Martin’s Hundred

In June 1606, King James I granted a charter to a group of London businessmen to establish an English settlement in North America between the 34th and 45th parallels. The group incorporated themselves as the Virginia Company of London, and in the fall of that year dispatched three ships across the Atlantic with 104 settlers with instructions to establish a permanent settlement in Virginia. The ships of the Virginia Company arrived in the Chesapeake in the spring of 1607, and on May 13 the settlers chose Jamestown Island as the site of their settlement.

For the next ten years life at Jamestown was harsh as the settlers endured disease, famine, and conflict with the native Powhatan Indians. Furthermore, with the exception of tobacco cultivation, experiments by the Jamestown settlers with a variety of industries and crops failed to produce lucrative commodities for export. Around 1616, in an attempt to compensate for nearly a decade of failures, the officers of the Virginia Company elected to reform their policies, and allowed investors to establish semi-autonomous subsidiary companies known as “particular” or “private” plantations in the Virginia colony in an effort to stimulate investment and settlement of the colony. Incentives for investors included 100 acres of Virginia land for each share of shock bought in the company and 50 acres for each transportee.

Hoping to take advantage of the Virginia Company’s new policy, a group of English merchants incorporated themselves as the Society of Martin’s Hundred, and obtained the title to twenty thousand acres, which included ten miles of frontage along the James River. The Society probably named themselves after their principal shareholder, who may have been Sir Richard Martin, goldsmith to Queen Elizabeth, Lord Mayor of London, and Master of the Mint. Less prominent shareholders may have hoped that the association of Sir Richard Martin’s well-respected name with the enterprise would also draw in additional investors. In the fall of 1619, the Gift of God set sail for Virginia with 220 settlers on behalf of the Society’s shareholders.

By 1620 the settlers had established themselves at Martin’s Hundred, nine miles down river from Jamestown. The initial occupation of Martin’s Hundred was clustered around Wolstenholme Town, the administrative center of the community located near the shores of the James River. Unlike the buildings of eighteenth-century Williamsburg, most of which were built on brick foundations, the early buildings at Martin’s Hundred were all erected in a style of architecture that was to become common throughout the seventeenth-century Chesapeake, referred to today as “post-in-ground,” “impermanent” or “earthfast” housing. In general, these buildings were built around wooden posts set into the ground without the benefit of brick foundations.

As settlements like Martin’s Hundred were established all along the shores of James River, the desire for more land for tobacco cultivation also fueled the Colony’s expansion into the interior of the peninsula. These attempts by the English to expand into the interior were often met with resistance by the local Powhatan Indians, who regarded the Tidewater peninsula as their own territory. Conflict with the Powhatan grew increasingly hostile, and in 1622 in an attempt to check the flow of European expansion, the Powhatan led a revolt against the English settlements killing over a third of the colony’s population. Martin’s Hundred was particularly hard hit with 78 out of its approximately 140 inhabitants either killed or taken prisoner. As a result, Martin’s Hundred was temporarily abandoned, and its surviving residents retreated to Jamestown. Their retreat, however, was short-lived, and by late 1623 many of the residents had returned to rebuild their community. The following year, however, also proved to be a difficult one as 23 individuals were reported to have died of disease at Martin’s Hundred, leaving only 27 residents at the time of a census (or “muster”) of the colony in February 1624/25.

Due to the continued financial problems of the Virginia Company, in 1624 King James decided to finally revoke the Company’s charter, and Virginia was made a royal colony. For the period after the termination of the Virginia Company’s charter, there exists very little specific information about the individuals who lived at Martin’s Hundred as a result of the destruction of the records for James City County during the Civil War. Nevertheless, the occupation of Martin’s Hundred during this period is attested to by archaeological evidence of at least eleven different sites variously dating from the second quarter of the seventeenth century to the beginning of the eighteenth century.

In 1634 the old Virginia Company’s plantations were formally abolished and the land converted into counties. As part of the reorganization, Martin’s Hundred existed from that point on only as a parish within James City County. By the early eighteenth century, Martin’s Hundred ceased to be an entity when it joined York-Hampton Parish in 1713. All the lands that formerly encompassed the original Martin’s Hundred settlement were eventually purchased around 1720 by Robert “King” Carter of Corotoman, in Lancaster County. Carter consolidated all the different Martin’s Hundred tracts into a single plantation that he initially named Merchant’s Hundred Plantation; it would later come to be known as Carter’s Grove.

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