Photo courtesy National Park Service.
Artifacts Unearthed Relating To Brewing And Distilling
Shown are lead and copper pipes, kettle fragments, a brass spigot, and scrap metal. It is believed that most of the beer and ale brewed at Jamestown after 1620 was made by the common brewer. One act, passed in 1620/21 "for the repressinge of the odious ... sinne of drunkenesse," stated that "noe person ... shall at any tyme ... brewe anie beere or ale, and sell the same againe in his or her house ... unless it bee in townes where there is noe comon brewer."
HERBS AND MEDICINAL PLANTS
Among commodities which the early Jamestown settlers searched for were herbs and medicinal plants. It is possible that Thomas Wotton and Will Wilkinson, surgeons with the first colony, were the first members of the English medical profession to collect and experiment with New World plants.
The few colonists who wrote of their travels in Virginia frequently made mention of the herbs and native plants. George Percy related that five days after the settlers had planted their colony at Jamestown, May 19, 1607, that "One of the savages brought us on the way to the wood-side, where there was a garden of tobacco and other fruits and herbes."
On an exploring trip upriver from Jamestown in late May, 1607, Gabriel Archer recorded that "One [savage] shewed us the herbe called in their tongue wisacan, which they say heales poysoned woundes, it is like lyverwort or bloudwort."