First Thanksgiving in America was Decreed for Town of Berkeley on James

By Dr. Lyon G. Tyler – Published in the Richmond News Leader, April 3, 1931.

            The Priorities of Virginia are numerous, but among them no one is more fascinating than the “Town and Hundred of Berkeley” on James river. It was founded a year before Plymouth, and is conspicuous among the various private compaies that got large grants of land in Virginia as the only one in which the records of its origin, settlement and management are fully preserved.

            The rules and material of its settlement, down to the smallest detail of the cargoes of the ship, are told us in the papers preserved in the library formerly of John Smith of North Nibley, five miles from Berkeley castle. Restored to much of its former interest by the present proprietor, Mrs. Jamison, of New York, it reaches the spirit of Beverstone and Berkeley castles in Gloucestershire, England, where the Lords of Berkeley, conspicuous in English history, once ruled in noble and almost princely style.

            One little fact makes it conspcuous in American history, and that is that in the very first of the instructions given by the proprietors to John Woodliffe, governor of the colony, he was ordered to hold the day of the arrival of the settlers as a day of holy and annual thanksgiving, thus anticipating Plymouth by several years; and what other single place in Virginia can boast in its subsequent history, of contributing both a signer of the declaration of independence and a president of the United States?

Continuous Existence

            Let us review the history of this interesting settlement whose title had a continous existence in spte of the withdrawal of the colonists after the massacre in 1622.

            Owing to climatic diseases, homesickness, wretched provisions, and poor management, the setttlement of Virginia, made at Jamestown in 1607 proceeded very slowly.

            When Sir Thomas Dale left the colony in 1616, emigration had almost stopped, and the whole number of settlers was only 351 – a pitiful outcome for nine years dreadful endeavor. Hundres of brave men had laid down their lives for the cause of civilization. The enterprise might have been given over entirely, had not, in the raising of tobacco, begun in 1612 by John Rolfe, the husband of Pocahontas, a fresh hope had been found. Dale frowned upon the new occupation, but after his departure in 1616, Captain George Yeardley, the deputy governor, gave every encouragement to its cultivation.

            When Samuel Argall came as deputy governor in April, 1617, he found the market place at Jamestown, the margin of the streets and other spare places set with the plant.

            The price brought by the plant in London, being as much as $20.00 a pound, in present money, encouraged many persons to join together and apply to the London company for permission to establish private tobacco companies in Virginia.

First of Companies

            The first of these companies located under the commission sent to Samuel Argall, deputy governor, were “Smyth’s Hundred,” reaching from Weyanoke to the Cihckahominy river. “Argall’s Town” near Jamestown, “Hamor and his associates” in Surry county, and “Martin’s Brandon” in Charles City county (afterwards Prince George). This was in the year 1617, and Martin’s Hundred in James City county, ten miles below Jamestown Island, was occupied in 1618; and in the summer of 1619, Captain Francis West laid out the site of Westover as the location for land in Virginia owing to Henry, fourth Lord Delawar as heir to his father, Sir Thomas West, third Lord Delaware, the late lord governor of Virginia. A neighbor to Westover was speedily forthcoming in the land selected for Berkeley Hundred by Sir George Yeardley, who was again deputy governor for Virginia in 1619.

            On Feb. 3, 1619, the “Treasurer and Company of Adventurers and Planters of the City of London for the Colony in Virginia,” with the advice and consent of the council of the same, did grant to Sir William Throckmorton, of Clowerwall, in the county of Gloucester, knight and baronet, Sir George Yeardley, “now governor of Virginia,” knight, Richard Berkeley, of Stoke, George Thorpe, of Wanswell, and John Smith, of North Nibley, in the said county of Gloucester, Esquires, 6,000 acres of land and 50 acres additional for every one of their servants sent over, all to be located in one body.

            A copy of this agreement, to be sent to the governor of Virginia, was written out by an Indian boy, born in Virginia and educated to write English by George Thorpe, who was the Indian’s friend, but not altogether appreciated by them as he fell a victim to the murderous tomahawk a few years later.

            Save Yeardley, who declined membership, the incorporators were kinspeople. Richard Berkeley was the ancestor of Virginia’s best beloved colonial governor, Norborne Berkeley, Baron de Botetourt, and John Smith was not only a kinsman, but steward of the great Berkeley estates in England and historian of the family. This John Smith, it must be remembered, was not Captain John Smith, of Pocahontas fame.

Ship is Provided

They procedded in a business fashion, losing no time, they provided a ship to carry the servants over, but she was kept wind bound off the coast of Ireland till the season was lost. Undlamayed, they chartered the Margaret, of 47 tons, and placed on board 28 passengers, and accompanied it with orders and directions significant of the management of all the private companies.

            John Woodliff, of Prestwould, in Buckinghamshire, Esquire, was appointed governor of the colony, and at the same time a council was named consisting of Ferdinand Yate, John Blanchard, Richard Godfrey, Rowland Painter and Thomas Coppy, Tobia Feigate, a noted mariner, was made pilot, and Ferdinand Yate was made historian of the voyage.

            The clause in the instructions which directed the annual thanksgiving reads as follows: “Imprimis, wee ordain that the day of our ships arrival at the place asssigned for the plantation in the land of Virginia shall be yearly and perpetually kept as a day of thanksgiving to Almighty God.”

            Under these instructions, 400 acres were ordered to be enclosed with a strong pale seven feet and a half high, to preserve more safely the cattle, and the corn, grain, vines and tobacco, “as shall be sown or planted.”

            A guard was to be kept at night and all were to dine at a common table, and for the “more decent and comely government and ordering of our famyly,” it was provided that Ferdinand Yate, besides being historian and one of the counsellors, act as “ancient” (flag bearer) of the plantation; Owland Painter as sergeant and “clarke of the kitchen”; John Blanchard as steward; Henry Perce as usher, and Thomas Partridge as bailiff, (see papers of John Smith of Nibley, published in the Bulletins of the New York public library, Vol. 3, Nos. 4, 5, 6, and 7.).

            The Margaret left Bristol, England, Sept., 16, 1619, and made landing at a good harbor at “Keekotan” (Hampton), in Virginia, on Nov. 30, 1619. Woodliff brought with him a letter from Sir Edwin Sandys, treasurer or president of the company of London, recommending the expedition to Governor Yeardley’s favor, and requesting him to place the settlers in the best possible locations. So Governor Yeardley planted them in the country adjoining Westover, “a very good and convenient place,” and not entrenching upon the lands of Lord Delaware. So he wrote to Sir Edwin Sandys.

Their Daily Husbandrie

            The account of the voyage from September to Nov. 30, 1619, written by Ferdinand Yate to George Thorpe , of Wanswell and John Smith, of Nibley, is prefaced with the statement that at the time of the writing, “they were then following their daily husbandrie – some to clearing ground for corn and tobacco, some to building houses, some to planting vines and mulberry trees.” It concludes with the following: “If I had the eloquence of Cesero, or the skillful art of Appelles, I could not pen, neither paint out a better praise of the cuntrie than the cuntrie itself deserveth.”

            In the following year on Sept. 24, 1620, William Ewins’ ship, the Supply, with Tobias Feigate as captain, left England carrying fifty more settlers for Berkeley Hundred, and arrived there Jan. 29, 1621.

            William Tracy, brother of Sir Thomas Tracy, bought the interests of Sir William Throckmorton, and the ship brought a revocation of Captain Wooliff’s commission, and a new commission for George Thorpe and William Tracy to be governors of “Berkeley Town and Hundred,” with new orders and instructions. Among those who came at this time, besides William Tracy, his wife and daughter, Joyce, who subsequently married Captain Nathaniel Powell, was Rev. Robert Pawlett (a relative of Lord John Pawlett), whom the proprietors had engaged to be their physician and preacher.

            The Supply left Virginia soon after April 3, 1621, carrying back to England Captain John Martin, proprietor of Brandon, Nathanield Basse, proprietor of Basse’s choic, Ferdinand Yate, Nicholas Combes and John Sabine. The ship also carried letters from Tracy and Thorpe to their associates in England, Berkeley and Smith. Within less than a month William Tracy died.

            The history of the plantation at this time, and during the next year, is one of disease and death. In March, 1621, there were only 843 English residing in Virginia, which is to say that out of about 700 old settlers and 1,238 newcomers, 1,095 had died en route and in Virginia; and to this dreadful mortality, attributable largely to homesickness and the plague bearing mosquitoes, was added in 1622 the horrors of an Indian massacre, which reduced a population of 1,240 in a single night to 893.

            Berkeley Hundred suffered greatly from sickness and Indian attack, and the colony there together, with many others was abandoned, after the massacre in 1622, though the title to the land has not broken.

            It is related by Edward Waterhouse that, besides Master George Thorpe, before mentioned, who at the time had the management of the college lands at Clay Point, John Berkeley who had charge of the iron works on Falling Creek, Nathaniel Powell of Merchants’ Hope (his wife Joyce Tracy, daughter of William Tracy) and Captain Samuel Maycox, “all gentlemen of birth, virtue and industry, and of the council there” suffered death at the hands of the cruel and trecherous Indians.

            For some years later the company owned a few cattle and servants in Virginia, and in June, 1632, Thomas Combe, then in London, wrote to Mr. Smith of Nibley to confer with Richard Berkeley “for the revival of our plantation” even though on a smallscale, “considering we have boeth land and cattle there and some ground already cleared.”

            Things, according to Combe, had improved greatly in Virginia, for the inhabitants no longer exported merely tobacco, but furs, soap, cedar, and black walnut, and had both “beer, butter and cheese as plentifully as the people in England had.”

Parted With Interest

            It is not probable that the partners did anything as recommended. It was not long before they parted with all their interest in Berkeley to Captain William Tucker, Maurice Thompson, George Thompson, William Harris, Thomas Deacon and Cornelius Lloyd, of London, merchants, and Jeremiah Blackburn, of London, mariner, who patented it anew in 1636. It described in this patent (1636) as containing 8,000 acres, bounded east by the land (Westover) of Captain Thomas Pawlett (brother of Lord Pawlett) and on the west by Kimages creek and extending back into the woods.

            After some years the interest of these merchants passed to John Bland, of London, merchant, whose son, Giles Bland, resided here till his execution in 1676 for complicity with Bacon.

            After this the estate went to Benjamin Harrison, the third of that name, attorney-general of Virginia, who died April 10, 1710. It Descended thence to Colonel Benjamin Harrison, speaker of the house of burgesses, who died in 1744, and at the time of the American Revolution it was owned by Benjamin Harrison, who was governor of Virginia and signer of the Declaration of Independence, as well as father of William Henry Harrison, president of the United States, who was born at Berkeley Feb. 3, 1779.

Tyler, Lyon G. “First Thanksgiving in America Was Decreed for Town of Berkeley on James.” The Richmond News Leader (Richmond, VA), April 3, 1931. https://www.newspapers.com/image/759491945/.