DATE: Friday, November 14, 1997             TAG: 9711140645

SECTION: LOCAL                   PAGE: B9   EDITION: FINAL 

SOURCE: FROM STAFF AND WIRE REPORTS

                                            LENGTH:   47 lines

VIRGINIA

CENTRAL

Research lab on

wheels to test state

waters for pfiesteria

RICHMOND - A converted Army trailer will be Virginia's latest weapon in the war against the toxic microbe Pfiesteria piscicida, the governor's office announced Thursday.

Costing $67,500, the trailer will become a mobile laboratory in which scientists can quickly travel to and sample waters suspected of harboring the micro-organism that attacks and kills fish and can sicken humans.

Gov. George F. Allen earmarked $800,000 this year to better study and monitor pfiesteria.

The lab will be stationed at the Virginia Institute of Marine Science in Gloucester Point.

Malcolm Jamieson, owner

of historic plantation, dies

CHARLES CITY - Malcolm Jamieson, owner of historic Berkeley Plantation, died Wednesday. He was 88.

When Malcolm Jamieson inherited the brick Georgian mansion in 1927, it was painted barnyard red, infested with rats and other vermin, and reeked of the manure piled knee-deep in the basement.

Jamieson devoted himself to restoring Berkeley Plantation to its stature as the birthplace of a U.S. president and a signer of the Declaration of Independence.

The grounds were settled by English colonists in 1619 and have played an important role in U.S. history. The first bourbon whiskey was distilled there in 1621. ``Taps'' was composed during the Civil War by Oliver W. Norton, a Union bugler.

Benjamin Harrison IV spent five years building the three-story mansion nearly 250 years ago.

Benjamin Harrison V, born in the house, was governor of Virginia three times and signed the Declaration of Independence. And his son, William Henry, was a hero of the War of 1812 and in 1840 became the ninth president.

Jamieson inherited the plantation from his father, who had acquired it in 1907.

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