er above Martin's Brandon and across from his Tanks
Weyanoke holding. He proceeded to establish a plantation here which he
named in honor of his wife who had been Temperance Flowerdieu. In 1619
it was well enough along to merit the representation in the Assembly
which was performed by John Jefferson and Ensign Edward Rossingham, the
latter one of Yeardley's kinsmen. This, perhaps, suffered in the
massacre less than many other settlements. Only six persons were killed
here. Flowerdieu Hundred was one of the fewer than a dozen points that
the Colony decided to hold after the onslaught.

Council minutes and other sources in the 1622-24 period show the
plantation as one that was probably functioning well. There were cases
revolving around the use of livestock, particularly cattle, and the
cultivation of tobacco. At least one such case led Yeardley to examine
witnesses at "Flowerdieu Hundreth." One reference to tobacco puts
interesting light on its cultivation at this time. Yeardley's overseer,
one Sergeant Fortescue, was charged with negligence in the care of the
harvested tobacco:

... hee did hange the tobacco soe thick uppon the lynes that
the lynes brake and the tobacco fell to the ground, and before
the said tobaco was at all dryed he made it upp into role and
soe by his faulte it was not marchantable and that all the
tobacco except six or seven hundred waight, was made upp wett
and nott merchantable, The whole crop amounting to 9000 waight
or thereabouts.

This seems to mean a yearly harvest of 9,000 pounds at Flowerdieu
Hundred in 1624.

This was the year that Yeardley sold this plantation as well as his
holding across the James at Weyanoke to Captain Abraham Piercey, one of
the leading merchants in the Colony. In 1624, the year of the sale, a
population of sixty-three (including eleven negroes) had been listed for
Flowerdieu Hundred with another eighteen having died in the previous
twelve months. In the census of 1625, Piercey's Hundred, as the place
was now called, had fifty-seven including its seven negroes (four men,
two women and one child). The enumeration included twelve houses, three
stores, four tobacco houses, and two boats, all of which had been
bought, or built, by Piercey. There was a windmill too, and this, the
first in the Colony, had been erected by Yeardley, it is said, in 1621.
It stood on Windmill, earlier known as Tobacco, Point.

Corn supplies were given a