Preservation Virginia Collection

Just over two miles from the Jamestown-Scotland Ferry sits Smith’s Fort, a story-and-a-half, brick merchant’s home, built for Jacob Faulcon and his family in the mid-18th century. In 1609, Captain John Smith began construction of a fort site on the property.

The national and global responses and outrage to the terrible and tragic events of George Floyd’s killing illuminate the long and violent American history of racism and injustice that began in 1619 with the beginnings of American slavery in Virginia.

This week should be the Garden Club of Virginia’s annual Historic Garden Week. This one promised to be spectacular, as the Garden Club of Virginia commemorates its centennial in 2020. Since 1927, proceeds from Historic Garden Week have gone to fund garden restoration projects throughout the Commonwealth.

These snapshots of Smith’s Fort were taken in June 1938 and were saved in a scrapbook now in the Preservation Virginia archives. The caption for the first photo references the restoration of the landscape around the house, then known as “Rolfe Place,” by the Garden Club of Virginia.

Our curator of collections, Lea Lane, continues to highlight incredible pieces in Preservation Virginia’s collection. Mary “Polly” Ambler Marshall, wife of Chief Justice John Marshall, was apparently quite the needlework artist.