Boldrup Plantation Archeological Site is a historic

archaeological site An archaeological site is a place (or group of physical sites) in which evidence of past activity is preserved (either prehistoric or historic or contemporary), and which has been, or may be, investigated using the discipline of archaeology an ...

located at

Newport News, Virginia Newport News () is an independent city in the U.S. state of Virginia. At the 2020 census, the population was 186,247. Located in the Hampton Roads region, it is the 5th most populous city in Virginia and 140th most populous city in the Uni ...

. It was the location of a 17th-century

plantation A plantation is an agricultural estate, generally centered on a plantation house, meant for farming that specializes in cash crops, usually mainly planted with a single crop, with perhaps ancillary areas for vegetables for eating and so on. The ...

and now the site of a modern residential development. During the 17th century, Boldrup Plantation was owned by Gov.

John Harvey John Harvey may refer to: People Academics * John Harvey (astrologer) (1564–1592), English astrologer and physician * John Harvey (architectural historian) (1911–1997), British architectural historian, who wrote on English Gothic architecture ...

(d. 1646), Gov. Samuel Stephens (1629-1669), and Gov. William Berkeley (1605-1677); the wife of the latter two men,

Frances Culpeper Berkeley Frances Stephens Berkeley Ludwell ( Culpeper; baptised 27 May 1634 – 1690s), most commonly styled Lady Frances Berkeley after her second marriage, was a leader of the Green Spring faction of Virginia politics in the seventeenth century and wife t ...

, lived there as well. The site includes the grave slab of Lt. Col. William Cole, colonial secretary of state, the graves of his second and third wives, and a pit house. The site was excavated in the 1980s. It was listed on the

National Register of Historic Places The National Register of Historic Places (NRHP) is the United States federal government's official list of districts, sites, buildings, structures and objects deemed worthy of preservation for their historical significance or "great artistic v ...

in 1982.

References

Plantations in Virginia Archaeological sites on the National Register of Historic Places in Virginia National Register of Historic Places in Newport News, Virginia {{NewportNewsVA-NRHP-stub