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Amber Waves Directory 07
Page 05
The second structure was a smaller (1,200 square feet), but imposing, house located near the present shoreline, considerably downriver. One of the features of this second mansion was a basement in the center of which was sunk a square, brick-lined recess, 3.3 feet on a side and 2.7 feet deep. Among the many wine bottle fragments in this recess were 3 bottle seals--1 with "WW" and 2 with "FN" stamped on them. Whether or not this mansion can be associated with Sir Francis Nicholson, the last governor resident at Jamestown (who moved the capital to Williamsburg), we do not know. Artifacts found in the refuse indicate this house was dismantled, not burned, shortly before or after the turn of the 17th century. The mystery of the little brick-lined recess is not entirely solved, but it is probable that here was a primitive cooler, deep below the house, in which perishable foods or wines were stored.
It is well known that the very earliest population of the Old Dominion was not of the highest, but predominantly idle and thriftless. Vagabonds and homeless children picked up in the streets of London, as well as some convicts, were sent to the colony from England to be indented as servants, permanently, or for a term of years. Persons of the better class, to be sure, came as well, and the quality of the population, on the whole, improved year by year. Settlement here followed a centrifugal tendency, except as this was repressed by fear of the Indians. In 1616 the departments of Virginia were Henrico, up the James above the Appomattox mouth, West and Shirley Hundreds, Jamestown, Kiquoton, and King's Gift on the coast near Cape Charles--a wide reach of territory to be covered by a total population of only three hundred and fifty.
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