was in general use in England, it is not surprising to discover that there were bricklayers, who were also doubtless brickmakers, in the band of settlers who arrived in 1607. Among the artisans whom the Company sought to obtain in 1609, with a view to their transportation to Jamestown, there were four brickmakers, who quite probably were also expected to serve as bricklayers.[1] Brickmakers and bricklayers were advertised for on two occasions in 1610.[2] It cannot be stated with certainty whether these men were dispatched to the Colony. No brickmakers are included by name in the list of persons sent over with the Second and Third Supplies. Dale reached Virginia in 1611, and was probably accompanied by workingmen of this class, as he mentions incidentally in his letter to the Council, written in the year of his arrival, that one of the most important tasks which the colonists had to perform was to manufacture bricks.[3] Kilns were certainly erected at Henrico when that place was selected as the site of the new town which he had determined to build.[4] The first story of all the houses there, was constructed of brick made on the spot by men who had been brought thither in company with spadesmen, carpenters, wood-choppers, and sawyers, for this special purpose. It was the bricks manufactured here which Whitaker, in his Good Newes from Virginia, had in mind when he related that the colonists had, in digging for bricks, come upon a red clay possessing the most excellent qualities for this purpose. At this time
- ↑ A True and Sincere Declaration, Brown’s Genesis of the United States, p. 353. “I did visit . . . ould Short, the bricklayer,” President Wingfield records in his Discourse, 1607. See Works of Capt. John Smith, p. xc.
- ↑ Broadside, Brown’s Genesis of the United States, p. 356. Broadside, Ibid., p. 439.
- ↑ Brown’s Genesis of the United States, p. 492.
- ↑ At this time,
