is
believed to have been a one story, single-room house with chimneys at
both ends. Access to the loft above was by a ladder-like stairway; the
dormer windows were a later addition.

A very early house in Virginia, of which there is a clear Court record,
is the brick dwelling of the colonial planter Thomas Warren, located on
Smith's Fort Plantation, in Surry County. It is sometimes called the
Rolfe House, as the land, on which the house was erected, was a gift
from the Indian King to Thomas, son of John Rolfe and Pocahontas.

[Illustration: Photo by Flournoy, Virginia State Chamber of Commerce

Warren House--Surry County

Thomas Warren's "fifty foot brick house" on Smith's Fort Plantation was
mentioned in a deposition recorded in Surry County as having been, in
1654, "recently completed." The structure now standing is a version of
the original house, which apparently was rebuilt about the end of the
seventeenth century. Smith's Fort Plantation comprising 1200 acres was
purchased by Warren from Thomas Rolfe, son of John Rolfe and
Pocahontas.]

The dwelling-house of Captain Thomas Bernard on Mulberry Island was
mentioned in 1641. The Wills family lived in the same area in a brick
house during the 1650's, for, in 1659, Henry Jackson bequeathed, to "my
widow's eldest son John Wills, the part that belongs to him of my wife's
brick house and lands on Mulberry Island."

Before 1627 the first windmill in the colony had been erected and was in
operation at Flowerdew Hundred, Governor Yeardley's plantation on the
south side of the James River. The more affluent planters like Yeardley,
and in keeping with the English customs, maintained homes at the seat of
government while operating large plantations on the River not too far
distant.

William Peirce, captain of the Governor's guard, had a plantation
project on Mulberry Island while he and Mrs. Peirce lived at Jamestown.
On a visit to England in 1629, Mrs. Peirce reported, that she had lived
for 20 years in the Colony, and from her garden of three or four acres
at Jamestown, she had gathered about 100 bushels of figs, and that she
could keep a better house in Virginia for three or four hundred pounds a
year than in London.

Young Daniel Gookin, probably with his brother John, was living at
Newport News in 1633, where their father had established a home called
"Marie's Mount," for the Dutch sea-captain Peter deVries recorded that
he stopped there over night. The Gookins