A Short History Of Old Virginia

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A Brief History of Virginia

When the three little boats, the Sarah Constant, the Goodspeed, and the Discovery tied up to the trees at Jamestown that day in May, 1607, and the first English settlers of the new world stepped ashore, to fall on their knees in thanks to God, already the gardens and fields of what is now Gloucester County were planted with the food crops that would sustain these settlers, and prevent their starvation. At Werowocomoco, north of the York, about twenty-five miles from the confluence of the Mattapoiii and the Pamunkey, and in all probability on the site of Shelly, was the seat of the great King Powhatan, who became the ancestor of many prominent Virginians of the white race through the marriage of his daughter, the Princess Pocahontas, to John Rolfe. It was to Werowocomoco that John Smith was taken as a prisoner, and where he was about to be killed, when, in one of the most dramatic episodes of history, his life was saved by Pocahontas.

It was to this place that Smith sent the Dutch to build the wooden house with the marl chimney for Powhatan. Here Powhatan was crowned by the English, this being the only occasion of the crowning of a king in Virginia, or in the United States, for that matter. John Ratcliff and a party of thirty went to Werowocomoco in 1609, to negotiate for food. He was not as fortunate as Smith. He and all but two of the party were killed. One was saved by Pocahontas, and the others escaped into the forest. Sir Thomas Dale burned Werowocomoco in 1612. There have been many conjectures as to the name of Mobjack. There is a story that, when the sailors called out over the waters of the Bay, the echo would come back from the thick forests along the shore. They said the Bay would mock Jack (the sailor).

 Then "Mobjack" probably was a corruption of "Mock Jack." It is not easy to get a continuity of history in Gloucester, for the records have been destroyed three times: first, at the time of Bacon's Rebellion, and the burning of Jamestown in 1676; second, when the Clerk's Office burned in 1820; and third, on the occasion of the evacuation and burning of Richmond in 1865, where the records had been sent for safe-keeping. In 1634 Virginia was divided into eight shires, the, Pamaunkee Shire including the Mobjack Bay country. Then in 1652, the shires were divided into counties, Charles River County including Mobjack. Owing to the danger from Indians, witness the terrible massacres of 1622 and 1644, there had not been during this early period a great deal of expansion of settlement, but after a treaty with the beloved Necotowance, who had succeeded the cruel Opecancanough, there was never any more widespread trouble with the Indians in Tidewater Virginia.

This treaty was made on the fifth of October 1646, and permitted the Indians to live and hunt on the north side of the York. While there had been many hunting expeditions and temporary camps made by the whites in the Mobjack Bay area, and land grants had been made to some, it was not until 1649 that Gloucester was really opened to the public for settlement. It is probable that the parish churches were organized very soon after this. From the records in Richmond which were copied from the English Public Record Office, we find that the earliest land grant was in 1635, to Augustine Warner.

 In 1642 Thomas Curtis, John Jones, Hugh Gwynne and Richard Wyatt took up tracts; James Whiting, in 1643; John Robins, in 1645; Thomas Seawell in 1646; Lewis Burwell and George Reade in 1648; Richard Kemp and Francis Willis in 1649; John Smith, Henry Singleton and William Armistead in 1650; John Page and Thomas Todd in 1653. Later on came James Rowe, John Thomas, Robert Taliaferro, William Wyatt, William Haywood, Henry Corbell, Anne Bernard, John Lewis, Thomas Graves, Lawrence Smith, John Chapman, George Billups, Charles Roane, William Thornton, Thomas Walker, John Buckner, Philip Lightfoot, William Humphrey, John Tompkins, Robert Peyton, John Fox, Ben Clements, Symond Stubblefield, Robert Pryor, Peter Beverley, John Stubbs, Mordecai Cooke, Humphrey Tabb. A little later came Thrustons, Roots, Throckmortons, Nicolsons, Vanbibbers, Pages, Byrds, Corbins, Ennises, Dickens, Rovs and Smarts. Home building along the rivers, (for there were no roads), began in earnest, and it was then that the beginnings of houses now standing, or their predecessors on the same sites, were erected.

 Small houses were built, and later additions made. Still later, alterations, reconstructions and restorations have been undertaken. The houses of Gloucester of the 1950's have evolved through a period of three hundred years, and that evolution is a fascinating study. Tyndall's Point, where Argoll Yeardley patented 4000 acres of land in 1640, began to be a town, which later was called Gloucester Towne (now Gloucester Point). As early as 1667 there was a fort there. From 1607 to 1624 Virginia was ruled by Council (appointed by the London Company), with the House of Burgesses, and a Governor. From 1624 to 1776 Virginia was a Royal Province, ruled by the King's Council (the members of which were appointed by the King, after being recommended by the Governor), with the House of Burgesses and Governor. Many prominent members of the King's Council were from Gloucester. A large number of men from this county also served in the House of Burgesses.

 After the outrages at Williamsburg, the gunpowder plot, and other incidents that led Virginia to join in the rebellion against Britain, Lord Dunmore began his ravaging depredations along the Bay Coast. He landed on Gwynn's Island with the British fleet near by. The Virginian forces under General Andrew Lewis attacked the fleet, forcing it to withdraw, taking Dunmore along; he never returned. This was the end of Royal government in Virginia and happened on July 9, 1776. Towards the end of the Revolution the scene of activity shifted again to Gloucester. Cornwallis had troops all around Yorktown and in Gloucester. Virginia militia with French forces under Choisy assisted by the cavalry of the Duke de Lauzun had an active engagement with Tarleton's cavalry forces, which ended in British withdrawal.

 A few days later when Cornwallis found himself bottled up at Yorktown, he planned to cross the York into Gloucester, hoping thus to escape, but a storm prevented his doing so, and he had to surrender on October 19, 1781. Major General William Bootlie Taliaferro tells in an article in the William and Mary Quarterly Review of remembering that his father told of watching the British fleet in the York River, daring the War of 1812, when his father (Warner Taliaferro) was a young boy. He said his father watched the fleet from the porch at Airville. It is a matter of record that the fleet committed unpleasant incursions from time to time along the coast. The militia was called up for defense, and was under the command of Colonel William Jones. In the Clerk's Office at Gloucester there is a complete roster of the officers and men of the county who served in the Confederacy. Reading these names is like reading the rolls of the old parishes. They are the same names, the same families.

 During the Civil War Virginian women did their part, too. After the Civil War, as Sally Nelson Robins so neatly puts it, "The pride which the sons of the old land-owners took in being scions of Cavaliers and fathers of the Union is changed into this glory, `My father was a Confederate Soldier." From then on Virginia has lifted up her head, and in spite of the struggles and losses she had just endured she kept pressing forward. Progress has continued. Northern money, and, yes, Southern money too, have combined with aristocratic blood and patriotic courage, to make this area one of culture and prosperity. Since the turn of this century the cultivation of tobacco has gradually given place to the cultivation of flowers and the raising of beef cattle.