A) Background of discovery and preservation
B) Historical Patterns of Land Use

C) Stage I - Tenant Farmers (1607-40) 

•1624 -- transient tenants working the land on 100-200 acre plots primarily for Richard Kingsmill, who lived in Jamestown 

 • remains are scant and composed of soil stains indicating native timbers set directly in post holes.  

 • the trash pits associated with these houses show an unusually high incidence of luxury artifacts (enameled toiletry articles and jewelry).  These artifacts reflect the boom-town environment of the 1620s and 30s when the tobacco planters profitted from the inflated tobacco prices. 

 • it is possible that some of the residents of this area were also affected the Indian massacre of 1622, but no archaeological evidence has been found like at Martin's 100

D) Stage II -- English Gentry (1640-1700) 

• the pattern at Kingsmill shifted shortly before 1650 when Colonel Thomas Pettus arrived on the scene.  Pettus was the 12th son of William Pettus, a wealthy merchant of Norfolk in England.  Due to his dismal prospect of inheritance, Pettus emigrated to Virginia shortly after 1641 and acquired the 800 acre Littletown tract at Kingsmill.  He employed both Indian and African slaves and quickly established a profitable tobacco planting program. 

 • the archaeological remains of the Pettus plantation are much more substantial than those of the previous state.  The manor house, although continuing to make use of timber for most of its construction also possed sturdy brick chimneys, glass windows, a brick-lined well and an ice house for the storage of diary products 

 • the plantation was active until 1669 when Pettus died and then passed onto his son, Thomas.  An ash layer associated with dateable artifacts indicates that the house burned down in the 1690s.

E) Stage III -- Native Virginians (1700-  ) 

• In 1700 James Bray, a native Virginian, married the widowed daughter-in-law of Thomas Pettus and the heirs to the Pettus estate released Littletown to Bray for five shillings and the rent of one ear of corn a year, payable on demand.  Bray immediately set about building a plantation home some 300 yards to the northwest of the ruins of Littletown. 

 • Bray erected a substantial, and imposing structure composed entirely of brick.  In design it speaks of permanence; there are no additions and few alterations that can be detected in the foundations and it shows the preoccupation with symmetry, that Deetz comments on in his discussion of the Georgian period of colonial architecture.