Following the 1622 Algonquian Uprising in Virginia, the English began to establish clustered settlements with communities that were well supplied and defended. Site 44JC802 was an example of this type of post-Uprising, pre-tobacco boom hinterland settlement that transformed the witnessed the frontier transform into the beginnings of Colonial America. Site 44JC802 was named after the area's first documented land owner, George Sandys, who served as Jamestown's inaugural resident treasurer from 1621-25. Sandys sold his 400 northside acres in James City to Edward Grendon in the 1620s. When Grendon passed away in 1628, he left the land to his son Thomas, an English merchant. Thomas instructed his attorneys to dispose of the territory, and by 1638 they had arranged a sale with John Browning. Records of the transaction indicated that before Browning acquired the land, John Wareham had been in possession of it, perhaps initially as a tenant of the Grendons. John Browning's son, William, repatented his father's land upon inheriting it in 1646. By the 1650s or '60s, the original Sandys tract had passed into the hands of Colonel Thomas Pettus. Archaeological investigations indicated that 44JC802 likely was a single occupation site, inhabited during the second quarter of the 17th century. On the basis of the many historical and archaeological parallels and the overall nature of the material assemblage, the listing in the 1624-25 Muster's for Sandys' Third Fort is the best documented match with the artifact collection and archaeological context of 44JC802.


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