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This image shows Widewater 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…

A Stafford elementary school was named in honor of Margaret Brent. After many successful ventures, Margaret Brent died in Stafford County in 1671. Among her land holdings were the original site of Alexandria, which she had owned since 1654 [the town would later be named for another Staffordian, John Alexander]; and the future site of…

Before joining her brother and his wife in Virginia, Margaret Brent made a name for herself in Maryland. She was arguably the most remarkable person in a remarkable clan. Born in 1601, she was the seventh child of Sir Richard Brent (1573-1652) and Lady Elizabeth Willoughby de Broke. With her brother Giles Brent and other…

Sisters Margaret and Mary left Maryland and joined Giles (I) and his wife. The sisters resided at “Peace” and the Brents built another house at Brent’s Point and named it “Retirement.” They traded with the Indians, no doubt aided by Mary (Kittamaqund) Brent’s linguistic skills and cultural knowledge. They preserved the peace, maintained their way-station,…

Giles Brent (II), representing a darker side of the generally positive union between his English father and Indian mother, was born about 1652. He reportedly dwelt in “two worlds.” His father and cousin had established themselves in respectable society, but Giles (II) lived a frontier existence and learned the Indian language. After his father’s death…

After the French Revolution of 1685, some 300,000 French Protestant Huguenots left France for Europe and America. George Brent, although Catholic, decided that something should be done when these refugees came to Stafford. He along with three other Staffordians, (Richard Foote, Nicholas Hayward, and Robert Bristow) petitioned the Roman Catholic King of England, James II,…

(First American Catholic archbishop and founder of Georgetown College [now University] was connected with the Brents of Stafford.) It was to Stafford that Father John Carroll, S.J., sailed from England. Born in 1735 in Upper Marlboro, Maryland, John Carroll was the brother of Daniel Carroll II (“The Commissioner”), a signer of the U. S. Constitution,…

The Mariner’s Cross depicts the crucifixion of Christ on an anchor motif. The King James II Tuppence Piece (right) was pierced for a pendant. Both artifacts were recovered from the Brent “Woodstock” house archaeological site in Stafford. (Northern Virginia Chapter of the Archaeological Society of Virginia – NVC/ASV).

Between 5,000 and 1,000 years ago, native-people tribal groups occupied the Blue Ridge Mountains to the Chesapeake Bay including the Stafford area. Subsisting primarily on small game and nuts, they migrated from hunting camp to camp. About 3,200 years ago the Woodland-period began.  

Between 8,500 and 5,000 years ago, Paleo-Indians responded to warming trends and heavier precipitation, which exposed the continental shelf on which Tidewater Virginia now sits. In forests of oak and pine, Paleo-Indian groups mastered woodlands and refined stone weapons and tools, as shown in the exhibit hand axe. They formed larger “band-level” societies in temporary…

Humans have occupied Virginia for 16,000 years. Relatively little is known of the earliest, Paleo-Indians or “hunter-gatherers” who arrived after the Ice Age.  These first humans are identified by their tell-tale fluted projectile points and lived by hunting bison, mastodon, and elk in small groups or “bands,” and by foraging for edible and medicinal plants.…

During a lengthy prehistoric-era, the area roughly east of today’s I-95 highway was covered by ocean water. Prehistoric sharks and other sea life were found in abundance. As the waters receded and the shelf was exposed, prehistoric creatures and other life forms of many types emerged. Over 119 million years ago, new life was evident.…