Washington’s River Farm
The first “English” family to own the property on which River Farm is seated, was not the Washingtons. It was the Catholic Brents from Maryland. Captain Giles Brent landed in Jamestown, Virginia in 1638, accompanied by his sisters, Margaret and Mary, on their way to settle Saint Mary’s City in Maryland. The Brent family was related to Lord Baltimore, the King’s proprietor in Maryland, and during their stay in the colony they associated closely with Lord Baltimore’s brother, the resident governor, Leonard Calvert.
By 1647, the Brents had become weary of political battles with the Calverts and religious battles with the Maryland Protestants and left the colony to settle along the Aquia in Virginia. The wife of Giles Brent was a young Indian princess of the Piscataway tribe who had been entrusted to Margaret Brent as a child by her father, a convert to Christianity. She was raised in the Brent household and at the age of 16 was married to Margaret’s brother, Giles. Although Giles Brent initially claimed most of the colony of Virginia because of his marriage to the Piscataway king’s daughter, he was assuaged by the Virginians to accept a grant of patent totaling 1,800 acres from Thomas, Lord Culpeper for his year-old son, Giles, Jr. This land was Piscataway Neck and included the land which is now River Farm.
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Pocahontas in the Woods
Pocahontas(circa 1595–1617) was a young Indian princess who is said to have prevented the execution of Captain John Smith by her people, the Powhatans. She was the “dearest daughter” of King Powhatan.
“… the conclusion was, two great stones were brought before Powhatan: then as many as could laid hands on him, dragged him to them, and thereon laid his head, and being ready with their clubs, to beat out his brains, Pocahontas the king’s dearest daughter, when no entreaty could prevail, got his head in her arms, and laid her own upon his to save him from death: whereat the Emperor was contented he should live to make him hatchets, and her bells, beads, and copper; …” (Memoirs of Captain John Smith).
Afterwards, Princess Pocahontas befriended the English colonists at Jamestown, whom she came to love, and became a Christian. Captain John Smith credited her with saving the Jamestown settlement from starvation.
“Now every once in four or five days, Pocahontas with her attendants, brought him so much provision, that saved many of their lives, that else for all this had starved with hunger. Thus from numb death our good God sent relief, The sweet assuager of all other grief.” (Memoirs of Captain John Smith)
The American princess married one of the colonists, John Rolfe, becoming Rebecca Rolfe and she travelled to England where she was entertained as royalty. She died young, in England, leaving a baby son to be raised by relatives there.
The real Pocahontas has become lost in the legends that have grown up around her short life. Here she stands overlooking the James River of Virginia, from whence appeared those first English sailing ships in 1607. Here she stands, planted on her own sod where her moccasin clad feet skipped and danced so many centuries ago. However, even this statue of her at Jamestown Island, Virginia, has transformed her into something she was not – an Indian maiden of the American plains.
Her mortal remains are planted on a foreign shore across the great sea, at Gravesend, England, as she died on a ship headed back to her native Virginia. Learn about “Pocahontas and the Red Bollings,” watch Neddy’s slide show of Jamestown 2007.
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Awaiting His Queen
English Captain John Smith, scanning the James River from Jamestown Island, Virginia, as he anticipates the arrival of his long awaited Queen Elizabeth. She will be coming on May 2, 2007.
Marine Corps Museum
The roof of the new National US Marine Corps Museum at Quantico, Virginia has created quite a landscape for travellers along the I-95 corridor in Northern Virginia. I shot this image from a moving car window while heading northward on I-95 during an April Nor’easter. The focal point of the museum building is this soaring, 210-foot tilted mast atop a 160-foot glass atrium. The architectural design was inspired by the famous Iwo Jima flag raising of World War II, as was the famous U.S. Marine Corps War Memorial, farther north in Rosslyn, Virginia.
The “first” birth of the USMC came about on November 10, 1775, when the Continental Congress raised “two battalions of ‘Continental’ Marines” to be used as landing forces with the fleet. These early Marines served on land and sea, and distinguished themselves in battles and operations. Their first amphibious raid on foreign soil occurred in the Bahamas in March of 1776. Believe or not, when the 1783 Treaty of Paris ended the American Revolutionary War, Congress saw no further use for the Continental Navy nor Marines and sold the Navy’s ships and disbanded both arms of military service.
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Happy Birthday George Washington
“A good moral character is the first essential in a man.” ~~George Washington
George WASHINGTON (1732 – 1799) was born on February 22, 1732, at “Popes Creek”, a home that his father had built in the 1720s in Westmoreland County, Virginia. In 1770, “Popes Creek” was renamed “Wakefield”, and on Christmas Day of 1779, Washington’s birthplace burned to the ground, leaving only the crushed oyster shell foundation remaining. George Washington was raised there and in Fairfax and King George Counties, Virginia.
This life size display of General Washington as Commander in Chief is from the new museum center at Mount Vernon, Virginia.
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