d as a "potter" in 1674. At the same time, Joseph
Copeland of Chuckatuck, in Nansemond County, was fashioning pewter. The
handle of a spoon bearing the hallmark of this earliest American
pewterer, of whom there is a record, is extant and may be seen at the
museum at Jamestown.

Some of the earliest of the colonists were skilled in boatbuilding, the
shipwrecked passengers on the _Seaventure_ having constructed, on the
Bermuda Islands in 1609, two pinnaces in which they sailed the 700 miles
to Virginia in 1610. The Hansfords maintained a boatyard on Felgate's
Creek in York County, where they both built and repaired small vessels.
On 17 November 1675, John Allen, Augustine Kneaton and William Hobson of
Northumberland County agreed to build a sloop of twenty-four feet by the
keel for Andrew Pettigrew and deliver it to his plantation, the sloop to
be able "to floor [lay flat] nine hogsheads complete."

These brief mentions by no means complete the story of the independent
Virginia planter, who acquired the luxuries shipped from England as the
proceeds from his tobacco crop permitted, but who generally had at hand
the necessities of life regardless of the times.

PART II

THE VIRGINIA PLANTERS AND THEIR MANNER OF LIVING

A YOUNGER SON IN VIRGINIA

The progress, from the status of a younger son in England, to that of a
landed proprietor in Virginia, is illustrated in the typical case of
Christopher Calthrope, third son of Christopher Calthrope Esq. of
Blakeney, Norfolk, England. The seniority of two brothers was a
limitation upon opportunity for him in England. As a youth of sixteen
years of age he was sent to Virginia, in 1622, in company with
Lieutenant Thomas Purefoy, the latter named later Commander of Elizabeth
City Corporation.

Young Calthrope had been well supplied by his family before leaving
England, even bringing with him a quantity of "good liquor" which, while
it lasted, added considerably to his popularity. In the name of the
family attorney, the young man shortly was assigned land on Waters
Creek, in the area now the site of the Mariners Museum of Warwick. In
1628, he also owned land in a choice area near Fort Henry and adjacent
to Lieutenant Purefoy in Elizabeth City.

These tracts, however, provided but small plantations, and so when the
area along the York River was opened for settlement in 1630, Christopher
Calthrope sought land available in large tracts in the adjacent
territory, patenting