Cole Digges House in the historic Yorktown area of Colonial National Historical Park

See the Historical Buildings of Yorktown web page for a map of the historical area.

The origin and construction date of the Cole Digges House in historic Yorktown is under debate. Called the Pate House until 2003, the house was originally thought to have been constructed by Thomas Pate, who owned the land from 1699 until his death in 1703. Yorktown law required that to retain ownership of property that a dwelling must be built within four months after purchase, thus pointing to a 1700 construction date. In Pate’s will he gave “my House and Lott in York Town” to Joane Lawson, his caregiver in old age. The will specifies the lot as #42: the lot where the Cole Digges House now stands. Unless the house was somehow destroyed—there is no historical record of this—clearly a house stood on the property when Cole Digges purchased it in 1713. So why does the National Park Service now think that Digges built the house in the early 1730s?

One reason for the change of mind is that the style of house was popular from the 1720s to the 1750s. A second reason is that a study was done using tree-ring analysis of the wood used for the rafters of the house, and the results indicated that the wood was harvested around 1730. I don’t have all the facts, but it seems to me that even if there was no house on the lot in 1713 when Digges purchased the property, since he lived there he obviously had to have built a house long before 1730. I suppose it is possible that an earlier house was destroyed around 1730 and that the current one is its replacement, but again, there is no historical record of any such incident.

Surprised by the name change, descendants of Thomas Pate commissioned the Laboratory of Tree-Ring Science at the University of Tennessee, along with the Tree-Ring Laboratory at Columbia University, to conduct another study of the wood. The 1730s tree ring date was confirmed, but the study points out that extensive renovations were made since the Battle of Yorktown, and that the wood used for the repairs may not be original. The house was damaged during the fighting at Yorktown and again during a fire in 1814 that burned much of the city. The existing nails and cutting techniques used on the rafters are from the early 1800s. It is theorized that the wood used for the repairs came from other old buildings that were damaged beyond repair during the 1814 fire, such as the Second Courthouse that was built in 1733. That would explain 1730s wood in a 1700 house. However, the National Park Service is still sticking with the Cole Digges nomenclature.

Regardless of who did the building and when it was built, the house standing today was drastically altered when purchased in 1921 and remodeled a few years later by Helen Paul. Both the interior and exterior were renovated using the Colonial Revival style, transforming it to resemble an early 18th century cottage. In 1968, the National Park Service purchased the house, but it never renovated the building back to its original appearance as is common with NPS properties. Only basic repairs were made, leaving it largely as it was after the Paul renovations.

In recent history, from 2003 until 2013, the Cole Digges House was being used as a Carrott Tree Kitchens restaurant; Carrott Tree moved to the shopping district of Yorktown when the lease ran out in 2013. The house is currently used as a Mobjack Bay Coffee Roasters store.

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