Henry Brooks Farm

Henry Brooks Farm. . At the distant end of the field in front of you stood the home of Henry Brooks, the first owner of much of what would become Popes Creek Plantation. , As you look toward the house site, perhaps you can sense the isolation Henry Brooks must have felt when he settled here in 1651; he stood on the frontier of Virginia's tobacco culture. During the next twelve years many others followed him to the area, and Brooks steadily sold off his 1,000 acres. By 1662 the area around Popes and Bridges Creeks was dotted with at least eight modest farms - more than would exist here a century later. , Archeological investigations at the Henry Brooks house site in 1977 testified to the difficulties of carving a new homestead out of the wilderness. The farm was less elaborate than the later Popes Creek Plantation. Brooks's main dwelling measured only 20x19 feet. Archeologists discovered just one other structure on the site.