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The Frontier
Prince William Forest Park was on the frontier of English settlement in America. Both the characteristics of the frontiersmen that we admire—courage, ingenuity, self-reliance—and those that make us uncomfortable—violence, greed, hatred of Indians—were found among these Virginians. They made clearings in the forest, planted crops, raised families, and set up county governments and institutions. Some settled down and became long-time residents, but most stayed only a few years before moving further west.
Records suggest that in this early period, a number of plantations were set up along the lower reaches of the creeks. It is evident that at least a few hardy people settled in what is now Prince William Forest Park.
The Landscape of 1650
What did the land look like when the first Europeans settled in the Park? Virginia was not one vast forest waiting to be cleared, as the folklore of the American frontier sometimes has it. One English promoter assured prospective settlers in a 1650 pamphlet that they would not have to cut the forests themselves, “for there are an immense quantity of Indian fields cleared already to our hand by the Natives.”
The Native Americans practiced “slash and burn” agriculture, so a traveler on Virginia’s rivers might have seen forests alternating with active corn fields and old fields growing up in brush or small trees. The uplands of the Park were most likely covered with a mature oak-hickory forest, while the lowlands along Chopawamsic Creek were probably a thicket of pine and cedar.
The Great Land Grab
Planters acquired land through the “headright” system, in which a planter obtained 50 acres of land for each person he paid to bring to the colony. The new colonists, in return, became indentured servants for a period of 5- 7 years. Newly acquired land had to be “seated” in order to validate a land patent. “Seating” meant that some portion of the land had to be cleared for farming and a house built before the claim would be legal. Many of the tracts patented in the 1650s were not seated, and so the patents lapsed. Inaccurate mapping and surveying mistakes led to many overlapping and competing land claims.
The William Bennet Plantation Site
Only one archeological site dating to the period of early European settlement has so far been found in the Park, the William Bennett Plantation Site. Between 1708 and1731 Bennett laid claim to 834 fairly rugged acres. The plantation site is located along a small ridge that runs north from Route 619. The main discovery at the Bennett Site was a cellar hole measuring 16x24 feet. A number of bricks and fragments of fieldstone were found in the cellar fill, indicating that the house once had brick or stone foundations. Artifacts were found at the site dating to all periods from the early 1700s to after 1820. Most likely, somebody lived at the site for more than a century.
-Information taken from Few Know That Such A Place Exists: Land and People in Prince William Forest Park by the Louis Berger Group, Inc.
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