Dear Mr. Kircofe,
This sounded really familiar to me. My mother is a native of Petersburg, and I think she's told me about that stone.
Pocahontas is a small section of the city of Petersburg, that, as I recall, was once an island. The bridges over the Appomattox on Rt. 1 and I-95 both cross over this island/peninsula. The land may well once have been considered to be in Chesterfield County, since the boundary has fluctuated as the river's course has changed over the centuries.
Please note the following in Francis Earle Lutz's Chesterfield: An Old Virginia County (Richmond: William Byrd Press, 1954), p. 204.
"B. F. Lossing, the renowned historian, was a Chesterfield visitor in 1844 gathering material for his books while here. He inspected the Mancester iron and cotton factories and also visted Pocahontas, where he was interested in the so-called Pocahontas stone wash basin. He reported that the basin had been moved from its original site to the northwest abutment of the bridge and in the transfer it had been broken and patched up with cement.[Shades of Plymouth Rock!!!!] The later removal to Petersburg in 1914 was a more workman-like job. The basin is five feet in diameter with an oval excavation twelve inches acreoss and twelve inches deep. While tradition associates the stone with Pocahontas, it is probable that it actually was a mortar for grinding corn with a pestle. It was at the Indian village in which it stood orginally that Captain Smith secred a goodly supply of corn for his hungry comrades at Jamestown."
Also, see James G. Scott and Edward A. Wyatt, IV's Petersburg's Story: A History (Petersburg, 1960), for a picture of the stone next to the old bridge (opposite page 18) and a commentary on the stone on nearby pages, noting that Pocahontas supposedly bathed in the basin! The text says that the first move of the stone was to the lawn of the Court House in Petersburg and later to Poplar Lawn, which is a park in the middle of the city. I don't know if it's still there or not.
(Reading that it was in Poplar Lawn park (aka Central Park), I'm sure that my mother told me about it, because she grew up a block from the park and took me there when I was a kid. I was born near Petersburg at Fort Lee.)
I'll bet the Virginia Department of Historic Resources knows something about this rock! There's bound to be a lot of other information on it there, at Petersburg Public Library, the Virginia Historical Society, LVA, etc.
Eric G. Grundset
Library Director
DAR Library
1776 D St., N.W.
Washington, DC 20006-5303
202-879-3313 (phone)
202-879-3227 (fax)
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-----Original Message-----
From: David Kiracofe [mailto:[log in to unmask]]
Sent: Monday, September 08, 2003 1:08 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Pocahontas sites
Dear listers: I'm trying to locate if possible a site that was
connected with Pocahontas in popular memory in the early 19th century
(at least, that's the date of my source). It was a large conical stone
known as Pocahontas's Basin -- the basin was apparently scooped out on
one side of the cone. According to my source (in the Southern Literary
Messenger vol 4 (1838), it was within the limits of Petersburg on the
north bank of the Appomattox. Any help -- and any other references to
historical sites connected with Pocahontas -- will be appreciated!!
David Kiracofe
Grand Valley State University
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David Kiracofe
History Department
MAK 1060
Grand Valley State University
Allendale, MI 49501
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