Thomas
E. Harris 1585 - 1654 – “Ancient Planter”
My
9th Great-Grandfather –by David Arthur
The account below contains information about Thomas, his
son William, and Francis Eppes II. William and
Francis are both my 8th Great-Grandfathers who were neighbors.
“Ancient
Planters” - http://www.ancientplanters.org/
The term "Ancient Planter" is applied to those
persons who arrived in Virginia before 1616, remained for a period of three
years, paid their passage, and survived the massacre of 1622. They received the
first patents of land in the new world as authorized by Sir Thomas Dale in 1618
for their personal adventure.
Lines
of Decent
William Harris > Eliz. Ann Harris > Margery Archer
> Ann Cousins > John Overby > Robert “Robin”
Overby > William Epps Overby
> David Overby > James Overby
> Bertha Overby > David Arthur.
Francis Eppes II > William Eppes > John Eppes > John Eppes, Jr. > Charlotte Eppes
> Robert “Robin” Overby > William Epps Overby > David Overby >
James Overby > Bertha Overby
> David Arthur.
Map of
the Area
William
Harris – Account of his father Thomas Harris - A
fictitious “document” presented and prepared based on facts.
By - Dan Mouer
This is like a biographical novel with the pretense that
the author is transcribing a historical document. The assignment Mary Praetzellis gave to those who participated in the
“Archaeologists as Storytellers” session at the 1997 SHA meeting was to tell a
story about a person, a family, or a place using “data” from an archaeological
excavation as source material.
Curls, Plantation, Henrico County, Virginia
https://danmouer.blog/tag/curles-plantation/
A True Story of the Ancient Planter and Adventurer in
Virginia, Captaine Thomas Harris, Gent.,
as Related by his Second Sonne
Published as “Archaeology Through Narrative: Captaine Thomas Harris, Gent,” in Historical Archaeology,
Volume 32, Spring 1998. Tucson: Society for Historical Archaeology.
The day before he was to die at the hands of Chickahominy
Indians in the Summer of 1678, Major William Harris
visited the widow of the rebel General Bacon at Curles,
once his father’s plantation and the place of William’s childhood. The ancient
seat was now nearly destroyed by the depredations of the Governor’s men in
retaliation for the late uprising, but the home he best remembered–his father’s
greatest pride–had been levelled by fire twenty years earlier. More than a year
had passed of her widowhood, but Elizabeth Bacon, with her Black, Indian and
German servants lived on in the mud and ashes of the Curles
estate. His recollections jarred by the visit, and by a dread premonition of
his coming expedition, Major Harris sat in the Indian’s house and told the boy
servants his father’s life story, which comes to us in the form of a petition
from Harris to the acting governor of Virginia. I have taken some care to
transcribe the document using modern usages and spelling only where needed for
clarity. I have likewise spelled out some words abbreviated in the original,
and these instances are marked with brackets ({}). In a very few instances I
have extrapolated a likely word or phrase which was illegible in the original,
and these are denoted by square brackets ([]).
THE PETITION OF WILLIAM HARRIS
To His Excellency The Hon’ble Acting Governor and High
{Commissioner} of His {Majesty’s Plantation} of Virginia, Colonel William Jeffreys from your most obdnt
Servant, Will: Harris, Major and Deputy of the Combined Militias of Henrico and
Charles City pray permit me through whatever intermediary this comes to you to
petition your exlcy on behalf of an Indian Boy named
Tom, of 18 yrs of age, presently a Servant in the estate
of the former Rebel and Scourge of our country, Nat’l Bacon, Jr. now deceased.
This Boy dwells at present with the widowed relict of the sd
rebel at his late plantation, known as Curles, in the
Coty of Henrico, said estate {presently} in the sizen
of your exlcy on behalf of his majesty due to the
treason of said Bacon. This Boy is remarkable in these parts even were he Christian, yet he is a Heathen of the Pamunkeys, a nephew, I believe, of the noble Queen of that
tribe with whom we have at long last made of late a peace.
The boy is well learned in our ways and language and he is
as capable a scribe as any clark
or barrister. {With proper nourishment} of his soul, and some further tutoring in
Classics, the boy would serve well as an {ambassador} of his people. He will
without doubt bring more boys from the Indians to live among us, to hunt and
plant, and to take instrucion in true religion and be
baptised, {thereafter} to become fine Citizens of
this Country. Mrs. Bacon will soon leave here to attend on Mr. Jarvis, to whom
she has become betrothd, at his {plantation} in the
lower parts of Nansemond. Unless you make some dispensacion
for this Boy and his young brother, a Boy about 12 years named Nat’l, they will
be sold as slaves, and of late many Indians have been sold to the Carolina
Savages who use them poorly. And t’were in my estimacion a strange Oeconomie
where we send our Indian’s boys to them and they send their captured Boys to
us, and an injustice to Ourselves to so {jeopardize} the peace by sending forth
such a one as this who could only by resentment turn his learning to our detrimnt through [treachery.]
I have only met this Boy to=night. I came to lodge at Curles in the hospitality of Mrs
Bacon due to a violent Gust and Torrent that has swoln
all the creeks of the upper parts of James His River. The night fell early and
I feared my horse would mis=step. Knowing the road to
Curles was at hand I entered this anciente
plantacn, once my father’s own, and the Home of my
youth. After a meager meal with the rebel’s Widow (and her having no man at
home other than a Dutch servant), she directed me to a quarters house where I
should lie the night with her Indian Servants, she having seven of these as
well five Negroes from Africa and Brazil. As I entered the small wooden House
this young Man arose respectfully and, in the Indian manner, he made no talk,
nor did I, but he took a Pipe and {Pouch} from a small trap in the floor filled
it with fine sweet=scented tobacco, brought the Ember to it and passed it me.
Nor he nor I spoke a Word til all the smoke was extinguisht from his Pipe. Then he spoke first saying he
knew me, and welcomed I should take his Bed and bolster.
He asked if I had fought against his great grandfather, the
old divil King Opechancanough
wherein I told him I was then too young, but that my father had done so,
{notwithstanding} I had seen the great Chief before he was murthered
in James City. This boy then asked where my father’s House was, and I near was
brought to tears, for it had once stood not a stone’s throw from the servant
hut where we spoke and these words are written. He asked I tell him about my
Father which I did to pass the time and to educate these boys–though I know not
the younger understood a word–about the history of our time in this Country. As
I spoke he wrote near every word, and this, his writing of my words, I have
placed with this letter that you may read it. I do not presume to entertain you
with my story=telling as I have done this night to educate these Heathens, but
only to shew the Cleverness of this servant who I pray you to save from slavery
so that he might serve his people and ours in an adventure of a peaceful
Communion. What follows are my words true as spake to
the Indian lads.
THOMAS HARRIS HIS STORY
My father, Captaine Thomas Harris
come hither aboard the Prosperus from England, a land
I know not, in the year of sixteen hundred and eleven to serve with Sir Thomas
Dale his Government. He told me in my youth that he had no estate in England
and that his only hope was as a soldier of fortune in the plantacions
or as a soldier to fodder the Canons in Holland. He chose then to be a Planter
rather than himself to be planted in the ground at so young an age, and he came
to decide between signing for Ireland or Virginia, and he swore he would not go
among the savage Irish or ever live in a Hovel of mud and sticks, for that is
how he dreamed of the Irish plantation. And he reasoned that should he have to die
at the hands of Salvages, better it would be of a heathen Indian than an
uncivilized Christian who knows no King, but only a cardinal Bishop. And so he
purchased his stock as an Adventurer in the Company and came hither after a
terrible voyage wch near killed all in a Tempest or Hurricano.
The year he came to this plantation twas
the Starving Time for English and Indian alike, and there was no house in
useful repair in James City, and the walls of the Ffort
were nearly tumbled in the dust. Governor Dale made mends to James Fforte and then, seeking a safer and more healthful seat up
the main River, he took near all the Companie to
build the City of Henrico, and having barely laid the plan of the towne and paled it in he took them all again to build a city
called the New Bermudas, wherein he commissioned my
father {Lieutenant} of Digges His Hundred in that City. Here my father and my
mother came to live in an old Indian house long since abandoned, blackened by
smoke, a Hovel of sticks, but at least not an Irish Hovel. At the end of the
first year he builded him the House in which I was
born at the foot of this neck of land along the main river. The House had one
room, no windows and a chimney of sticks plastered with mud. Here we lived when
Opechancanough and all the Indians rose against us
and slaughtered near 400 in one day of 1622. In my father’s charge three were
lost to the Indian treachery, and that House was burned to the Ground. For many
years we lived as tenants on the lands of others, in one of the fortified
settlements. We had another small wood House to ourselves and our servants, but
the {Tobacco} we made on a landlord’s field, and it were no Benefit to us. The
year 1630 the Governor released us from the Indian-imposed bondage to return to
our ruined {plantations} and tenancies and we come back then to Curles Neck where, finally, my Father said we should have a
proper English house, near twenty years after he come to this country.
My Mother had died and now with a new wife my Father and
Brother and I began to build the finest House in Henrico wch
was the among the first shires ands courts of the
country. We labored terribly in the Summer of that
year to dig a Cellar 18 feet by 24 feet and full 5 feet below the earth but
rising eight to the plaistered silling
overhead. On the side walls we erected stout posts, nogged
between with bricks fired by the house, and on the chimney wall we builded only of brick. The House raised a full room and a
garret above the lowroom Cellar, where stood the
Kitchen which served also as a Brewhouse, Buttery,
and Bakehouse as well our Magazine and Armory. The
house was covered with cypress shingles and on one end rose a [massive brick
chimney,] the finest of its kind in the upper parts. Nestled against the
hearth, half within and half without the house, was a large stone oven for my
new mother to bake fine bread for all those of the {neighborhood} who would
answer the perfume of its baking. This fine Hall, my father would say, was no
Irish Hovel.
The Greate Room was plaistered of mud and lime and washed with ochre, and the
walls were hung heavy with French clothes to keep the warmth of the hearths
within. My new mother would cook on the great hearth of the lowroom
with the help of my sister. We had then but two servants who worked the fields,
made and mended all our tools. as well serviced our Meate, Meale and Beer within the
hall. Mother, father, sister, brother and I all stooped over the hoe in the
fields beside the servants to bring in the crop each year and to plant the
next, except when my father was about his Business of soldiering, for he was
above all, before a Farmer or a Father, a Soldier. His great pride, beside his
brick house, was his rank of Captaine which they
{commissioned} him at the time I speak of. I remember how, as a youth, it
struck me with great dread to see him transformed in his armor gorget and tassets, a great steel
helm on his head, a broadsword in his sash and rapier to hand, his legs and
feet bound in Indian clothes and moccasins of coarse deerskin.
We lived well in that single Hall, low room and Garett for
many years, and we builded more buildings, in the
manner of the co’try, in our yarde.
A tobacco house was the first, and then a small barn for the Cattle, a Granary
and a dovecote. About the year 1640, my father resolved to enlarge the house.
Another year we dug a long passage to serve as a Buttery beside and beyond the
great hearth and opened it to another room as large as the Lowroom
below the hall. Above ground were new chambers for he
and my mother, one for my brother and I, and another for our Sister. In the gartt dwelt a maidserv’t from
France and a Negro girl, not a slave, for my father would have no truck with
the selling of flesh into perpetual servitude. When her time was passed, and she
had been brought to the Church, she married a baptized Indian and they raised
their plantacion on fifty acres a Gifte
from my father.
And we builded this little wood
house wherein we now huddle as this be spoke and
written. Here lived the men and boy servants. I befriended one Indian named
Dick. He was my age and he made smoking pipes, beautifully cut out and
polished, decorated with Deer and the compass=rose. He made Pipes for all our
neighborhood. for men and women, some with their
Ciphers emblazoned in fine dentacions made by the artfull cut of a great shark’s tooth. He would roll out claye dug from the white Marl in the riverbank into tubes
and bury it for many days to season. To this he would add small measure of
quicklime. He burned them in the bread oven, and Mother–for I came to know her
as my mother– was much put off until he gave her pipes with her own cipher,
which she showed to all, smoking proudly with great billows at the Court or
Churchyard.
In the year 1644, the old King of Pamunkey,
Opechanough, raised another warre
against us. That day near 700 men women and children were delivered by sauvages to their maker’s judgment. The old Indian was
blind and more than 100 years old, and he was soon captured. I can remember
well the militia with my father at its Head brought him before the parade at
Henrico for all to see. It was no more than a few weeks after he was imprisnd in James Cittie that a
knavish rogue among the guard shot the anciente enemie in the Back, ending his fearful reign. Though Pamunkey served the work of the divil,
he knew no better, for he had not been instructed in the ways of our Lord; it
were a treachery worthy of the Salvage himself to have been murthered
so infamously.
They burned three plantacions in
these partes and killed nearly fourscore in Henrico,
but by God’s will, we were saved and our houses were unmolested. But then the
government resolved to stop the fearsome ravages once and for all, and we had a
long revenge upon yr people. I saw my father very
little for nearly two yeares as he led rangers
against the Appomattox, the Arrahatox, the Weyanokes, and the Manahoax. He
was busy too in the work of building new fortes at the Falls
and at {Chickahominy,} and commaunding them and their
garrisons. My brother being gonne
from the country for his learning, the management of this plantation fell to
me.
In the year 1654, in the 69th year of his Life, my Father
fell ill of the Ague and Fever. Of all he was the most seasoned of the ancient plaunters, yet the agues laid even him low. In those
evenings of his last days we would talk when the fever permitted. He told me
again his stories of coming hither, and how glad he was he had done so. He was
never a rich man, though our lives were {commodious} and we wanted for naught.
I had already builded my own house across the neck in
Charles City, but I never failed to think of Curles
as my home. He reminded me in his dying of what to him was important: that he
hoped he had pleased God and served his King and his fellow men: that he had provided
some small portion of an Estate for me and my brother and a Dowrie
to secure my Sister an honorable husband: And he had lived to see the
plantation of Virginia survive, even flourish: not the home of dandies the
likes of which inhabit the Isle of Barbados, but rather as a place where a
man’s hands with Will and Fortune and Blessing could raise a living. And he
gestured weakly to the brick walls surrounding us, and said
“At least I did not die in a Netherlandish Myre or an Irish Hovel.”
OUR COUNTRY SPOIL’D
This your exllncy can see is the scribework of a talented young man. It breaks my heart to
see this plantacion, long since deprived of my
Father’s brick House by the act of God and the Neglect of Tenants, now ruined further
by the rebellion of Bacon and the retribution of our former govnr
on his estates. The neighbors hereabouts daily plunder this place and the Widow
is helpless to defend it. The destruction and thievery has so far been of the
Crop and the buildings and their furnishings: but soon they must spoil as well
the cattle and servants for these are nearly all of value that remain on the plantacn, save the bricks from Mrs. Bacon’s own house and
many timbers yet standing of the Rebel’s great Ffort.
For this reason I beseech you take this Indian boy as your servant and godson,
have him instructed in Faith and in the artes he
might learn of a cultured Tutor. He, or someone like him, may yet serve as the
emissary to bring forever a lasting peaceful co=habitacion
between the Indians and ourselves.
I would deliver this request and my Compliments in person
save I am to muster our county troop on the Morrow at Henrico Court to ride out
with Col. Eppes to the plantation of Rowland Pace
where several Indians have of late been marauding and it is reported they have stole a Pig and killed some chickens. These sauvages tolerate not the encroaching upon their champion
and meadows by the Planters in these parts who have late drained the marishes wherein the Indians are used to hunt. Nor do our
own Citizens take lightly theft of Swine whereon so many of the desperate ones
might feed a familie for a season or two. I would it
were not too late to avoid the letting of more human bloode.
God protect our country and God save the King.
yr most
humble etc.
(signed) Wm Harris
Given at Curles this day, 23rd Augst 1678
Telling
Captain Harris’s Story
Also from - https://danmouer.blog/tag/curles-plantation/
The assignment Mary Praetzellis
gave to those who participated in the “Archaeologists as Storytellers” session
at the 1997 SHA meeting was to tell a story about a person, a family, or a
place using “data” from an archaeological excavation as source material.
Discussion of archival or archaeological research was not to impose itself upon
the story. When constrained by the “rules” of narrative (and, in the case of
the live delivery at a conference, the rules of performance), I found, not
surprisingly, that competence in archaeology’s language and styles is no
guarantee one can be a decent story-teller in the strict sense. But the
experiment was instructive. In seeking a “voice” and a “face” to present the
story, I realized how little we know of language, costume, gesture, or other
aspects of daily social life on late 17th-century Virginia’s frontier. It made
the detailed groundedness of archaeological insight
seem, somehow, all the more important.
From the beginning, even before choosing a character or
plot, I knew I wanted to set my story at Curles
Plantation, a site I have worked on annually since 1984 (Figures 1 and 2). The Curles Plantation Site, in Henrico County, Virginia, was
settled about 1630, although earlier colonial settlement as part of Digges’s
Hundred is suggested by documents but not yet confirmed by archaeology. Thomas
Harris lived at Curles until his death in the middle
of the century, after which the plantation became a tenanted quarter of
merchant Thomas Ballard. In 1674, Ballard sold the plantation to Nathaniel
Bacon, Jr. who, in the three years he resided in Virginia (the last three of
his life) led a war with the Indians and a revolution against the colonial
government. By the time the dust settled, a long-time governor had been
unseated, colonial laws had been rewritten, and the local Native American
societies had been reduced to subjugation to English and Virginian authority.
The plantation was seized in 1677 by Bacon’s nemesis, Governor William
Berkeley, and it remained abandoned and wasted as a government holding until
1699. For the next century, Curles enjoyed a rebirth
and flourished as the seat of one of the most powerful families in Virginia.
The plantation entered a long period of decline beginning about 1810, and the
last of the remaining buildings were dismantled by Federal troops during the
Peninsula Campaign of 1862.
With assistance from a grant from the Virginia Historic
Landmarks Commission, I located and surveyed the site of the manor house
complex in 1984. Each year since then my students and I have conducted
excavations at Curles through the summer Field
Archaeology program at Virginia Commonwealth University. The Curles project is “unfunded” in any traditional sense; the
hard work (and ample tuition) of students has been the main source of sponsorship.
Enormous support has been offered by VCU’s Archaeological Research Center
(VCU-ARC), which has provided much staff assistance and virtually all of the
field and laboratory supplies needed for this enormous, on-going project. We
have periodically had generous assistance in the field from the owner of Curles Neck Farm, Mr. Richard Watkins, as well as from
Virginia Power Company and TARMAC, an international construction-materials
firm.
The first couple of years of full-scale excavation work
were dedicated to digging the 18th-century Randolph mansion and some associated
structures and features. In 1987 we discovered the small brick house Nathaniel
Bacon had constructed at Curles in 1674. We excavated
the house in 1988, and, the following year, we began to uncover the remains of
what appears to have been a huge fortification complex Bacon had constructed
around his home. By 1990, while excavating the 18th-century plantation kitchen,
we had stumbled upon the extensive remains of the Thomas Harris house. These
four structures–the Randolph kitchen, the two 17th-century houses, and Bacon’s
fort–have taken most of the efforts of the field school over the past decade,
although we have also excavated 18th-century gardens, 18th-century slave
quarters, a 17th-century brick clamp, and an assortment of drains, ditches,
wells, and other typical (and some not-so-typical) plantation features.
Over the years a great many students have undertaken
independent-study projects and internships that have contributed extensive documentation
about the site’s history, as well as bringing order to the vast collections.
While my debts are too many to mention, I must take special notice of the
tremendous contributions to this project by Beverly Binns,
VCU-ARC’s Laboratory Director and the field director at Curles
for most of recent history. I also want to acknowledge the tremendous trove of
documentary source material recovered from around the world and transcribed by
Katherine Harbury during her years as staff historian
at the Center.
While I have presented findings from Curles
regularly in papers delivered at local, regional and national meetings (Mouer 1993b; 1992a; 1991b, c; 1990a, b; 1989a, b; 1988b;
1987; 1985; Mouer, Wooley and Gleach
1986), little has been published, largely because it is an on-going project.
Articles about Bacon’s house at Curles have appeared
in Archaeology (Mouer 1991a) and in the Henrico
County Historical Magazine (Mouer 1988a), and I have
included chapters related to the Harris, Bacon and Randolph occupations at Curles in my forthcoming book for Plenum (Mouer 1998).
My views of the 17th century in the upper reaches of the
tidal parts of the James have also been influenced by my work (with Douglas McLearen) over three seasons of excavation at a complex of
sites on Jordan’s Point. These represented the fortified master compound and
some tenancies associated with the early-17th-century settlement known as
Jordan’s Journey (Mouer and McLearen
1991, 1992; McLearen and Mouer
1993, 1994; Mouer 1994). I have also researched the
17th-century history of the Fall-Line area for my projects at Rocketts (Mouer 1992, 1993c) and
Falls Plantation (Mouer and Kiser 1993). Certainly I
owe a considerable debt to all my colleagues who have devoted so much time to
digging and interpreting 17th-century Virginia. A few outstanding works require
special mention: William Kelso’s (1984) Kingsmill Plantations, Ivor Noel Hume’s
(1979) Martin’s Hundred, and James Deetz’s (1993) Flowerdew Hundred.
Thomas Harris is someone we know primarily from official
documents, which reveal quite a bit, because he left a pretty good paper trail
thanks to his various land dealings and military activities. Still, much
remains unknown about Thomas Harris, although genealogists have contributed
considerably to the facts–as well as some fiction and confusion–surrounding
Harris’s life in England and Virginia. He and his two wives were officially
designated with the status “ancient planter” due to their having been in
Virginia during the tenure of Sir Thomas Dale. That gave him access to an
additional 150 acres of land over and above the 50-acre headrights they each
earned for themselves, and any additional headrights for servants imported to
the colony.
We know that Dale assigned Harris Lieutenant of Digges’s Hundred,
and that he was living on the “Neck of Land” during the 1622 massacre. His
patents place him at Curles Neck by 1630, the year
that many who had moved into Jamestown or one of the large fortified villages
erected after the massacre returned to earlier habitations. He held a number of
militia posts and commissions and was, for much of his adult life, the senior
military official in what was then known as “the upper parts” of the colony.
While the evidence isn’t conclusive, it appears he never owned slaves. He was
certainly one of the longest-lived of the “ancient planters” in Virginia.
While the historical literature on the 17th-century
Chesapeake is huge, and there is an especially good basis of recent scholarship
in social history and archaeology, there are few works that, on their own,
stimulate for me the “historical imagination” needed to reach into that distant
culture. One of the best such pieces, in my opinion, is still Morgan’s (1975)
American Slavery, American Freedom. While Morgan sketched out a broader thesis,
he drew on the emerging literature in archaeology and social history to elicit
at least some sense of everyday life.
Another work I have long admired is the Rutmans’
(1984) experiment in creating an evocative historical ethnography: A Place in
Time. The Rutmans draw a convincing picture of
colonial Middlesex County, but their account of this lower Tidewater area does
not square with what I have come to sense about the Fall-Line frontier up
river. Many years of archaeological work have driven home to me the fact that
the Fall Line was different from the tobacco-raising heartland of the early
colony in many important ways. Throughout the 17th century this area was the
center of the Indian trade. Many of the settlers here were not typical English
planters; there were also French sheepherders and Irish millers. They depended
on industry, commerce or military positions as much as or more than they did on
agriculture. Servants were as likely to include Native Americans as Africans or
English. Cultural and economic interactions among colonists and Indians were
far greater here, and when wars and skirmishes broke out they were likely to be
within these precincts. It was in Henrico County that Bacon’s Rebellion was
fomented. It was in this cauldron of peripheral “multiculturalism” that many of
the important historical events and cultural developments of early Virginia
were centered. This intensive variety and interaction created creolized
cultural forms which I have discussed at some length elsewhere (Mouer 1987, 1993a, in press).
William Harris, the narrator of the story, was probably as
typical as anyone in these parts in the later 17th century, which means he was
neither extraordinarily rich, nor poor; neither very powerful, nor by any means
without his own sphere of influence (Figure 3). The son of an “ancient
planter,” he had a small tobacco farm that was worked by his family and,
occasionally, one or two servants. So far as I can
tell, like most second-generation Virginians, he probably never saw England. He
was a creole colonial. He was a landowner, but his holdings were modest. He
rose to the rank of major as second-in-command of the combined militias of
Charles City and Henrico Counties. He was what I once called a “local elite:”
one of the peasantry living in the colonial periphery that rose to a modicum of
local power, but whose wealth and influence did not extend to the colonial
core, nor were they nearly as great as the colony’s core elites (Mouer 1987).
In 1670 he ventured west beyond the Fall Line with a troop
of mounted rangers accompanying John Lederer (1966
[1671]), a Swiss explorer with a governor’s commission. His fear of Indians and
of going beyond what had been the boundary of the Virginia colony for 70-some
years led him into a conflict with Lederer. He
finally abandoned the explorer just 50 miles from the Fall Line and returned
home with his troop and announced that Lederer had
been killed by Indians. A year later, John Lederer
returned to Virginia having mapped and documented his travels throughout a huge
section of the American Southeast. Harris was shamed. For reasons that aren’t
entirely clear, he died impoverished. His probate inventory include a lump of
melted pewter, a bedstead, and an old mare considered to have no value.
My principal documentary and secondary sources for William
Harris’s era are those dealing with Bacon’s Rebellion. The central published
works include Wertenbacker (1940), Washburn (1957),
and Webb (1984), as well as a very useful and extensive compilation of
documents and abstracts concerning the rebellion compiled by Neville (1976). We
have few primary sources for Curles Plantation in
this period other than deeds, wills, and some other court papers. The cream of
the crop is an extensive room-by-room inventory made under the commissioners
sent to investigate the rebellion (Anon. 1677). They charged surveyors to
inventory rebels’ plantations that had been seized by Governor William
Berkeley. From this document we get a very good picture of the estate as it
existed right at the end of the rebellion in May of 1677, including a detailed
list of Bacon’s Indian, Black, and European servants.
I chose Harris, and his story about his father’s life,
because I wanted to present a chronicle of events at Curles
that could embrace more than a single lifespan. William Harris lived through
the period of the 17th-century occupation at Curles,
and he is a credible first-hand observer of events on, and surrounding, the
plantation. I wanted to contrast the physical world the Harris’s built at Curles with what we have come to know about the preceding
period of the 1610s and 1620s, and William Harris was a subject who might have
had reliable second-hand knowledge of that time from his father.
I chose the device of a written document primarily because
we have very few sources that permit us to infer the speaking manner of a
frontier-dwelling, native-born Virginian of the later 17th century. We have
writings of men like Nathaniel Bacon and William Bird, but these were much more
powerful elites, raised and educated in England, whose lives revolved around
Jamestown and London, despite their geographic locations at the Falls of the James. What we do have in plenty are petitions,
court papers, etc. Their language is conventional, somewhat formal, and
immediately familiar to any who have spent much time reading papers of the
period. By “reading” a fictitious “document,” I avoided having to act out a
character whose clothing and language I can scarcely imagine. For the written
version presented here, the reader’s suspension of disbelief is aided by the
use of approximations of 17th-century spelling, orthography, capitalization,
abbreviation, and all the usual inconsistencies in each of these found in
period documents.
References Cited
Anonymous
1677 An Account of the Estate of Nathaniel Bacon, Jr., Dec’d. C.O.5/1371, Pt.II,
227vo-230, May 11, 1677. Colonial Records, London.
Deetz, James
1993. Flowerdew Hundred: The Archaeology of a Virginia
Plantation, 1619-1864. Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia.
Kelso, William M.
1984 Kingsmill Plantations, 1619-1800: Archaeology of
Country Life in Colonial Virginia. Academic Press.
Lederer, John
1966 [1671] The Discoveries of
John Lederer. Readex
Microprint.
McLearen,
Douglas C., and L. Daniel Mouer
1993 Jordan’s Journey, Volume II: Report on the 1992
Excavations at Archaeological Sites 44PG302, 44PG303, and 44PG307. Report
prepared by VCU Archaeological Research Center for The Virginia Department of
Historic Resources and The National Geographic Society.
1994 Jordan’s Journey, Volume III: Report on the 1992-1993
Excavations at Archaeological Site 44PG307. Report prepared by VCU
Archaeological Research Center for The Virginia Department of Historic
Resources and The National Geographic Society.
Morgan, Edmund S.
1975 American Slavery, American Freedom: The Ordeal of
Colonial Virginia. W. W. Norton and Co., New York.
Mouer, L. Daniel
1998 Digging Sites and telling Stories: Essays in Interpretive
Historical Archaeology. Studies in Global Historical Archaeology series, edited
by Charles Orser. Plenum Publishing, New York.
1994 “…we are not the veriest
beggars in the world:” The People of Jordan’s Journey. Presented at the Annual
Conference on Historical and Underwater Archaeology, Vancouver, B.C.
1993a Chesapeake Creoles: An Approach to Colonial Folk
Culture. In The Archaeology of Seventeenth-Century Virginia, edited by Dennis
J. Pogue and Carter Hudgins. Special Publication of the Archaeological Society
of Virginia, Richmond, pp.
1993b An Update on the Curles
Plantation and Jordan’s Journey Projects. Jamestown Archaeology Conference,
Jamestown.
1993c Telling Stories About Rocketts: Community and Diversity on Richmond’s Early
Waterfront. Paper presented at the Conference on Historical and Underwater
Archaeology, Kansas City.
1992a Curles, Rocketts,
and Jordan’s Journey: A progress report on three major excavations. Paper
presented to the Jamestown Archaeology Conference, Fredericksburg.
1992b Rocketts: The Archaeology
of the Rocketts #1 Site, Technical Report. Report in
3 volumes prepared by the VCU Archaeological Research Center for the Virginia
Department of Transportation.
1991a Digging a Rebel’s Homestead: Nathaniel Bacon’s
fortified plantation called “Curles” Archaeology
magazine, July/August, pp: 54-57.
1991b Three Centuries on the James: Archaeology at Rocketts, Curles, and Jordan’s
Journey. Paper presented to the Annual Meeting of the Archaeological Society of
Virginia, Roanoke.
1991c Jordan’s Journey and Curles:
the 1991 Season’s Finds. Paper presented at the
Jamestown Archaeology Conference, Washington’s Birthplace National Landmark.
1990a Progress Reports: Jordan’s Journey, Rocketts Port, and Curles
Plantation Excavations. Paper presented at the Jamestown Archaeology Fall
Conference.
1990b “An Ancient Seat Called Curles”:
The Archaeology of a James River Plantation: 1984-1989. Paper presented to the
Conference on Historical and Underwater Archaeology, Tucson.
1989a The Rebel and the
Renaissance: Nathaniel Bacon at Curles Plantation.
Paper delivered to the Middle Atlantic Archaeology Conference, Rehobeth Beach, Delaware.
1989b The Curles Plantation
Project at the Five Year Mark: Retrospect and Prospect. Paper delivered to the
Jamestown Archaeology Conference, Jamestown.
1988a The Excavation of Nathaniel Bacon’s Curles Plantation. In The Henrico County Historical Society
Magazine, Vol. 12, pp: 3-20.
1988b Nathaniel Bacon’s Brick House and Associated
Structures, Curles Plantation, Henrico County,
Virginia. Paper presented at the annual meeting of the Archaeological Society
of Virginia, Hampton.
1987 Everything in Its Place: Locational Models and
Distributions of Elites in Colonial Virginia. Paper delivered at the annual
meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology, Savannah, Georgia.
1985 What are you looking for? What have you found? What
will you do with it now? Paper presented at the Jamestown Archaeological
Conference, sponsored by the Association for the Preservation of Virginia Antiquities,
Jamestown.
Mouer, L. Daniel, and R.
Taft Kiser
1993 Falls Plantation and the Confederate Navy Yard: An
Archaeological Assessment of Richmond’s Eastern Waterfront. Report prepared by
VCU Archaeological Research Center for the William Byrd Branch, Association for
the Preservation of Virginia Antiquities.
Mouer, L. Daniel, and
Douglas C. McLearen
1991 “Jordan’s Journey”: an Interim Report on the
Excavation of a Protohistoric Indian and Early 17th Century Colonial Occupation
in Prince George County, Virginia. Report prepared by VCU Archaeological
Research Center for the Virginia Department of Historic Resources.
1992 Jordan’s Journey: A Report on Archaeology at Site
44Pg302, Prince George County, Virginia, 1990-1991. Report prepared by VCU
Archaeological Research Center for The Virginia Department of Historic
Resources and The National Geographic Society.
Mouer, L. Daniel, Jill C.
Wooley, and Frederic W. Gleach
1986 Town and Country in the Curles
of the James: Geographic and Social Place in the Evolution of James River
Society. Paper presented at the annual meeting of the Middle Atlantic
Archaeological Conference, Rehobeth Beach, Delaware.
Neville, John Davenport
1976 Bacon’s Rebellion: Abstracts of Materials in the Colonial
Records Project. The Jamestown Foundation.
Noël Hume, Ivor
1979Martin’s Hundred. Alfred Knopf, New York.
Rutman, Darrett B., and Anita H. Rutman
1984 A Place in Time: Middlesex County, Virginia,
1650-1750. Norton, New York.
Washburn, Wilcomb
1957The Governor and the Rebel. University of North
Carolina Press, Chapel Hill.
Webb, Stephen Saunders
1984 1676: The End of American Independence. Harvard
University Press, Cambridge.
Wert
1940Torchbearer of the Revolution: The Story of Bacon’s
Rebellion and its Leader. Princeton University Press, Princeton.
--------------------------------------- End of Dan Mouer’s
presentation
________________________________________________________________________________________________
Maj.
William Harris and Col. Francis Eppes were in command
of the Indian Battle of 1678
Major William Harris (b ca 1629 Henrico Co., Va., died 1678
Va).
He was killed in a battle with Indians near the present
town of Richmond, Va. The battle was between the
Militia and a band of Indians raiding from the north. Colonel Francis Epps and
Major William Harris were both killed.
A letter of Colonel Herbert Jeffreys,
the Governor of Virginia, to Sir Henry Coventry reported that: "On the
22nd and 23rd of August [1678] some Indians came downe
uppon james River to the
number of 150 or 200 in Henrico County on the 24th some of the Militia officers
of Henrico County gott upp
a party of forty six horse and marched imediately upp to [ ] upper plantation of Coll:
[Rowland] Places: The cheife officer Coll: [Francis] Epps and Major [William] Harris were killed
and two more wounded Indians Kill Maj. William Harris (1678).
In 1678 Maj. William Harris and Col. Francis Epes were in command of a militia of hands near present-day
Richmond when an Indian raiding party came from the North. A letter from John
Banister of 6 April 1679 described the events.
... Last Summer
they made several Incursions among the Inhabitants on the Heads of Rapahannock, York & Our (i.e.) James River destroying
their cattle, rifling their houses, & killing and carrying away some
Families. But tho' we were sufferers in our Stocks
& Cropps, & some of the loss of household
goods also, & (blessed be God) none of us lost our lives. One Coll[.] Epes indeed was killed who with some Forces rais'd in Our (i.e.) Henrico
County, came in pursuit of them two days after the mischief was done. They
found them Shut up in a Corn field belonging to the Upper Plantations on the
North-side of ye River, & had they been but half so courageous as they were
cautios might have cut them all off together.But while one durst not shoot nor the other for
want of extent of Commission & for fear of breach of Peacd,
out get the Indians, gain the clear'd ground &
fire on them. The Coll. paid dear for his deliberation, he was shot in the
throat by an Indian at least 200 paces distant. We lost another stout man at
the same time, one Major Harris, who rashly pursuing the flying Enemy with a
Pistol only in his hand & that too discharg'd was
shot and died a Martyr to his foolhardiness. The Indian that shot him was kill'd & one woman taken prisoner, ye rest escap'd over the River...
Colonel
Francis Eppes II
Francis Eppes II was the son of
Francis Eppes I, "the Immigrant," and wife Mary.
He was born c. 1627 in Virginia. His father returned to England c.1629, taking
Mary and two small sons with him, to tend to the affairs of John Eppes, recently deceased. The third son, Thomas, was born
in 1630 in London. When the family returned to Virginia, the senior Francis Eppes was able to claim headrights for his wife and three
children by paying for their passages.
Francis Eppes II served as
justice of the Charles City County monthly court. He served in the Virginia
Militia, rising to the rank of captain by 1660 and to Lt. Col during Bacon's
Rebellion. He moved to Henrico County, Virginia c.1665 and served as a justice
in that county, as well. He served in the House of Burgesses.
Francis married twice. The first wife's name is not known.
It has been suggested that her birth name was Wells or Welles, but no documents
have been found to support this name. There was one child from this marriage.
His second wife was Elizabeth Littlebury, widow of
William Worsham. There were four children from this
marriage.
Francis died in August, 1678, of a wound, possibly from
fighting Indians. He had made a deposition earlier that year reciting he was 50
years of age. From this we can estimate his date of birth.
Before his death he made a nuncupative {"oral"}
will dividing his estate, and designating his son Francis executor, to which
will William Randolph and Richard Cocke, Sr. were
witnesses. On December 2, 1678 Richard Cocke, Sr.,
aged about 38, deposed that he was at the house of Colonel Francis Eppes the day before he died, and Col. Eppes
said he wished his estate divided equally between his wife and four children.
And on the same day Wm Randolph, aged about 28, deposed that he was at the
house of Col. Francis Eppes a few days before he
died, and said Eppes, being dangerously wounded,
called him, and desired him to take notice that he wished his estate to be
equally divided between his wife and four children, and when his wife asked
about his land, he said and that Lanton would serve
one of the boys. His son Francis was his administrator and among his accounts
with the estate are payments to Parson Williams and Parson Ball, doubtless for
the funeral services.
During his lifetime he carried on a mercantile business at
Bermuda Hundred, and was agent for a London firm.
Child of Francis Eppes II and
first wife:
Frances Eppes III, b. 1657
Children of Francis Eppes II and
wife Elizabeth Littlebury:
William Eppes, b. 1662
Littlebury Eppes
Mary Eppes, b. 1664
Anne Eppes.
Eppes Family - Francis Eppes
I
Lt. Colonel Francis Eppes I
(1597-1674) (called Captain Eppes elsewhere) obtained
a grant of land August 26, 1636, for transportation of himself, his three sons
and some 30 servants into the Virginia Colony, and in 1635 settled there on the
south shore of the James River near the mouth of the Appomattox. this river formed the boundary line between the southern
halves of the counties of Henrico and Charles City, which then lay on both
sides of the James River; and as Colonel Eppes
subsequently acquire very extensive estates in both counties he was returned to
the House of Burgesses indifferently from either. Sometime previous to his
death which occurred in 1655 he became a member of the Colonial Council. Four
of his descendants in lineal succession, each bearing the name Francis and
three of them distinguished by the title of Colonel, all county officials and
Member of the House of Burgesses, enjoyed in tail(?) male(?) the large landed
estates the first Francis had secure in that part of the County of Henrico
which was subsequently made Chesterfield. The lands in and around City Point
(Appomattox Manor) which were granted in 1636 are still owned by the Eppes family; it is said that no other tract of land in
America has been so long in unbroken possession of one family. Francis Eppes I was Lt. Colonel of the County, member of the House
of Burgesses 1625-1632, Commissioner 1631-39, Member of the Council April 30,
1652.
Appomattox
Manor
https://www.nps.gov/articles/appom.htm
____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________-
Curles Neck Plantation
Curles Neck
Farm is a large plantation style farm located on the northern banks of the
James River. It was first owned by
Captain Thomas Harris in 1635. He served
as a burgess (or representative) for this area in the House of Burgesses at
Jamestown.
William Harris fell heir to "Longfield",
later known as "Curles." His inheritance of
the plantation is established through a Henrico County record in a suit
entitled John Broadnax vs. Willm. Soane, entered 1
October 1700, to clear the title to the land and establish boundaries.
On 17 March 1664/5, William Harris sold Curles
to Roger Green, a merchant. A portion of Curles, the
Harris plantation, consisted of 820 acres originally patented by Thomas Harris
in 1638. Roger Green sold this portion of the estate to Thomas Ballard in
September 1668. Neither Green nor Ballard lived at Curles.
Thomas Ballard was a member of Virginia’s prestigious Governors Council. On 28
August 1674, Ballard sold Curles to Nathaniel Bacon.
Nathaniel had just arrived in Virginia with 1,800 in his pocket. With him was
his wife, Elizabeth, a relation of Royall Governor William Berkeley. They
immediately appointed him a member of the Governors
Council and granted him a license to participate in the lucrative Indian trade
monopoly. Nathaniel built his home at Curles and
maybe he took advantage of some structures put up by Capt. Thomas Harris.
Nathaniel was upset with the governor of Virginia for being
too friendly towards the American Indians and led Bacon’s Rebellion in
1676. His land at Curles
Neck was confiscated (taken away) and resold to the well-known Randolph family
(whose descendants were Thomas Jefferson and Robert E. Lee). The Randolph
family grew tobacco and built a large mansion on the property which fell into
disrepair after the Civil War. In 1894
an enterprising farmer named Charles Sneff purchased
the land. He started raising cattle,
sheep, and horses, and he built the mansion which is there today. After his death in 1913, a horse-lover named
CK Billings acquired the property and opened a horse racing track. The Strawberry Hill Horse Races were held
here during this time. The next owner,
AB Ruddick, started the famous Curles Neck Dairy farm
here in 1933 which was one of the largest dairy farms in the area. The milk was processed and bottled at a
factory in Richmond which still exists and is called the Dairy Bar.
By the mid
20th century Curles Neck Farm under the
ownership of Fred Watkins who purchased the property in 1943 had become one of
the largest dairy suppliers in the eastern United States.
Curles Neck
is no longer a dairy farm and is being mined for sand and gravel.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Curles_Neck_Plantation
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bermuda_Hundred,_Virginia
Other
Ancestors in the area who were contemporaries of the Harris and Eppes families.
In 1661 the clerk of Charles City County, Virginia recorded
the following in his official report. Governor ffrancis
Moryson is appointing Coll. Abram Wood, L t. Coll.
Thomas Dewe, Major William Harris, Captain John Eppes, Captain William ffarar,
Peter Jones, Captain Edd Hill Junr.
and Captain ffrancis Grey to
be Commanders of the Regiment of the trayned bands in
the Counties of Henrico and Charles City. The Majors companie
to be from Powells Creek in Henrico Coun. to the falls of James River
on the South side & hence of and Curles
plantation to four mile Creeke. .Major William Harris
& Capt. William ffarrar of Henrico Militia are to
give & present an accot of their proceedings in
all the places under their bands (together with the general lists) will all
possible speed to Coll Abraham Wood Esq . att ffort Henry, and to be very
wary and circumspect that no ammunition be spent or waste at the said musters
but only false fires to be given to prove readiness of their guns.
Notes: Captain William ffarar was
Capt. William Farrar, and Captain Peter Jones, after a later promotion, was
Maj. Peter Jones I, the father of Capt. Peter Jones II who married Mary Batte.
In 1678, Major William Harris and Colonel Francis Epes were in command of a militia of "trayned hands" near present-day Richmond when an
Indian raiding party came from the North. A letter from John Banister of April
6, 1679 described the events.
...Last Summer they made several Incursions among the
Inhabitants on the Heads of Rapahannock, York &
Our (i.e.) James River destroying their cattle, rifling their houses, &
killing and carrying away some Families. But tho' we
were sufferers in our Stocks & Cropps, & some
of the loss of house hold goods also, & (blessed be God) none of us lost
our lives. One Coll Epes
indeed was killed who with some Forces rais'd in Our (i.e.) Henrico County, came in pursuit of them two days
after the mischief was done. They found them Shut up in a Cornfield belonging
to the Upper Plantations on the North-side of ye
River, & had they been but half so courageous as they were cautios might have cut them all off together. But while one
durst not shoot nor the other for want of extent of Commission & for fear
of breach of Peacd, out get the Indians, gain the clear'd ground & fire on them. The Coll. paid dear for
his deliberation, he was shot in the throat by an Indian at least 200 paces
distant. We lost another stout man at the same time, one Major Harris, who
rashly pursuing the flying Enemy with a Pistol only in his hand & that too discharg'd was shot and died a Martyr to his foolhardiness.
The Indian that shot him was kill'd & one woman
taken prisoner, ye rest escap'd over the River...
The paragraphs above are listed to show the families of my
ancestry and their future intermarriages.
Col. Abraham Wood was the employer of Nicholas Overby
(Overbury) the immigrant, on my maternal line, my 8th
Great-Grandfather http://www.edavidarthur.net/NicholasOverbyImmigrant.pdf
who was in this area at the same time as Francis Epps II and William Harris.
Later Jeremiah Overby,
great-grandson of Nicholas, married Ann Cousins, great-granddaughter of William
Harris. Jeremiah Overby’s son John married Charlotte Eppes, great-great-granddaughter of Francis Eppes II.
Also, Abraham Wood’s son-in-law, Peter Jones is my 9th
Great-Grandfather on my paternal line. Another ancestor on my paternal line who
was in the area as a contemporary was my 8th Great-Grandfather John
Ellis http://www.edavidarthur.net/JohnEllis/JohnEllisFamily.htm
. Also employed by Abraham Wood was cousin Gabriel Arthur
http://www.edavidarthur.net/GabrielArthur/GabrielArthur.htm
.
Download a pdf file of this webpage at
http://www.edavidarthur.net/ThomasEHarris.pdf