The Brick House

WO-33

The Brick House, built in the mid-1600s, stood 1.5 miles east of here on the York River. Late in 1676, as Bacon’s Rebellion crumbled, rebel leaders William Drummond and Richard Lawrence used it as a fort. When they fled, Gov. William Berkeley’s forces caught and executed Drummond, while Lawrence disappeared. In 1680 the Virginia General Assembly established a port town at the Brick House. Tobacco was collected there for export, and imported goods and enslaved Africans were brought ashore. With its two ferries, the site was an important link in the colony’s transportation network. In 1716, Lt. Gov. Alexander Spotswood crossed the river there early in his expedition to the Shenandoah Valley.

Department of Historic Resources, 2024

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References/Bibliographic Citation:

William Waller Hening, Statutes at Large, vol. 2 (New York, 1823): 471-478. Malcolm Hart Harris, Old New Kent County, vol. 1 (West Point, VA, 1977). Malcolm H. Harris, “The Port Towns of the Pamunkey,” William and Mary Quarterly, vol. 23, no. 4 (Oct. 1943): 493-516. Edward Porter Alexander, ed., The Journal of John Fontaine: An Irish Huguenot Son in Spain and Virginia, 1710-1719 (Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, for the Colonial Williamsburg Foundation, 1972). Wilcomb E. Washburn, The Governor and the Rebel: A History of Bacon’s Rebellion in Virginia (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1957). James Rice, “Bacon’s Rebellion (1676–1677)” Encyclopedia Virginia (2020) https://encyclopediavirginia.org/entries/bacons-rebellion-1676-1677/