WEYANOKE 



HE estate of Weyanoke, the name of which was 

 borrowed from the Indians, lies on the north shore 

 of James River and is mentioned in history as early 

 as 1607, When John Smith and Christopher New- 

 port made their adventurous voyage up the James, 

 they found seated here the Weyanoke Indians. 

 This tribe, though in reality under Powhatan, was nominally 

 governed by a queen to whom the early colonists often referred as 

 the "Queen of the Wayanokes." Unfortunately, no other name 

 seems to have been bestowed upon her. 



When Sir George Yeardley was Governor of the Colony of 

 Virginia, he acquired an estate at this point, but this he sold later 

 to Abraham Piersey. ToAvards the end of the seventeenth century, 

 the place passed into the possession of the Harwood family. 

 Though there had been an earlier house on the property, in 1740 

 William Harwood built the present large frame house at Weyanoke. 

 Some years later the estate was inherited by the daughter of 

 Samuel Harwood, who married Fielding Lewis of Warner Hall, 

 Gloucester County, Virginia. The portrait of the latter now hangs 

 in the Virginia State Library as that of an early scientific planter. 

 Through the marriage of a daughter to Robert Douthat that part 

 of the plantation known as Lower Weyanoke became the property 

 of the family who own it today. 



In 1854, Mary Willis Marshall, granddaughter of the Chief 

 Justice, a slip of a girl, came to Upper Weyanoke as the bride of 

 Fielding Lewis Douthat and there began with her husband's assist- 

 ance the making of a garden. 



Near by is Lower Weyanoke, where the mother-in-law lived and 

 where flourished what was said to be one of the most beautiful 

 gardens in Virginia. The mistress of the older place gladly gave 

 to her young daughter and son from her overflowing garden all 



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