Samuel Maycock came to Virginia about 1618 and served as a Councilor under both Yeardley and Wyatt. He located a plantation upriver from Jamestown on the south side next above Flowerdieu Hundred sometime prior to April, 1619. It took its name, Maycock's Hundred or Plantation, from him, the original patentee, as was often the case in early Virginia. It would seem that he, like others, then undertook to bring in men and supplies. There is reference to Sara Maycock bringing over four servants in the Abigail in 1622 "uppon the accompt of Mr. Samuell Maycock." For this she got 200 acres of her choice.
Maycock's was another of the early beginnings that was snuffed out by the massacre. Four were killed on his "Divident" including himself. Another was Edward Lister who came to Plymouth in the Mayflower and had signed the "compact." Maycock was one of six Councilors who perished on March 22, 1622 at the hand of the Indians.
[Flowerdieu Hundred—Piercey's Hundred (27)]
In 1618 Sir George Yeardley acquired 1,000 acres on the south side of the James River above Martin's Brandon and across from his Tanks Weyanoke holding. He proceeded to establish a plantation here which he named in honor of his wife who had been Temperance Flowerdieu. In 1619 it was well enough along to merit the representation in the Assembly which was performed by John Jefferson and Ensign Edward Rossingham, the latter one of Yeardley's kinsmen. This, perhaps, suffered in the massacre less than many other settlements. Only six persons were killed here. Flowerdieu Hundred was one of the fewer than a dozen points that the Colony decided to hold after the onslaught.
Council minutes and other sources in the 1622-24 period show the plantation as one that was probably functioning well. There were cases revolving around the use of livestock, particularly cattle, and the cultivation of tobacco. At least one such case led Yeardley to examine witnesses at "Flowerdieu Hundreth." One reference to tobacco puts interesting light on its cultivation at this time. Yeardley's overseer, one Sergeant Fortescue, was charged with negligence in the care of the harvested tobacco:
... hee did hange the tobacco soe thick uppon the lynes that the lynes brake and the tobacco fell to the ground, and before the said tobaco was at all dryed he made it upp into role and soe by his faulte it was not marchantable and that all the tobacco except six or seven hundred waight, was made upp wett and nott merchantable, The whole crop amounting to 9000 waight or thereabouts.
This seems to mean a yearly harvest of 9,000 pounds at Flowerdieu Hundred in 1624.
This was the year that Yeardley sold this plantation as well as his holding across the James at Weyanoke to Captain Abraham Piercey, one of the leading merchants in the Colony. In 1624, the year of the sale, a population of sixty-three (including eleven negroes) had been listed for Flowerdieu Hundred with another eighteen having died in the previous twelve months. In the census of 1625, Piercey's Hundred, as the place was now called, had fifty-seven including its seven negroes (four men, two women and one child). The enumeration included twelve houses, three stores, four tobacco houses, and two boats, all of which had been bought, or built, by Piercey. There was a windmill too, and this, the first in the Colony, had been erected by Yeardley, it is said, in 1621. It stood on Windmill, earlier known as Tobacco, Point.
Corn supplies were given at ninety-three barrels and fish at 1,600 pounds. Cattle was totaled at forty-four head and hogs at thirty-one. Supplies of powder and lead were ample for the thirty-four "fixed pieces" which were on hand. Besides, there were thirty-four swords and 20 complete suits of armor as well as some other types. Two pieces of ordnance were included and, perhaps, one of these is that described as on hand in the winter of 1622. This evidently was one of the most successful of the Virginia private plantations.