Maycock's Plantation

Samuel Maycock, a member of the governor’s Council who served in Virginia’s first legislative assembly in 1619, patented land originally inhabited by Virginia Indians about four miles north on the James River. The area became a tobacco plantation that continued to operate after Maycock was killed in 1622 during a surprise attack at the outset of the Second Anglo-Powhatan War. The labor of enslaved Africans and African Americans sustained the plantation under later owners. In 1781, during the Revolutionary War, British and American armies likely crossed the river at the property. In the summer of 1862, several enslaved families escaped to Union lines. Union forces soon burned the main house.