Colonial Williamsburg Digital Library

Lot M - Block l4

While the ownership of lot #M can be fairly well established in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, the use made of the lot until 1818 when it appears that the Baptist meeting house stood on it is unknown.

The Frenchman's Map (1782? or 1786?) indicates that there were no dwellings on it at that date. As will be shown in later pages, that seemed to be true also in 1861.

The Unknown Draftsman (c. 1790?) has designated this lot as M. On both maps -- that of the Unknown Draftsman and that of Bucktrout (1800) - the name "Taliaferro" was placed in the lot located in the southeast corner of this block.

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The only Taliaferro who owned property in Williamsburg at those dates was Charles Taliaferro. (Further information on Taliaferro may be found in the Taliaferro-Cole House report.)

The Williamsburg Land Tax Records contain the following information about Charles Taliaferro:

Date	Name	No. Lots	Annual Rent or Value	Taxes
1785	Charles Taliaferro	14	£25	1s. 5d.
1891 " "	14	16.10.	16s.
1797 " "	1	3.	3s.
1797 " "	14	16.10	16s. 6d.
1801	Charles Taliaferros, Est	14	$55.00	$ .86
1806	(Not listed)

Since these lots were listed in Charles Taliaferro's name in 1797, and in that of "Charles Taliaferro's Est" in 1801, it is evident that Taliaferro had died sometime during the four-year period.

From Taliaferro or Taliaferro's estate, the lots seem to have passed directly to a Cole. A Cole is located south of lot 351 on February 26, 1810, in the policy revaluing the property on the Bryan lot. In insurance policy No. 1011 in which William Bryan's property was revalued, the appraisers declared:

..... we have viewed and revalued the building heretofore declared for assurance by William Bryan then residing at Williamsburg in the county of James City...We also certify that the said building is now owned by Frances Bryan and Julian Bryan that it is now occupied by Murray A. Drummond Frances Bryan and that it is situated south of the main street East of Durfeys lot north of Coles lot and west of a cross Street dividing Coles lots. (Insurance Book, p. 11)

Five years later, a Cole was again located south of lot 351 in Frances Bryan's policy. She described her building on the main street in 3 Williamsburg as now occupied by herself and "situated between Coles lot south and Durfeys lot west in the County of James City." (Insurance Book, Policy No. 1511, p. 1.2, July 5, 1815)

From the records, it seems that the owner of this lot was Jesse Cole who owned other lots from 1804 through 1843. In 1804, seven lots were transferred from Charles Taliaferro to Jesse Cole. (Williamsburg Land Transfers copied from the Virginia State Library) The Williamsburg Land Tax Records confirm this transfer of lots. For Jesse Cole, whose name appears on the records for the first time in 1806, the figures are:

Date	Name	No. Lots	Annual Rent or Value	Taxes
1806	Jesse Cole	7	$70.00	$1.10
1810	Do	3	50.00	.78
1812	Do	3-¾	83.34	1.31

The Land Tax Records continued to show Jesse Cole as the possessor of 3-¾ lots until 1818 when he was credited with 5. He had received "1-¼ via Francis B. Bryan, house and lot situate on the Duke of Gloucester Street, bounded on the east by a cross street which divides this lot from Jesse Cole's lot and on the south by the Baptist meeting house." (This information was given under the "Remarks" in the Williamsburg Land Tax Records for 1818. This was the first mention found of a Baptist church, on lot No. M apparently.)

The location of Jesse Cole in lot 352 in the Williamsburg Land Tax Records of 1818 coupled with the failure of the appraisers of the Bryan property in 1810 to make any distinction between the Cole who owned a lot south and the Cole who owned lots east of the Bryan lot 351, seem to establish Jesse Cole as the owner of lot No. M in the early nineteenth century.

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In 1820, in Williamsburg Land Tax Records, Jesse Cole had among other lots, two with no buildings on them. One lot was valued at $50; the other at $100. He continued to own these and others through 1843. Although this information throws no light on lot No. M, it shows that Cole owned lots on which there were no buildings.

Mr. Charles in his "Recollections of Williamsburg, in 1861, after describing the Travis house which stood on the southwest corner of Block 14, and an old two-story frame building which stood where the Executive building of the Eastern State Hospital now stands, adds

There were no then houses in this block fronting on Francis street. On the east side of this block, fronting on Nassau Street, was the present African Church, as it was known. This church looks today on the exterior very much as it did sixty years ago. In recent years it was made a few feet longer in order to provide a vestibule. A belfry was erected at the same time. (Page 20)

NOTE

A review of Joseph B. Earnest's "Religious Development of the Negro" in the William and Mary Quarterly, Vol. XXIII (1), pp.148-49, comments as follows: "Mr. Earnest calls attention to the fact that the African church in this place (Williamsburg) established before 1791, was the first negro church in Virginia, if not in the U. S. . . . . The church had a membership almost entirely if not altogether, of negroes. Moses, a negro, and afterwards a man called Gowan Pamphlet preached among them".