As an Ancient Planter, a settler who had lived at the Jamestown settlement for 10 years, Captain William Powell was granted the 750-acre Chippokes Plantation tract in 1619 by the Virginia Company. Powell died just four years later in 1623. Chippokes Plantation passed to his infant son, George, in the care of Powell's widow, Margaret Powell Blaney West. When George Powell died childless in his early twenties, the plantation was purchased, sold, and repurchased by Governor William Berkeley. When Berkeley died in 1677, Chippokes passed to his widow, Lady Frances Culpeper Berkeley, who then married Philip Ludwell I.