Archaeologist, historians present Pocahontas Island’s hidden treasures

Progress-Index
02/11/2007

PETERSBURG — With Pocahontas Island visible through several tall windows, a presentation on the island was given Saturday morning.

In the Western Room of Union Station, two historians and an archaeologist presented some of the information and artifacts that helped grant Pocahontas Island a spot on the National Register of Historic Places.

Historians Ashley Neville and John Salmon found and recorded much history about the island.

Pocahontas Island, which originally was connected to Chesterfield County by swampy ground, was planned in a grid format in the 1750s that was retained to this day.

Over the course of about 70 years, the island grew in population slowly but became filled with high-density homes. The island also became home of the highest concentration of freed blacks in the South.

Many of the historic buildings on Pocahontas Island were destroyed after a tornado hit in August 1993 but two antebellum homes remain.

The Jarratt House, on Logan Street, is the only brick home on the island to survive the Civil War. Artifacts and documents date the house to about the 1820s.

Not far away from the Jarratt House is a home on Witten Street that is traditionally known as a stop on the Underground Railroad.

Although there was no written history of this building being a stop, for practical reasons, it seems likely due to the island being a hub of transportation and commerce.

Before the Civil War, Pocahontas was the terminus of the Richmond and Petersburg Railroad and shipping traffic also ended in the area, as the area is the farthest point a ship could travel up the Appomattox River.

Dr. Matthew Laird of the James River Institute for Archaeology presented a sample of over 30,000 artifacts found on the island during a series of test digs from December 2005 to April 2006.

For the last 6,000 to 8,000 years humans occupied the region at least on a temporary basis.

The artifacts will be housed in the Virginia State Preservation Office in Richmond.

This project was funded by grants from the Cameron Foundation and the Virginia Department of Historic Resources.

(Posted by Mady)