Submitted by FHMaster on Sun, 03/21/2021 - 14:05

Sometime after the abandonment of the Jordan-Farrar site, the land around Jordan Point came into the possession of Benjamin and Mary Sidway, who surrendered the land in 1657 to the joint ownership of John Bland, a merchant of London, and his brother Theodorick Bland as payment for their debts.

Up to the 1670s, there is no evidence that the Blands actively used the land. However, Giles Bland, the son of merchant John Bland, became involved as Nathaniel Bacon's lieutenant during Bacon's Rebellion in 1676, for which he was hanged a year later. Charles Andrews states that the rebellion started on Jordan's Point when Nathaniel Bacon took leadership over a group of insurgents there, who wanted to attack Native American settlements against the wishes of the colonial government.

Around 1687, Theodorick's son Richard Bland I acquired unencumbered title to the land. and established Jordan's Point Plantation, which was a more typical Virginia Plantation of the later colonial era with its economy still focused on tobacco, but maintained through black slave labor. The archeological record revealed that the residence of Bland was located about 1000 feet west of the Jordan-Farrar site. It consisted of the main building, three outbuildings, a pond, and one of the largest colonial gardens of the era; it was actively used from the mid 1680s to the 1740s.

When Richard Bland I died in 1720, his son, Richard Bland II, who became both a prominent member of Virginia gentry and a delegate to the Continental Congress, inherited the plantation. He expanded the property by adding a tobacco warehouse and a tobacco inspection station. As evidence of this ongoing expansion, archaeologists also found the remains of a large, elaborate brickwork building "consistent with a Georgian sense of proportion" that had been started around 1760, but its construction appears to have come to a halt with the death of Richard Bland II in 1776 and it was in ruins after 1781, the year that the Virginia tidewater region was invaded by Benedict Arnold.

When his father died, Richard Bland III inherited the property and moved inland, building a new residence about 1.5 miles south of the original plantation. Jordan Point itself remained with the Bland family until the end of the 19th century. It was then sold to the Leavenworth family, who sold it to the City of Hopewell in 1929. In 1945, it was acquired by Hummel Aviation. Bland family cemetery, which include the graves of both Richard Bland I and II, is still present at Jordan Point.

Location
On the south bank of the James River in the northern portion of Prince George County, Virginia, United States. It is about 20 miles from Richmond and 30 miles upstream from Jamestown on the James River.
State
GeoCoord
37°18′26″N 77°13′14″W
Status
Unknown