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Northern Neck Rental Speckled Trout Cottage, 381 tidewater point rental, Lancaster, VA (2026)

05/20/2026

Some ideas for your next visit to our cottage.

05/15/2026

Interesting early history about the Northern Neck, the peninsula where &Northern Neck Rental Speckled Trout Cottage is located.

Explorers such as Captain John Smith made trips to the Northern Neck in the early 1600s, but John Mottrom is believed to be among the first—if not the first—white settlers to live here.

Mottrom likely arrived in the early 1640s, well before it was popular for colonists to live along the Virginia side of the Potomac, an area then only home to Indian communities.

After obtaining land near Heathsville from Chief Machywap, Mottrom established his home, Coan Hall, one of the first plantations in the Northern Neck to use slave labor.

Coan Hall then became the center of Chicacoan, the first known English settlement on the Northern Neck, named after a nearby Indian village.

In 1648, Northumberland became the first county in the Northern Neck, and Mottrom was a leading figure. His property was the legislative seat, he represented the county in the House of Burgesses, served as a militia colonel, and acted as a county justice. At times, court sessions were even held in his home.

Mottrom also reportedly helped arm Protestant rebels and offered refuge at Coan Hall during Ingle’s Rebellion, an uprising in the mid-1640s against Maryland’s Catholic-led government.

Mottrom died in 1655.

Archaeologists from the University of Tennessee, Knoxville have uncovered structural remains of Coan Hall, revealing the house was much larger than most Virginia homes of its time.

Coan Hall’s design suggests Mottrom intended to legitimize the importance of Chicacoan in the 17th century political landscape and show his leadership, says an article from site researchers published in “The Bulletin of the Northumberland County Historical Society” Vol LIV-2017.