By 1613 the area was officially known as West and Sherley Hundred and soon thereafter a handful of adventurous tobacco farmers had put up simple dwellings. Beginning in the 1650s, Edward Hill I acquired the property and for three generations his family operated a successful plantation. Historical records say very little about these first occupants, leaving archaeology to fill in the picture. And gradually, excavations at modern day Shirley are beginning to find telling evidence of activity before 1723 and the Carter era.