who lived in the general area attended services at Jamestown's church until the 1750s, when it was abandoned. By the mid-18th century, the land was heavily cultivated, primarily by the Travis and Ambler families. In 1831, David Bullock purchased Jamestown from the Travis and Ambler families. American Civil War During the American Civil War, in 1861 Confederate William Allen, who owned the Jamestown Island, occupied Jamestown with troops he raised at his own expense with the intention of blockading the James River and Richmond from the Union Navy. He was joined by Lieutenant Catesby ap Roger Jones, who directed the building of batteries and conducted ordnance and armor tests for the first Confederate ironclad warship, CSS Virginia, which was under construction at the Gosport Naval Shipyard in Portsmouth in late 1861 and early 1862. Jamestown had a peak force of 1,200 men. During the Peninsula campaign, which began later that spring, Union forces under General George B. McClellan moved up the peninsula from Fort Monroe in an attempt to capture the Confederate capital of Richmond. The Union forces captured Yorktown in April 1862, and the Battle of Williamsburg was fought the following month. With these developments, Jamestown and the lower James River were abandoned by the Confederates. Some of the forces from Jamestown and the crew of Virginia relocated to Drewry's Bluff, a fortified and strategic position high above the river about below Richmond. There they successfully blocked the Union Navy from reaching the Confederate capital. Once in Federal hands, Jamestown became a meeting place for runaway slaves, who burned the Ambler house, an 18th-century plantation house, which along with the old church was one of the few remaining signs of old Jamestown. When Allen sent men to assess the damage in late 1862, they were killed by the former slaves. Following the Confederate surrender at Appomattox Courthouse, the oath of allegiance was administered to former Confederate soldiers at Jamestown. Preservation and early archaeology In the years after the Civil War, Jamestown became quiet and peaceful once again. In 1892, Jamestown was purchased by Edward Barney. The following year, Barney donated 22½ acres of land, including the ruined church tower, to the Association for the Preservation of Virginia Antiquities (now known as Preservation Virginia). By this time, erosion from the river had eaten away the island's western shore. Visitors began to conclude that the site of James Fort lay completely