Archaeologists recently made a surprising discovery about the oldest tombstone in the United States, dating back nearly 400 years. The tombstone, from 1627 in the Jamestown settlement, belonged to an English knight. However, the material the tombstone was made of and where it originated from had baffled experts until now. A study published in the International Journal of Historical Archaeology revealed that the black limestone tombstone was not of North American origin but actually came from Europe.
The study, titled “Sourcing the Early Colonial Knight’s Black ‘Marble’ Tombstone at Jamestown, Virginia, USA,” sheds light on the trade routes of the time. Wealthy English colonists in seventeenth-century Virginia often used engraved tombstones to exhibit their wealth and memorialize themselves. These colonists in the Tidewater region of the Chesapeake Bay preferred black ‘marble,’ which was actually polished, fine-grained, black limestone. The iconic knight’s tombstone at Jamestown was one such stone, likely transported from Belgium rather than being made from a local fossil.
The study theorizes that the black limestone was quarried and cut in Belgium, then shipped down the Meuse River and across the English Channel to London. In London, the stone was carved and brass inlays were installed before being shipped to Jamestown as ballast. This trade route highlights a small piece of the rapidly expanding Atlantic world of geopolitical colonial trade during that time period. While historians have not definitively determined the identity of the knight buried under the tombstone, the study suggests it was possibly Sir George Yeardley, the governor of Virginia at the time of his death in 1627.
If the knight’s tombstone does belong to George Yeardley, it would be the oldest black ‘marble’ tombstone in the Chesapeake Bay region and possibly the oldest surviving tombstone in America. It is also the only known tombstone in the English colonies with engraved monumental brass inlays. The discovery of the tombstone’s European origin and the trade route it traveled to reach Virginia provides valuable insight into the connections between Europe and America during the colonial period. This new information adds to our understanding of the social and economic networks that existed in seventeenth-century Virginia and beyond.
