Agriculture Reference
In-Depth Information
By trade the junior Minitree worked as a brickmaker and brickmason [brick-
layer]. He was a Williamsburg resident by 1724 when he acquired two lots in the
city limits. Archaeology revealed that Minitree used these city lots as a materials
preparation area; with features such as the clay borrow pits. Though no buildings
in Williamsburg can be specifically attributed to him, it is believed that Minitree
worked throughout the city as it was being constructed during this early period.
He held these lots until 1736 when he sold them to a local carpenter. Minitree
would also own land in neighbouring James City County, about 5 miles west of
Williamsburg and may have been living there by then.
In the 1730s David Minitree began working in other parts of Virginia. The first
major project with which he is confirmed with is Mattaponi Church (
c
.1732-
34). It is a cruciform building with brick walls laid in Flemish bond with glazed
headers used throughout the building, measuring 8
7
/
8
ins
2
5
/
8
ins.
Located above the side of the gauged frontispiece of the south end door of the
church is a single brick carved and painted with the name 'David Minetree' into
it. The gauged work to the two frontispieces to the north and south doors and
semi-circular arches are built of orange-red rubbing bricks set with fine lime
putty:silver sand mortar joints. All are built very much in the English tradition
in bonding, the use of 'dummy joints' to create some of the 'closers' and head-
ers, as well as in the style of execution. Regrettably both doorways have fallen
victim to some areas of poor quality modern repairs that are inappropriate and
aesthetically disfiguring.
Minitree was working in 1746, 80 miles north of Williamsburg in Stafford
County, making 116,304 bricks for the building of a now demolished house called
'Marlborough' for a John Mercer. It was, however, in the 1750s that Minitree, with
the construction of Carter's Grove (1751-53) really came to major significance
(Fig. 114). This was a large brick-built house constructed 8 miles south-east of
Williamsburg, in James City County, for one of Virginia's wealthiest landowners,
Carter Burwell. A very handsome building, upon which, as Lounsbury (2003, 18-
19) details, Minitree:
4
3
/
8
ins
…embellished the two-story [storey] brickwork with delicately attenuated gauged
and rubbed jack arches in every aperture on the building from the cellar to the
second story. Minitree maintained the hierarchy of the stories [storeys] by build-
ing shorter jack arches on the cellar appetures, which also blended more closely to
the colour of the plinth bricks. The rich red bricks of the second-story jack arches
extend four courses in height compared to the five courses of the main story. He
demarcated the plinth with a three-course molded watertable. A Flemish-bond
cavetto course sits atop a double row that forms a torus, all of which are rubbed
and laid in wafer thin, white-lime putty joints. However, Minitree muted the con-
trast between the watertable and walls by choosing bricks of a similar color range.
The precision of the watertable is matched by a three-course rubbed stringcourse
