Treasure of Flowerdew

Located in the heart of Tidewater Virginia, the 1,400-acre farm is hardly distinguishable from its neighbors along the James River. There are fields of soybeans, corn and peanuts; well-fed cattle roam the pastures. Only its name seems special: "Flowerdew Hundred" has survived almost intact since 1618 when it was chosen by its first owner, Governor Sir George Yeardley, in honor of his wife, Temperance Flowerdieu ("hundred" is an old English land division). But now Flowerdew Hundred has acquired unexpected fame: within its boundaries, diggers have discovered the remains of one of the earliest English plantations in the New World.

The man who moved Flowerdew out of bucolic obscurity is a shrewd, self-taught archaeologist named Leverette Gregory. He suspected that Flowerdew might still harbor relics from the original Yeardley settlement, which is known from old chronicles to have been founded shortly after the first settlement at nearby Jamestown. Thus Gregory asked the farm's owners, New York Investment Banker David A. Harrison III and his wife, for permission to do a little spadework. He soon found pieces of exposed sandstone that were not native to the area and clearly cut and shaped by human hands. A little digging suggested that the stones --which may have been brought from England as ballast in ships--were part of the foundation of an ancient building. Most convincing of all, there were telltale gaps in the foundation where timbers might have been lodged.

To Norman Barka and other archaeologists at William and Mary, the regular spaces offered convincing evidence of so-called "cruck" architecture, used in medieval England for construction of cottages and farm dwellings. Naturally curved timbers were split down the middle and placed opposite to each other--as in modern A-frame houses--to form the supports. If the Flowerdew remnants are in fact from a cruck building, they would be the first evidence that this construction technique was used by early Americans.

Since April, when really serious digging began, no fewer than 1,000 major artifacts have been unearthed. The catalogue ranges from ancient Indian relics to a wide sampling of colonial Americana that includes a rusty piece of armor, flintlocks, riding spurs, china and cutlery, locks and keys, handwrought iron nails and pins, a winebottle seal and even Venetian glass beads (apparently for barter with the Indians).

Decade of Digging. The William and Mary researchers are convinced that digging will yield still more treasures: the plantation's original cemetery, which perhaps includes headstones for the six settlers killed in a 1622 Indian massacre that nearly ended English colonization in Virginia; the foundations of other plantation buildings and fortifications; perhaps even traces of the old windmill, the first in English America, that stood on a promontory, still known as Windmill Point, overlooking the James River. Indeed, the archaeologists are certain that there is such a bonanza buried under Flowerdew Hundred that it will take at least a decade to dig it all up.

To speed their work, the team is turning to the latest technological innovations. Technicians are using a high-powered gun that sprays a stream of fine-grain abrasive particles to remove grit and rust from fragile artifacts, yet does not damage them. The diggers have also enlisted a computer. With it they have calculated the area of the cruck-house roof (1,722 sq. ft.) and the total number of tiles required for it (6,378). Eager to reveal Flowerdew Hundred's hidden trove to the public, the Harrisons are generously supporting the excavation and hope one day to restore the plantation to its original early-17th century condition.

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