".... Capt Roger Jones, some time an Inhabitant of this Country, but at present residing in London. A man that, from noething, pretends in a few years to have gained a great Estate, & since he has declared his disaffection to yr Maty before his leaveing this Country, by refuseing to serve in any office, or take the usuall Oaths wee pray yor Lordshps leave to give you his true caracter. He came into this Country a souldier under the L Culpeper; was by his Ldsp made Captaine of a small sloope wh was to have been furnished with twelve men, & was ordered to cruise in our great Bay, to look out for & seize all unlawfull Tradrs, &c. But ye Captaine having learnt to cheate ye King very early, never had above 8 men, altho he constantly received pay for 12 men, for wh ye Lord Culpeper endeavoured to call him to Acct., as well as for his adviseing, trading with & sheltering severall Pyrates & unlawfull Traders, instead of doeing his duty in seizing them. By which means ye sd. Jones laid ye foundation of his p'sent great Estate, as he gives out he is master of."[95]
In 1701 Roger Jones died in Stepney, London, and was buried at Mansfield, Nottinghamshire, the home of his wife Dorothy (née Walker) by whom he had two sons. The elder son, Frederick, inherited the larger share of the estate,[96] and both he and his brother Thomas arrived in Virginia in 1702. Thomas remained in the colony throughout his life, but, as already shown, Frederick decided that North Carolina was more to his liking. In about 1708 Frederick disposed of most of his Virginia holdings and moved south, taking with him at least two Negro slaves and his wife Jane, whom he had married while in Williamsburg.[97]
There is no doubt that Frederick Jones prospered in North Carolina, and in 1717 he was appointed Chief Justice for the colony,[98] replacing the previous Secretary and Chief Justice, Tobias Knight, who had resigned in disgrace. The latter had made the mistake of being too open an accomplice of Edward "Blackbeard" Teach, the pirate. There is reason to suppose that even if Governor Eden did not personally profit from Teach's activities, he was fully aware that the pirate made his winter quarters in a North Carolina inlet. Teach was not finally cornered until November 22, 1718, in the famous exploit of Lieutenant Maynard off Ocracoke Inlet.[99] Jones had by then been in office for at least a year and he was doubtless aware of the Governor's sympathies. Indeed, with his own father's example to guide him, Jones was clearly an excellent choice for Chief Justice if leniency towards piracy was a prerequisite for the job. Although there is no evidence that Jones profited from Blackbeard's operations, the records show that he was quite prepared to turn the trust of his office to his own advantage. In the end it was a comparatively small manipulation that proved his undoing.
In 1721 one Daniel Mack Daniel murdered, by drowning, a certain Ebanezar Taylor and carried off his goods and money to a total of £290.0.0d. When Mack Daniel was apprehended the money was passed for safekeeping to Frederick Jones, who apparently pocketed it. On April 4, 1722, the following entry appeared in the Colonial Records of North Carolina:[100]
It's the Opinion of this Board that the money lodged in the said Collo ffredk Jones hands late Cheif Justice for the appearance of Robert Atkins and Daniel Mackdaniel at the Genl Court ought to have been deliverd to the present Cheif Justice with the Genl Court Papers & Records.
Orderd that the said Collo ffredrick Jones late Cheif Justice doe immediately pay to Christopher Gale Cheif Justice or his Order whatever moneys he has in his hands lodged as aforesaid ... in case of failure hereof the Attorney Genl is hereby Orderd to take proper measures for the recovery thereof.
At the session of July 31 to August 4, 1722, Jones was due to appear to answer the charge that he had failed to relinquish the money. But when the session opened, it was reported that Colonel Jones was dead.[101] He had made his will only five days after the initial order of April 4 had been issued.[102]
Frederick Jones was in many respects a worthy and upright member of the North Carolina Council, or so one would gather from the opinion of Hugh Jones (no relation), who wrote: "Col. Frederick Jones, one of the Council, and in a good post, and of a good estate in North Carolina, before his death applied to me, desiring me to communicate the deplorable state of their Church to the late Bishop of London."[103] Frederick Jones presumably thought no better of the state of education in the colony, for we know that in the period 1719-1721 two of his sons were at school in Williamsburg.[104]
The Excavation
As stated in the introduction, the area and intensity of the excavations were limited by time and prevailing local conditions. Being aware of these restrictions from the outset, no attempt was made to undertake the total clearance of either the residence or kitchen. Instead, carefully restricted cuttings were made across the foundations to obtain the maximum information with the minimum effort, at the same time retaining sufficiently large undisturbed areas to merit total clearance of the site at some future date. As the area is now covered by fast-growing trees it is unlikely that such an operation would be feasible within the next 15 or 20 years. In the meantime, however, Colonial Williamsburg has erected concrete markers (see fig. 5) to record the positions of both buildings.[105] No excavation of any sort would have been undertaken at this time had not the foundations been so extensively and irreparably mutilated by the 1959 bulldozing. The loss of all the topsoil and the scooping of the upper courses of the foundations into banks to serve as windbreaks had done such damage that it was essential that something be done before the new growth took hold.[106] The operation should be correctly described, therefore, as a rescue project rather than an archeological excavation in the classic manner.