The
Berkeley Hundred was created through a
land grant in 1618 of the
Virginia Company of London to Sir William Throckmorton, Sir
George Yeardley,
George Thorpe, Richard Beverley, and
John Smith (or Smyth) (1567–1641) of
Nibley, a parish in the
Hundred of Berkeley in
Gloucestershire. Smyth was also the historian of the Berkeley group, collecting over 60 documents relating to the settlement of Virginia between 1613 and 1634 which have survived to modern times. It consisted of about on the north bank of the
James River near Herring Creek in an area then known as
Charles Cittie (sic). It was named for one of the original founders, Richard Berkeley, a member of the
Berkeley family of Gloucestershire, England. It was about 20 miles upstream from
Jamestown, where the first permanent settlement of the
Colony of Virginia was established on May 14, 1607. The Berkeley Hundred was the next plantation down river from the
Shirley Plantation. In 1619, the ship
Margaret of
Bristol, England sailed for Virginia under Captain John Woodliffe and brought thirty-eight settlers to the new Town and Hundred of Berkeley. The Margaret landed her passengers at Berkeley Hundred on December 4, 1619. The group's
London Company charter required that the day of arrival be observed as a day of
thanksgiving to God. On that first day, Captain John Woodlief held a service pursuant to the charter which specified, "Wee ordaine that the day of our ships arrival at the place assigned for plantacon in the land of Virginia shall be yearly and perpetually keept holy as a day of thanksgiving to Almighty God.". Because of this, the Berkeley Plantation had one of the first recorded celebrations of
Thanksgiving in the United States, establishing the tradition two years and 17 days before the Pilgrims arrived aboard the
Mayflower at
Plymouth, Massachusetts to establish their Thanksgiving Day in 1621. On March 22, 1622,
Opchanacanough, head of the
Powhatan Confederacy, began the
Second Anglo-Powhatan War with a coordinated series of attacks against English settlements along the James River, known in English histories as the
Indian massacre of 1622. Nine colonists were killed at Berkeley. The assault took a heavier toll elsewhere, killing about a third of all the colonists, and virtually wiping out
Wolstenholme Towne on
Martin's Hundred and Sir
Thomas Dale's progressive development and new college at
Henricus. Jamestown was spared through a timely warning and became the refuge for many survivors who abandoned outlying settlements. A myth about the March 22 date was that it occurred on Good Friday. This is incorrect. In 1634, Charles Cittie became part of the first eight
shires of Virginia, as
Charles City County, one of the oldest in the
United States, and is located along
Virginia State Route 5, which runs parallel to the river's northern borders past sites of many of the
James River Plantations between the colonial capital city of
Williamsburg (now the site of
Colonial Williamsburg) and the capital of the
Commonwealth of Virginia at
Richmond. In 1636 William Tucker, Maurice Thompson, George Thompson, William Harris, Thomas Deacon, James Stone, Cornelius Lloyd of London, merchants and Jeremiah Blackman of London, mariner, and their associates and company patented the 8,000 acres known as Berkeley Hundred. After several decades, the site of Berkeley Hundred became the property of
Theodorick Bland of Westover. A portion of the Berkeley Hundred patent was purchased from descendant Giles Bland by
Benjamin Harrison III. His son
Benjamin Harrison IV built the three-story brick mansion that became the seat of the
Harrison family, one of the
First Families of Virginia. s Albert V. Colburn,
Delos B. Sackett and
General John Sedgwick in Harrison's Landing, Virginia, during the
Peninsula Campaign, 1862 Using bricks fired on the Berkeley plantation,
Benjamin Harrison IV built a
Georgian-style two-story brick mansion on a hill overlooking the
James River in 1726. Harrison's son,
Benjamin Harrison V, a signer of the
United States Declaration of Independence and a
governor of Virginia, was born at Berkeley Plantation, as was his son
William Henry Harrison, a war hero in the
Battle of Tippecanoe, governor of
Indiana Territory, and ninth
president of the United States. Berkeley would later earn a distinction shared only with
Peacefield in
Quincy, Massachusetts, as the ancestral home for two United States presidents, During the
American Civil War, Union troops occupied Berkeley Plantation, and President
Abraham Lincoln twice visited there in the summer of 1862 to confer with Gen.
George B. McClellan. The Harrisons were unable to regain possession of the
plantation after the war, and it was rented out by the bank from time to time to tenant farmers and the mansion was eventually used as a barn, falling into such disrepair that it was uninhabitable. Also in 1862, amid fighting in the Civil War, the area was the scene of the creation and first bugle rendition of present-day "
Taps".
Restoration John Jamieson, a lumber tycoon who as a youth had been at Berkeley as a drummer boy in McClellan's army, purchased the property in 1907. In 1925, his son Malcolm inherited the property, expending large sums of money to turn the ruined main house into a livable and stately home for himself and his bride Grace Eggleston. The project took over a decade and the mansion was finally occupied by the Jamisons in 1938. The ground floor of the mansion was turned into a museum in the 1960s. Today the house attracts visitors from the United States and other parts of the world. The architecture is original, and the house has been filled with antique furniture and furnishings that date from the period when it was built. The grounds, too, have been restored, and cuttings from the boxwood gardens are available as living souvenirs for its visitors. Berkeley is still a working farm; corn,
soybeans, wheat, tomatoes, and other vegetables are grown here. There is also a small family cemetery on the property. Among those buried here are Benjamin Harrison V, Grace Jamieson, and Malcolm Jamieson. ==Exterior==