AMES CITTY" (46)

This area lay behind Jamestown Island on the mainland between Mill and
Powhatan Creeks. Even though separated from "James Citty" only by the
narrow Back River and its marshes, settlement seemingly was delayed for
a decade. At least the records are silent on the matter if colonists did
establish here in the first years.

It clearly emerges as an established settlement in 1624 when its
population was given at twenty-five persons including at least four
families with servants and dependents. That same year it sent its own
burgess to the Assembly at Jamestown, its most prominent resident,
Richard Kingsmill. Early in 1625 the population stood at eighteen, six
freemen, three women, three children, five servants and a single negro.
A comparison of the names given in 1624 with those in 1625 points up the
shifting of persons that must have been a part of the Virginia scene at
this time. As might be expected from its proximity, a number of the
residents of the "Neck-of-Land" had property also at Jamestown or in the
Island.

The 1625 muster listings included six houses, a boat, twenty-six and a
half barrels of corn as well as some "flesh," fish, and meal. Livestock
embraced eleven cattle and thirty-one hogs, "yong & old." There was only
one "armour" and two "coats of male" yet small arms, shot and powder
were in greater supply. The General Court records offer an occasional
glimpse of life here in these years. There was, for example, the
decision in 1624 that the "lands and goods" of John Phillmore, who died
without a will, should be given to Elizabeth Pierce "unto whom he was
assured and ment to have maryed."

* * * * *

This then was the Virginia of 1625--a settled area embracing the James
River basin and the lower part of the Eastern Shore. It was very rural
with the people busy about the task of developing a new land. Some
twenty-seven distinct communities, groups, or settlements were
enumerated at this time, yet even these may not fully suggest the scope
of the occupied, or cultivated, land. These settlements were chiefly
along the north and south shores of the James River, eastward from the
falls to the Chesapeake Bay. Though loosely knit geographically, they
were a unit politically with affairs, for the most part, administered
from the capital "citty" of Jamestown. Actually the Colony even now was
poised for an extension of its frontier inland from the river fringe
espec