The goal of this project was to determine the source of Jamestown’s black “marble” knight’s tombstone. From 1627, it is the oldest such tombstone in the Chesapeake Bay region. We used the fossils contained in archived fragments from the stone to identify its microfossils which included six species of foraminiferans. These co-occurred in what is now Belgium and Ireland during the Viséan Age, Middle Mississippian Epoch, Carboniferous Period. They did not co-occur in North America. Therefore, the knight’s tombstone had to be imported from Europe. Historical evidence suggests Belgium, from where it was transshipped in London and on to Jamestown.

Two knights died during the life of Jamestown’s second church (ca.1617 to ca.1639).

One was Sir Thomas West (The Lord De La Warr), the colony’s first resident governor. He died in 1618 on the transatlantic voyage to Jamestown and was buried there. There is no archaeological or historical evidence connecting the knight’s tombstone to Sir Thomas West.

The other knight was governor Sir George Yeardley. The tombstone likely belonged to Yeardley based on a reference to it in the 1680s will of his step-grandson, Adam Thorowgood II. Thorowgood requested that his own black “marble” tombstone be engraved with the crest of Sir George Yeardley and have the same inscription found on “the broken tomb,” indicating that the stone was originally damaged in the seventeenth century as seen in the oldest photograph from 1905.

Assuming the knight’s tombstone was George Yeardley’s, then it is the oldest black “marble” tombstone in the Chesapeake Bay region, USA and may be the oldest surviving tombstone in America .

It is the only known tombstone in the English colonies with engraved monumental brass inlays.