W&M ScholarWorks Dissertations, Theses, and Masters Projects Theses, Dissertations, & Master Projects 1996 Marston Parish 1654-1674: A Community Study Jane Dillon McKinney College of William & Mary - Arts & Sciences Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarworks.wm.edu/etd Part of the Social and Cultural Anthropology Commons, and the United States History Commons Recommended Citation McKinney, Jane Dillon, "Marston Parish 1654-1674: A Community Study" (1996). Dissertations, Theses, and Masters Projects. Paper 1539626035. https://dx.doi.org/doi:10.21220/s2-pkee-f913 This Thesis is brought to you for free and open access by the Theses, Dissertations, & Master Projects at W&M ScholarWorks. It has been accepted for inclusion in Dissertations, Theses, and Masters Projects by an authorized administrator of W&M ScholarWorks. For more information, please contact [email protected]. MARSTON PARISH 1654-1674: A COMMUNITY STUDY A Thesis Presented to The Faculty of the Department of Anthropology The College of William and Mary in Virginia In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Master of Arts by Jane Dillon McKinney 1996 APPROVAL SHEET This thesis is submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts Author Approved, November 1996 Norman F. Barka Kathleen J. Bragdon Kevin P. K In memory of my father, Donald L. McKinney TABLE OF CONTENTS Page TABLE OF CONTENTS iv ACKNOWLEDGMENTS v LIST OF TABLES vi LIST OF FIGURES vii ABSTRACT viii INTRODUCTION 2 CHAPTER I. SETTLEMENT PATTERN 13 CHAPTER II. THE MARSTON PARISH COMMUNITY 42 CHAPTER III. THE NEIGHBORHOODS IN MARSTON PARISH 75 CHAPTER IV THE NEIGHBORHOOD AT THE HEAD OF QUEENS CREEK 99 CHAPTER V CONCLUSION 145 APPENDIX 1 MARSTON PARISH BURIAL REGISTER 157 APPENDIX 2 COMPUTER ENCODING FORM FOR MERGE 164 DOCUMENTS APPENDIX 3 MARSTON PARISH LAND TRANSACTIONS AND 165 PATENTS BIBLIOGRAPHY 169 VITA 178 iv ACKNOWLEDGMENTS Several groups helped make this thesis possible. I would like to thank the following people in particular: The staff at the Department of Historical Research, Colonial Williamsburg Foundation cheerfully answered my often naive questions. Linda Rowe, Lou Powers, Julie Richter, Ann Smart Martin and Jennifer Jones patiently explained both the nature of historical research and the mysteries of the seventeenth century sources. My committee’s careful reading and their stimulating critiques helped me to focus and sharpen points that had been buried in my prose. This thesis had its genesis in a paper that I wrote for Dr. Kathleen Bragdon’s class in Documentary Archaeology. Following up on her suggestions to contextualize and compare, I consulted with Dr. Kevin Kelly, who helped form my research questions and pointed out where the information could be found. Dr. Norman Barka shepherded me through the thesis process. Without the cooperation of my family, I could not have written this thesis. They know their many and varied contributions. My love and gratitude to my mother, Katherine Dillon Brawner; to my daughters and their husbands, Jane and Michael Cullipher, Catherine and Yasutoshi Suzuki; and to my sons, David and Edward Currier. Last, but not least, thanks to Elizabeth Frith Woods, who opened the door to seventeenth-century life in Virginia and lured me inside. v LIST OF TABLES TABLE Page 1. Marston Parish Deaths by Year 65 2. Marston Parish Land Certificates 67 3. Marston Parish Deaths by Month 69 4. Marston Parish Deaths by Status 71 5. Marston Parish Deaths by Month and Sex 73 vi LIST OF FIGURES FIGURE Page 1. Marston Parish 1654 - 1660 21 2. Marston Parish 1660 - 1670 23 3. Marston Parish 1670 - 1674 25 4. Landmarks in Marston Parish 27 5. Property that Descended through Female Heirs or Was Controlled by Women in Marston Parish 82 6. 1650s Neighborhood Network at the Head of Queens Creek 100 7. Map of the 1650s Neighborhood at the Head of Queens Creek 102 8. County and Colony Level Officials 128 9. Local Level Officials 129 Vll ABSTRACT Marston Parish in York County, Virginia, existed as separate entity from 1654 to 1674. This study uses microlevel analyses of settlement patterns, community and neighborhood formation, and ethnographic data to test the proposition that Marston Parish was an area of cultural transition, neither frontier nor wholly incorporated into the established ecclesiastical or legal structures of the lower James-York peninsula. The Marston years marked the beginning of property subdivision and the agglomeration of smaller plantations into neighborhoods. While the neighborhood at the head of Queens Creek achieved maturity and a sense of self-identity, the northern neighborhood at the head of Skimino Creek was just beginning to become an aggregate. The population associated more closely within neighborhoods than between neighborhoods or at the parish level. Due to institutional failure, Marston Parish did not function as a centralizing force in the community, but rather as a socioeconomic and political factor that was used by individuals to promote their own interests. Demographics thwarted the entrenchment of a transplanted gentry. An ethnographic history of the neighborhood at the head of Queens Creek examines the processes of change and adaptation to the reality of the New World and the important role that women played in the formation of new communities. Studies of other Virginia parishes and counties in the Chesapeake area, in comparison to Marston, illuminate the minutiae of the local level. Because Marston joined with Middletown Parish to become Bruton Parish in Williamsburg, Marston Parish provides a singular insight into cultural change during the early years of the Middle Peninsula. viii MARSTON PARISH 1654 - 1674 A COMMUNITY STUDY INTRODUCTION “History is culturally ordered, differently so in different societies, according to meaningful schemes of things. The converse is also true: cultural schemes are historically ordered, since to a greater or lesser extent the meanings are revalued as they are practically enacted. The synthesis of these contraries unfolds in the creative action of the historic subjects, the people concerned” (Sahlins 1985 :vii). When the General Assembly created Marston Parish between Queens and Skimino Creek in 1654, it also decreed that the upper part of York County, from Skimino Creek to the heads of the Pamunkey and Mattaponi Rivers, would be called New Kent County. Thus, at its very founding, Marston was simultaneously incorporated into the ecclesiastical system and separated from the new frontier that had moved inland to what was to be New Kent County. During the twenty years that Marston Parish existed as a discrete entity, before joining with Middletown Parish to become Bruton Parish in 1674, the transitional nature of its culture is evident. Because Marston only existed while it was in a state of transition between the freedoms of the frontier and the conventions of colonial life, it allows a close examination of the process of change. Before it became a parish, Marston, with a dispersed, sparse population, was very much a frontier area that lay outside the palisade that spanned the Middle Peninsula. Even after the General Assembly created Marston as a parish, it remained relatively free from the oversight of the church and the court or colonial government. Due to these institutional failures, Marston offered an opportune area for what Marshall Sahlins has called, “‘structural transformation,’ since the alteration of some meanings changes the positional relations among the cultural categories” (Sahlins 2 3 1985: vii). And, although all the land had been patented or bought up, fresh chances still seemed possible; for its youthful population, Marston would have retained an environment that would have encouraged the growth of democracy, capitalism and individualism, according to the Turner frontier thesis. The period during which Marston Parish existed was one of flux in York County as a whole. The composition of the population changed, probably due to outmigration, and ownership of servants, black and white, more than doubled. Variations in tobacco prices and reduced productivity of nutrient-depleted tobacco fields occurred. These demographic and economic factors affected Marston Parish. The owners of large land patents began to die or to sell their property. The resulting subdivision of property, in turn, permitted the formation of the neighborhood at the head of Queens Creek during the 1650s, and, later, in the 1670s, the establishment of what would become a Quaker community on the south shore of Skimino Creek. The formation of these neighborhoods within the parish community set the stage for the contest between the forces of individualism and capitalism with those of the community. In 1606, the London Company had issued instructions to the first settlers: “The way to prosper and to Obtain Good Success is to make yourselves all of one mind for the Good of your Country and your own, and to Serve and fear God, the Giver of all goodness...” (Billings 1975:22). Material success was the primary concern, as was self; God and unity were means to that end. The London Company’s creed had a lasting influence in Virginia. Breen (1980) regards this as a dysfunctional and variant aspect of English culture that only became viable in the context of tobacco cultivation. The jousting for position and property that had first occurred both among the English themselves and 4 with the Native Americans became refined as social status and position came increasingly to include partaking in responsible roles in the community. The resulting tension was due, in a sense, to the colonists colonializing themselves; they created their own positions within new forms of community in the uncertainty of the New World. This study of Marston Parish addresses, at the microlevel, both Chesapeake and York County settlement patterns, demographic analyses, community and neighborhood studies, and includes an ethnographic history of the neighborhood at the head of Queens Creek as seen through the court record of one litigious woman, Elizabeth Woods.