There are no records to tell what kind of bargain Mottrom made with the Chicacoans for their land, but apparently the relations between the white men and the Indians were friendly. Marshvwap, King of the Chicacoan and Wicocomoco Indians, became a friend of his new neighbor, John Mottrom.

_COAN HALL_

When John Mottrom came to the Indian district of Chicacoan to live, it must have been like the Garden of Eden. The river was there; the trees that were pleasant to the sight, and good for food; the beast of the field and the fowl of the air. Except for the Indian clearings along the margin of the river it was new, untouched and as it was in the beginning.

Mottrom chose a site for his house on the east bank of the Coan, and like all early Virginia settlers he knew how to select the spot. Springs were numerous in this region so that it was not necessary to dig a well.

And how did he go about building a house in this wilderness, so far from any place where skilled labor, tools and bricks, glass and nails could be obtained? No records to answer this question have been uncovered to this date. Perhaps, he brought indentured servants and a few crude tools with him in the shallop.

What kind of a house did he build? It is fairly certain that he did not build a log cabin, even for a temporary shelter.

In the seventeenth century the English settlers in Virginia built log forts, log prisons and log garrison houses but they were of "logs hewn square," and they were built in the traditional Old World manner.

These early settlers mentioned living in cottages, huts and frame cabins but, so far as is known, they never said that they lived in log cabins.

The American-type log cabin is believed to have developed later and in another part of the country.

Mottrom and his men may have erected temporary shelters of saplings, boughs and bark, similar to the Indian houses.

If wood was cut from the forest for his permanent home, time was needed.

Locust for sills, oak for framing, heart pine and cedar were at hand, but green lumber had to be seasoned.

Mottrom may have made several trips to Jamestown or Maryland for artisans and building supplies before his new home was completed.

Meanwhile, he may have brought his family to live in one of the temporary shelters.

There are no buildings surviving in Virginia that were known to have been built before 1650, therefore, no true picture of the Mottrom home can be presented.

However, there are enough facts known of the period to enable one to reconstruct a reasonably accurate picture of the first house on the Coan.

First of all--the house had to be strong, for life itself might depend upon the house. Its style was, no doubt, patterned after the architecture of England but modified by circumstances in the New World.

A framed building, one storey and a half high, with brick underpinning, and brick chimneys at either end, was the typical dwelling of Virginia about the middle of the seventeenth century. Its size would have been about forty by twenty feet, with downstairs ceilings about nine feet high.

We can visualize those workmen at Coan "riving" out the weather boards for the first known house in the Northern Neck. One of the men would be holding a rough-squared length of timber on a "frow" horse, while another would be pounding, with a wooden mallet, a wedge-shaped knife into the wood. Presently a board would fall off. With the same tools shingles for the roof would be split from cedar.

John Mottrom may have bought English bricks from some ship bound homeward with a load of tobacco and eager to get rid of the ballast of bricks at any price. It is more likely that his bricks were burned in a kiln at Coan, made with clay dug from the riverbank.

Nails were so hard to get that settlers when they were leaving to settle elsewhere burned their homes in order to get the nails to start a new house. Mottrom probably brought some nails from his former home and supplemented them with wooden pegs.

Rarely before 1720 were "windows sasht with crystal glass." Casements were used. Glassmaking had ended at Jamestown in 1624. Mottrom's windows may have been diamond-shaped panes of oiled paper with solid wooden shutters, or merely sliding panels of wood. But it was possible to get imported glass and he may have had some glass, drawn lead and solder from England. The window openings were a structural part of the framing, not just holes cut in the sheathing. Sometimes the windows did not open, as they were mainly intended to let in light. In this case the leaded glass was permanently set in the frames in diamond-shaped panes.

Mottrom's front door may have had hinges made in the shapes of the letters H and L, to stand for Holy Lord, for it was believed then that such hinges would drive ghosts away from the door. The door may have had panels in the form of a cross to keep out the witches. Or, the door may have been made of oak battens, heavy enough to keep out wolves, Indians and "hurry-canes." In either case, it was fastened with a latch and string, with possibly an oaken bar inside for added strength.

The chimneys of Virginia houses were much larger than those in England, and the fireplaces were at least seven feet across, for the hearth was the heart of the home.

From these various facts of the time, we assume that the first house in the Northern Neck which John Mottrom named Coan Hall was strong, simple, functional, and its character was medieval.

_NEIGHBORS_

In spite of its isolation Coan Hall was probably not a lonely place.

Besides John Mottrom and his wife there were two children, and probably several indentured servants. There were at least a few domestic animals.

The Indians were near, the forest was alive and rustling and "nimble"

with wild beasts, the sky was darkened and animated by the various birds in their season. The shallop lay at anchor not far away and was a reminder that it was possible to reach some civilization beyond the woods and water.

And Coan Hall was hardly established before guests began to arrive. They came by boat, and perhaps after dark. These Protestant friends and refugees were from Lord Baltimore's "Citie of St. Mary's."

It was whispered in that unhappy "citie" north of the Potomac that treason was being plotted at Coan Hall.

John Mottrom's new home must have been filled to capacity in those days.

Although the rooms were few we can be sure that there was no lack of beds or chairs. Rooms then, with the exception of the kitchen, had no distinct character. Beds were in every room, even in the hall where meals were taken.

On a winter's night we can imagine John Mottrom dispensing hospitality at Coan Hall--food, drink and roaring fires. Great plotting and planning must have gone on before the hearths, while the passing tankards of metheglin cheered and warmed the indignant gentlemen from Maryland.

Perhaps John Mottrom's guests were charmed with his new home and decided that it was easier just to settle at Chicacoan. At any rate we hear no more of treason. Instead, settlers begin to arrive in the Northern Neck.

William Presley and his English wife were among the first to arrive at Chicacoan. They built at the head of a creek not far from Coan Hall.

Richard Thompson and his family probably arrived early too. Richard was a young man, about twenty-seven, when he came to live at Chicacoan. He was a native of Norwich, Norfolk County, England. As a boy he had come to Virginia as an indentured servant and had served William Claiborne on Kent Island for three years.

When at twenty-one Richard became a free man, he went into business for himself, trading with the Indians for beaver. He must have been a good trader for he acquired a considerable estate. He also worked as an agent for William Claiborne, which in the end brought about his downfall. When Claiborne was proclaimed an enemy by the Maryland Council, Thompson was denounced also. He was in this way forced to flee to Chicacoan.

Before long a settlement had sprung up along the Coan. John Mottrom became the unofficial leader of this first white settlement in the Northern Neck. Although he did not know it, there was one among them who was to play an important part in his life--her name was Ursula, wife of Richard Thompson.

_THE "KIDS"_

As soon as their homes were built the settlers at Chicacoan began to remove the forest and clear the ground for tobacco fields.

The sound of axes was no doubt heard from sunrise until sunset. Then the stumps had to be dug up, and the soil had to be broken up with hoes.

This hard labor was probably done by white indentured servants.

These British servants were commercially known as "kids," probably because most of them were young, their ages ranging from thirteen to thirty as a rule.

An early English writer described the manner in which these "kids" were obtained to send to Virginia--"very many children ... were violently taken away or cheatingly duckoyed without the consent or knowledge of their Parents by ... persons ... called Spirits ... into private places or ships, and there sold to be transported, and then resold there to be servants to those that will give most for them."

A letter written in England in 1610 says that--"there are many ships going to Virginia with them 14 or 15 hundred children w'ch they have gathered up in divers places."

The shipmaster who brought the children over could sell the indentures for whatever he could get for them. If he could not find a purchaser, he could sell the children to persons known as "soul drivers" who would "buy a parcel of servants" to fill his wagon and drive through the country until he could sell them at a cash profit.

Other indentured servants were brought over by planters as "head-rights," which meant that the planter paid for their transportation and received fifty acres of land as a reward for transporting an immigrant to Virginia.

The indenture was a simple bargain between master and servant with protection by law for each. The treatment of the servant depended upon the nature of his master.

The boys who had long terms to serve became restless and often ran away across the Potomac to Maryland or to an Indian village. They were usually caught and punished and put back to work. In Virginia the punishment was sometimes thirty lashes and the letter R branded on the cheek, forehead or shoulder. The hair was sometimes cropped, and the leg shackled with irons, even during working hours. There is no evidence that the settlers of the Northern Neck did anything more severe than to whip their "kids."

Food, clothing and shelter was provided by the master. The shelter was usually in "a house set apart for him." The list of clothing might include a coat of frieze, a pair of leather breeches, a black hat, or cap of fur, a pair of "wooden heel shoes," and underclothes of dowlas and lockram.