Another historic marker heading to Accomack County honoring Anne Toft’s home

Pictured: a sign, like the one approved for Gargaphia, on the Historic Debtor’s Prison in Accomac.

Another historic marker has been approved by the Virginia Board of Historic Resources for the Eastern Shore.

A sign honoring Gargaphia, the plantation home of Anne Toft (ca. 1642-ca. 1687), who became the wealthiest woman on the Eastern Shore in the 17th century, was approved this week.

Toft settled in Virginia by 1660, when fewer than one-fifth of English immigrants were women. While she was single, Toft engaged in international trade and defended her interests in court. She was a friend and supporter of Col. Edmund Scarburgh II, a burgess and Virginia’s surveyor general. Toft acquired more than a total of 30,000 acres in Virginia, Maryland, and Jamaica. Indentured and enslaved laborers worked on her land. Toft married Daniel Jenifer in 1671.

Her great-grandson, Daniel of St. Thomas Jenifer, was one of the signers of the U.S. Constitution.

The sign is proposed to be placed on Route 13 at the intersection of Gargatha Landing Road. Shore History is the sponsor for the marker.