CHURCH BUILDINGS AND ORIGINAL GRAVEYARD.

One of the vexed questions concerning the first settlement is the position of the first churchyard or graveyard. It is learned from several old chronicles that the first two churches were within the first fort. The map of the Virginia settlement, procured by Zuniga, for Philip III of Spain, in September, 1608, previously referred to, shows a church thus inclosed.

The first church, a rude hut "covered with rafts, sedge and earth," was burned within eight months of its erection. The second, erected in 1608, to replace the first, must also have been a flimsy makeshift, for it is referred to by Sir Thomas Gates, two years after its construction, as being in an unserviceable condition, shortly after which it was reconstructed by La Warre. Its dimensions in plan were sixty feet long by twenty-four feet wide, with a steeple at the west end.

When, in 1617, Captain Argall arrived at "James Towne," he discovered the church which La Warre had renovated seven years before in ruins, a storehouse being in use for divine service. During his administration, i. e., from May, 1617, to April, 1619, the third church, whose dimensions were "50 by 20 foote," was erected.

In 1639 Governor Sir John Harvey wrote to the Privy Council: "Such hath bene our Indeavour herein, that out of our owne purses wee have largely contributed to the building of a brick church, and both Masters of Shipps and others of the ablest Planters have liberally by our persuation underwritt to this worke."'*

No information is available as to when the building was begun or completed, but the latter is supposed to have been accomplished by about 1647. It was burned in 1676.

The fifth structure was in all probability erected during the partial rebuilding of the town between 1676 and 1686. There is not apparently available any information on the subject. It is not unlikely that only the woodwork of the fourth church was burned in 1676, and that the last church was the former struc

*Letter from Governor and Council in Virginia to Privy Council, McDonald Papers, Vol. II, pp. 233-260.

ture with the woodwork renewed. This would, in a measure, account for the church walls not having stood longer than they did, on account of being injured by the fire. Circumstances indicate that it was used until about the end of the eighteenth century, when its walls fell, and the bricks composing them were used by Mr. William Lee, of Green Spring, and Mr. John Ambler, of Jamestown, to inclose a part of the old burial ground.

In his Old Churches and Families of Virginia, Bishop Meade states, with reference to the foundations of the last brick church, which he measured during a visit to Jamestown Island shortly before 1856, that the ground plan of the church had the form of an oblong square, whose accurately measured dimensions were twenty-eight by fifty-six feet.*

In the summer of 1901, the above foundations which adjoin the eastern wall of the tower ruins, were uncovered by Mr. John Tyler, Jr., under the auspices of the Association for the Preservation of Virginia Antiquities, to which society the surrounding tract of twenty-three acres belongs. The average length and width within the walls are fifty and six-tenths feet and twenty-two and seven-tenths feet, respectively.

In clearing away from around the foundations the mould of more than a century, parts of the foundations of the side walls of a narrower building, whose inside width was about twenty feet, were uncovered. They consist of a footing of cobble-stones one foot thick, capped by a one-brick wall. The slenderness of the foundations indicates that their superstructure was of timber, as in the days of substantial building to which they belonged, they would have been regarded as too light for one of brick. It will be observed that the width of a building matching the foundations would be the same as given for the church built during Argall's term as deputy-governor. As only the western ends of the foundations of the two side walls remain, the length of the building they supported cannot be learned.

In making the before-mentioned excavations three distinct

* Meade's Old Churches and Families of Virginia, Vol. I, p. 111.

† Donated to the above association by Mr. and Mrs. Edward E. Barney, in 1896.

sets of floor tiles were found lying at slightly different levels across the east end of the building, formerly belonging to a chancel five and one-half feet by twenty-two feet, indicating that there were three church structures on the same site.

The low

est layer of tiles probably belonged to the third church and, in that case, if its end walls were inclosed in the same manner as its side walls, which seems quite likely, the length of the third church would have been about fifty feet.

As the same site was used for the three church buildings erected after 1617, the churchyard, which was by custom the principal burial ground, most probably was never changed, and was probably used even before that year. The finding of a human skeleton, while excavating the foundations, crossed by a wall of the church near its southeastern corner, shows that there was a burial ground at its site before the first brick church was built (1639-1647), and possibly even before the building of the timber church in 1618, which covered almost all of the ground occupied by its successor.

From what has preceded there should be no room for doubt as to the lighter foundations being those of the third church. structure, that built under Argall, and in use when Yeardley came to the colony in 1619. The inclosure of one structure by the other suggests that, while the later church of brick was being constructed around the earlier one of timber, the latter was used for service.

As the marriage of John Rolfe to Pocahontas occurred in 1614, it would appear that the ceremony could not have been performed in the third church, whose site, as shown above, was subsequently occupied by the brick churches, but in the second structure, 60 by 24 feet in plan, which was reconstructed by La Warre, and situated within the triangular fort a short distance, probably one hundred and thirty yards, above the church tower. The third church, however, was undoubtedly the one used for the convening of the first American legislature by Governor Yeardley, on July 30, 1619.*

Although the first and second churches were within the tri

*Colonial Records of Virginia, Extra Senate (State) Document of