This image shows Wide Water Peninsula today. At the tip is Brent’s Point, where the Brents established their home.

Giles (I) and his wife, Mary, built a home around 1646 and named it “Peace.” The Brents were the northernmost English residents in Virginia. When settlers pushed northward to patent land (c. 1651), “Peace” became their last stop for provisions and information – a point of departure into the unknown. One historian’s account suggests, “Giles naming of ‘Peace’ was either wishful or optimistic because life there was far from peaceful.”

When Lord Baltimore of Maryland discovered Giles had settled across the river, he ordered Governor William Stone to issue land patents in the Northern Neck including “that place where Mr. Giles Brent now resides and called by him ‘Peace’.” Settlers began arriving at Brent’s Point bearing grants with Lord Baltimore’s seal; but, in 1654, Brent petitioned the Jamestown court for protection from Northern Neck encroachments. Maryland patents in Virginia were terminated.