Maycock Plantation

Seven archaeological sites show habitation from the Early Archaic through the Late Woodland periods.

[2] There had been a mill on Powell's Creek, which was damaged during the Civil War, after which it was restored and operated for a few decades.

[1] In 1970, an archaeological team led by Dr. Ben McCary and Dr. Norman Barka from College of William & Mary unearthed a foundation of a house built between 1640 and 1660.

Situated on a bluff, it was built upon a former Native American site of the Weyanoke people that overlooked the James River.

[4] In 1772, acreage of various sizes on a seat called Maycox was put up for sale by George M. Meade and John Ravenscroft.

[6] The plantation's "long, narrow terraced raised walks that offered excellent viewing platforms, formed circulation routes through the landscape, and made ideal venues for social promenade," built according to François-Jean de Chastellux in residential settings, such as Vassall-Craigie-Longfellow House in Cambridge, Massachusetts and Maycock Plantation, in 18th-century America.

[11] In 1864, Union General Ulysses S. Grant had a pontoon bridge built nearby to cross the river en route to the Siege of Petersburg.

[6] The historic marker for Maycock's Plantation states, Samuel Maycock, a member of the governor's Council who served in Virginia's first legislative assembly in 1619, patented land originally inhabited by Virginia Indians about four miles north on the James River.

The area became a tobacco plantation that continued to operate after Maycock was killed in 1622 during a surprise attack at the outset of the Second Anglo-Powhatan War.