The history of the Hollymead area begins with Native American inhabitants known as the Monacan Nation.
The Monacan had several large villages throughout the region. One village, Monasukapanough, was located on both sides of the South Fork of the Rivanna River, near the current intersection of Route 29 and Polo Grounds Road. The village was abandoned around 1700, before the arrival of English settlers in the area.
The village of Monasukapanough, and by extension Hollymead, was first shown on a 1612 map by John Smith. This map from 1630 is based on Smith’s earlier map.
Nova Virginia Tabula, courtesy David Rumsey Map Collection
The Monacan at Monasukapanough were undoubtedly familiar with the rivers and land throughout the Hollymead area. Archaeologist David Ives Bushnell, Jr. studied the Monacan Indians in the early Twentieth Century and described the Hollymead environment:
Game was plentiful during the days of Indian occupancy, and deer, bear, and the smaller animals were here in vast numbers.
A prominent feature at Monasukapanough was a large burial mound which Thomas Jefferson excavated. The site is shown as “Indian Grave” on this 1801 map that accompanied an edition of Thomas Jefferson’s Notes on the State of Virginia.
Native Americans sometimes returned to the area after the village was abandoned. Jefferson described such a visit to the burial mound that occurred around 1735:
[They] went through the woods directly to it, without any instructions or enquiry, and having staid about it some time, with expressions which were construed to be those of sorrow, they returned to the high road, which they had left about half a dozen miles to pay this visit, and pursued their journey.
Writing in 1914, Bushnell reported speaking with an elderly African American woman who grew up in the area. Based on his description she likely lived on the Carrsbrook plantation. She told him about seeing, as a child, groups of Native Americans stopping at the Monasukapanough site where they would “at night dance around a fire on, or near, the Indian Grave.'”
Today, a historical marker on Rio Mills road, across from the boat landing, commemorates Monasukapanough and the Monacan who lived in the Hollymead area.
Sources
- The Monacan in Virginia – VirginiaPlaces.org
- Nova Virginia Tabula – David Rumsey Map Collection
- “The Indian Grave”–A Monacan Site in Albemarle County, Virginia – David I. Bushnell, Jr.
- Jefferson’s Excavation of a Native American Burial Mound – Monticello Foundation