Flowerdew Hundred Plantation

The site of the first windmill in British America, Flowerdew has seen it's share of history as the commonwealth took shape. This land has been attacked, shelled, burned, divided, sold, and reunited. General Ulysses Grant once crossed the James on a pontoon bridge at this spot. Archaeological inquiries have yielded relics of it's past, some nearly 400 years old.

Flowerdew Hundred was among the earliest English settlements in the New World, and its 1,400 acres contain some of the country's best preserved and most significant archeological sites. Archeological investigation has revealed that this site was first inhabited as long ago as 11,000 B.C. In 1618 Governor George Yeardley was granted 1,000 acres of land that he named in honor of his wife, née Temperance Flowerdew.

Flowerdew Hundred survived a major Indian attack in 1622 and occupation of the site continued through the 18th century. America's first windmill was constructed here in 1621, later demolished, and now commemorated by a 17th-century style windmill built in the 1970s. Like many of the original patents, Flowerdew was subdivided into smaller parcels during the 17th and 18th centuries. In 1804 the Willcox family, of nearby Belle Air and North Bend, began acquiring numerous tracts of land, which would by 1855 include all of the original 1,000 acres granted to Governor Yeardley in 1618.