History
The colony struggled for five years after its establishment at Jamestown in 1607. Finally, a profitable export crop was identified through the efforts of colonist John Rolfe. After 1612, a sweet form of tobacco became the largest export crop, customarily shipped in large hogsheads.
Because the river was a highway of commerce in the 17th and 18th centuries, the early plantations were established on the north and south banks along it, with most having their own wharfs. A site of 100 acres (0.40 km2) was a common unit of size, which may explain why many early plantations included the word "hundred" in their names. However, most were much larger than 100 acres (0.40 km2). A more likely explanation is the name derived from the English tradition of subdividing shires (counties) into "Hundreds".
While most are now long gone, some of the larger and older of the James River plantations are still in use and/or open to the public. Almost all are non-government-owned, and houses and/or grounds are generally open daily to visitors with various admission fees applicable.
Read more about this topic: James River Plantations
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“What you don’t understand is that it is possible to be an atheist, it is possible not to know if God exists or why He should, and yet to believe that man does not live in a state of nature but in history, and that history as we know it now began with Christ, it was founded by Him on the Gospels.”
—Boris Pasternak (1890–1960)
“All history is a record of the power of minorities, and of minorities of one.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“In the history of the human mind, these glowing and ruddy fables precede the noonday thoughts of men, as Aurora the sun’s rays. The matutine intellect of the poet, keeping in advance of the glare of philosophy, always dwells in this auroral atmosphere.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)