USA > Virginia > City of Hampton > City of Hampton > History of Hampton and Elizabeth City County, Virginia > Part 1
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History of Hampton
AND
Elizabeth City County Virginia
COMPILED BY LYON G. TYLER, M. A., LL. D.
PUBLISHED BY
The Board of Supervisors of Elizabeth City County
Hampton, Virginia
1922
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LIBRARY OF CONGRESS RECEIVED APR 131923 DOCUMENTS DIVISION
To The Confederate Veterans
of the Peninsula, who gave up homes and all for the cause of their State, for four long years on battle- fields of fame served the land they loved to the best of their great ability and then returned to find their homes in ruins and ashes, this little volume is dedicated as a tribute of in- effable remembrance.
Composed 1912 for the Retail Merchants Association by Lyon G. Tyler, M. A., LL. D., and now published in pamphlet form by the Board of Supervisors of Elizabeth City County, Virginia, November, 1922.
FOREWORD
Dear old Hampton, with its colonial, Revolutionary, 1812, and Civil War memories, has endured and survived much. We of the present Hampton, we who love this old place either because it is our home by inheritance or adop- tion must carry on and remember that we are its guardians and makers and that the Hampton of the future will be the sort of place we are making it today.
With a deep and abiding love for the place of his birth and a keen interest in her welfare the first steps were taken by Hunter R. Booker, youngest son of Major and Mrs. George Booker, of Sherwood estate, now Langley Field, Elizabeth City County, who brought to the attention of his fellow towns and countrymen his wish that a history of Hampton be compiled as a matter of civic concern.
In accord with this viewpoint the Retail Merchants As- sociation of Hampton gave the money for this project and the history was written by Dr. Lyon G. Tyler, eminent Vir- ginia genealogist and former President of the College of William and Mary.
With commendable public spirit the Board of Super- visors of Elizabeth City County made up of Messrs. W. R. Rawlins, A. L. Dixon, Hunter R. Booker, as members, and H. H. Holt, clerk, made an appropriation for the publica- tion of this history.
In 1896 the Association for the Preservation of Vir- ginia Antiquities put upon the old light house at Cape Henry a bronze tablet with these words upon it: "Near this spot landed April 26, 1607, Capt. Gabriell Archer, Hon. George S. Percy, Christopher Newport, Bartholomew Gos- nold, Edward Maria Wingfield, with 25 others, who calling the place Cape Henry, planted a cross April 29, 1607."
That same evening, toward dusk, while attempting to enter James River the colonists struck what is now known as Willoughby Spit, the eastern end of Hampton Roads, where "they found shallow water for a great way."
The next day April 30, they rowed to a point of land
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on the opposite side of Hampton Roads where they found a channel "which put us in good comfort. Therefore we named that point of land Cape Comfort (present Old Point Comfort)." Upon the invitation of some friendly Indians to come ashore to their town called by them Kecoughtan, Captain John Smith says: "Wee coasted to their town running over a river running into the main where these savages swam over with their bowes and arrows in their mouths." "Kecoughtan," continues the doughty Captain, "has a convenient harbor for fisheries, boats or small boats, that so conveniently turneth itself into Bayes and Creeks that make that place very pleasant to inhabit, their corn- fields being girded thereon as peninsulars." "The abound- ance of fish, fowls, and deer" was noted.
To such a goodly place some of the colonists returned after three years, from Jamestown, in 1610, making a perm- anent settlement at Kecoughtan. Thus it is that the present Hampton occupying a place near the site of the Indian vil- lage is the oldest English settlement in the United States in continuous existence. Hampton may well be proud of this priority and others. The Church came with the colonists and the first church was probably erected in Kecoughtan in 1620. The walls of the present St. John's Church have stood since 1728. The three old pieces of communion silver now in use in St. John's Church bear the "hallmark" of 1618. This plate has been in use in America longer than any English Church plate now known to be in existence. These pieces "were given by Miss Mary Robinson of Lon- don to a church endowed by her in Smith's hundred in Vir- ginia which lay in the point between the Chickahominy and the James rivers. This church was endowed especially with the hope of converting the Indians; but the settle- ment was almost destroyed by them in the great massacre of 1622. At this time these vessels were carried by Gov- ernor Yeardley to Jamestown. Years afterwards they were given to the parish of Elizabeth City." The present Syms-Eaton School is a continuation of the oldest free school in America, there having been no break in its history since its establishment in 1634, by Benj. Syms and Thos. Eaton.
We, of Virginia, are justly proud that no matter what services were rendered in raising the superstructure of our
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present national government, the foundation-stone of con- stitutional liberty for the English speaking race was laid firmly and irremovably at Jamestown. The House of Bur- gesses convened there from 1619 to 1698. In 1698 the seat of government was moved from Jamestown to Middle Plan- tation (Williamsburg) which lies half in James City and half in York County. Many of us in the peninsular counties had forebears who sat in this august assemblage. Repre- senting Kecoughtan at this first Legislative Assembly held in the New World at Jamestown in 1619, were William Tucker, and William Capps. These gentlemen were com- missioned to ask the House of Burgesses for a change of name for Kecoughtan. Says an old chronicle concerning that event: "Some people, in pious frame of mind, took a spite at Kecoughtan name and said a name so heathen should not be for a people so pious as we, and suggesting some other names, they made their grudges to old King James, and so the King a new name found, for this fine sec- tion and all around."
The name Kecoughtan does not appear regularly in legal documents from 1619. The new name, Elizabeth City, was called after the daughter of King James I. The cor- poration of Elizabeth City developed into Elizabeth City County in 1634. In 1705 the town of Hampton was founded by an act of the Legislature. The name was in honor of the English Earl of Southampton.
The American Revolution, the War of 1812, and the War Between the States left their impress on old Hampton. In 1812 and again in 1861, the "Gamecock Town" was burned. Attesting their loyalty to and love for the cause of the Confederacy, the inhabitants, in August, 1861, set fire to their own homes rather than have them fall into the hands of the Federal troops who were approaching. Gen- eral Macgruder commanded the Confederates.
"Furl that Banner! True, 'tis gory, Yet 'tis wreathed around with glory, And 'twill live in song and story, Though its folds are in the dust.'
The loyalty of Hampton to the Union has been tried and proved in the Spanish-American, and World Wars. Side by side the descendants of the followers of Lee and
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those of the followers of Grant clad in khaki, a blend of the blue and the gray, battled for the same principle, the same cause, and a common country.
Dear old Hampton! For you, indeed, does love make memory eternal. Blessed memories are yours-"memories of images and precious thoughts that shall not die, and can- not be effaced."
To new Hampton, God bless her.
Hark forward! Carry on!
BESSIE LEE BOOKER
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HISTORY OF HAMPTON AND ELIZABETH CITY COUNTY
Old Kecoughtan, 1607-1619
T "HERE are few more picturesque regions in the world than the Peninsula on which the town of Hampton is sit- uated. The wealth of water scenery is of mingled advantage and beauty. On the east, parallel to the coast line of the ocean, stretches the noble basin of the Chesapeake Bay twenty miles wide. On the north are the blue waters of the magnificent York River, and on the south is the great bay called Hampton Roads, into which the rushing James pours · its yellow tide. The land is a fertile, sandy, alluvial and remarkably level, and the landscape is beautiful with the silvery windings of Back River, Hampton River, Mill Creek and Harris' Creek.
At the arrival of the first white settlers the conditions in this favored region were quite different from conditions elsewhere. While in the rest of Virginia the land was most- ly covered with great forests of oak, gum, poplar, hickory and chestnut, here was an open field of two thousand or three thousand acres or more, quite ready for extensive agricultural operations. The waters around swarmed with crabs and valuable fish, and on the beds beneath the sheet of liquid blue lay great quantities of oysters, clams and mussels. Thus, the means of subsistence were abundant, and we are not surprised to hear that, some years before the English arrived, the region was sometimes the seat of as many as a thousand Indians and 300 wigwams. On ac- count of their numbers the Indians were called Kecoughtans meaning the inhabitants of the "great town," but the name Kecoughtan applied more to a region than a collection of buildings. As a region, Kecoughtan was pretty near identi- cal with the modern Elizabeth City and Warwick Counties. It extended perhaps northward along the James as far as Skiffe's Creek and along the York as far as Pocoson River, averaging from East to West about fifteen miles, and from North to South, between the two rivers five miles.
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These Indians were members of a Confederacy of about 34 tribes occupying Tidewater Virginia, of which Powhatan was war-chief or headwerowance. They belonged to the Algonquin race, and were far less barbarous than the wild inhabitants of the Mississippi region. Like the other tribes of the Powhatan Confederacy, they had a territory defined by natural bounds and their villages had a permanent char- acter and place. They were composed of houses oval in shape made of bark set upon a frame-work of bent saplings.
On account of their strength, Powhatan regarded the Kecoughtan tribe with suspicion, which was much increas- ed by the warnings of his medicine men. It is said by Stra- chey' that Powhatan was informed by them that "from the Chesapeake Bay a nation would arise that should dis- solve and give end to his empire." Powhatan bided his time, and while things were in confusion by reason of the death of the old Kecoughtan werowance, he suddenly in- vaded the territory, killed the new chief and most of his people and settled the survivors in the remote region of the Pianketank. And it was not the Kecaughtans only that he involved in slaughter, but the Chesapeakes also who in- habited on the south side of the bay, and, therefore, "lay under the suspicion of the same phophecy." In the room of the former inhabitants Powhatan placed at these places some of his own people on whom he could rely. At Kecough- tan he made his son Pochins werowance, but the new comers there did not exceed over thirty warriors or 150 men, women and children.
This was the condition of things in the Bay region on April 26, 1607, when the famous fleet consisting of the Sarah Constant, the Goodspeed and the Discovery, under com- mand of Captain Christopher Newport, sailed with the founders of the Nation through the broad water gateway be- tween Cape Charles and Cape Henry into Chesapeake Bay. Anchoring three days off Cape Henry, they broke the seal of the box which contained the names of the council, ex- plored the Country, and subsequently set up a cross, taking possession in the name of King James of England. On April 30th, they came with their ships to a long, sandy point of land which they called Cape Comfort, because of the deep water, which was found there, and which put the navi-
1 William Strachey, Travaile into Virginia Brittannia.
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gators in "good comfort" of being able to pass into the safe harbor beyond. Here Captain Newport caused the shallop to be manned and rowed to the mainland, where he saw an Indian village of eighteen wigwams. Captain George Percy, brother of the Earl of Northumberland, gives us this account of this first meeting of the white men and the savages:
"When we came first a land they made a doleful noise, laying their faces to the ground, scratching the earth with their nails. We did thinke they had beene at their Idola- try. When they had ended their Ceremonies, they went into their houses and brought out mats and laid upon the ground: The chiefest of them sate all in a rank; the mean- est sort brought us such dainties as they had, and of their bread which they make of their Maiz or Gennea wheat. They would not suffer us to eat unless we sate down, which we did on a mat right against them. After we were well satisfied they gave us of their tobacco, which they tooke in a pipe made artificially of earth as ours are, but far bigger, with the bowle fashioned together with a piece of fine cop- per. After they had feasted us, they showed us, in wel- come, their manner of dancing, which was in this fashion. One of the savages standing in the midst singing, beating one hand against another, all the rest dancing about him, shouting, howling, and stamping against the ground, with many Anticke tricks and faces, making noise like so many Wolves or Devils. One thing of them I observed; when they were in their dance they kept stroke with their feet just one with another, but with their hands, heads, faces and bodies, every one of them had a severall gesture; so they continued for the space of halfe an houre. When they had ended their dance, the Captain gave them Beades and other trifling jewells."
The curious antics of the Indians described in the above paragraph had probably a deeper meaning than Percy suspected. The religion of the Powhatan Indians consisted in a belief in a great number of devils, who were to be warded off by pow-wows and conjurations, and they were inclined to believe that Percy and his friends, if not devils, were messengers sent by devils. The pipes display- ed were probably the peace pipes, which were often of very large dimensions and curiously carved.
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The map of Captain John Smith and other contempor- ary evidence show that the site of the Indian village was very near the spot on which the present Soldiers' Home is located.
The settlers on this visit did not stay long, but sailed up the river and established themselves May 14th, on the Island of Jamestown. In doing this they made a great mistake, for the Island was very unhealthful, very accessi- ble to Indian attacks, and was covered with morasses and huge trees centuries old. As Dr. Philip Alexander Bruce observes: "The proper site for the colony was the modern Hampton." The action of the settlers was dictated by the London Company, who were afraid of the Spaniards, but as subsequent events proved, a nearer settlement to the sea- shore would have resulted in no real danger. The Spanish Kingdom had lost power, and the open country of Kecough- tan would have promoted health and enabled the colonists to go to work at once in providing adequate sustenance; moreover the settlement protected by wide stretches of water, could have been readily defended against Indian attacks. In the midst of such abundance as the place afforded there could have been no Starving Time as at Jamestown in 1610. It is true that a settlement at Kecough- tan however would have involved a speedy conflict with the savages, which the London Company deprecated, but this the colonists did not avoid by placing their settlement at Jamestown. They were attacked almost immediately.
In December, 1607, Captain John Smith paid a visit to these Indians of Kecoughtan for trade, and returned to Jamestown with a good supply of fish, oysters, corn and deer meat, which he obtained from them for a few glass beads. Smith stopped here again when he returned in July, 1608, after his exploration of Chesapeake Bay. The gallant cap- tain at this time was suffering from a wound inflicted by a stingray, and one of his men had his shins bruised; and we are told that the Indians surmised that they had had a bloody battle experience. The captain fell in with their humor, and soon the report spread far and wide, that Cap- tain Smith had badly beaten the Massawomekes, the invet- erate enemies of the Powhatans. On his departing from Jamestown for his second exploration of the Bay not long after, Smith made another stop of two or three days at
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Kecoughtan, where he was "feasted with much mirth." The next year a party, including Captain Francis West, Captain George Percy and Captain Smith spent Christmas week among these savages. Their own account was: "We were never more merry nor fed on more plentie of good oysters, fish, flesh, and wild fowle and good breade, nor never had better fires in England than in the dry smoky houses of Kecoughtan."
Fort Algernourne
Kecoughtan was recognized as a strategic situation, and after Captain Smith's departure for England, in Octo- ber, 1609, George Percy, the President, sent Captain John Ratcliffe down to the mouth of the river to build a fort. He chose the present site of Fort Monroe, and called his stock- ade "Algernourne Fort," in honor of President Percy's ancestor William Algernourne de Percy, who came to Eng- land with William the Conqueror. Soon after began the Starving Time at Jamestown, during which most of the settlers died. Captain Ratcliffe, while on a trading voyage to the York, was betrayed and killed by the savages, and his place at Point Comfort was supplied by Captain James Davis. Only some sixty wretched survivors were at James- town when the Spring of 1610 arrived, and these would have perished but for the almost miraculous arrival of Sir Thomas Gates and the passengers of the Sea Venture, who had been wrecked for forty weeks on the Bermuda Islands. They reached Point Comfort May 21, 1610, and through Captain Davis, Governor Gates was first made acquainted with the terrible condition of things at Jamestown.
Here again was the stopping place two weeks later of Sir Thomas West, Lord Delaware, who arrived just in time to prevent the desertion of Virginia by Gates. There was then waiting at Point Comfort, a little pinnace called the "Virginia," built on the coast of Maine, and the only pro- duct of the colony sent out, to that region in 1607 by the Plymouth Company. It had been sent down from James- town by Governor Gates to take on Captain Davis and his guard; and the colonists at Jamestown were momentarily expected. Delaware at once dispatched the Virginia up the river, and the ships from Jamestown were met off Mulberry
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Island. Under orders the departing ships tacked about and sailed back to the old place of settlement, and, in the even- ing of June 8th, 1610, the colonists again took possession of their forlorn habitations.
Forts Henry and Charles
Not long after their return, a white man named Humph- rey Blunt, who had strayed off to himself, was killed by some Kecoughtan Indians, near the point on James River which bears his name. To punish the murderers Sir Thomas Gates took a squad of men, and on July 9th, 1610, drove the werowance Pochins and his tribe away from their village; and built near the shore two stockades, called Forts Henry and Charles, "a musket shot apart from one another." William Box, one of the first settlers, described these small defences as named in honor of "our most noble Prince (Henry), and his hopeful brother (Charles)." "They stand upon a pleasant plaine, and neare a little Revilet they called Southampton River; in a wholsom aire, having plentie of Springs of sweet water; they command a great circuit of ground, containing wood, pasture and marsh, with apt places for vines, corne, and Gardens; in which Fort it is resolved, that all those that come out of England, shall be at their first landing quartered, that the wearisom- nesse of the Sea may be refreshed in this pleasing part of the country." In this opinion of the attractiveness of Kecoughtan, William Strachey, Gate's Secretary concur- red: "It is an ample and faire countrie indeed ****** and is a delicate and necessary seate for a citty or chief fortifi- cation."
Southampton River, now known as Hampton River, was named in honor of Henry Wriothesley, Earl of South- ampton, President of the Virginia Company of London from 1620 to 1625, and his name was also given to the splen- did body of water into which the rivulet entered "South- ampton (Hampton) Roads." In the autumn following (1610) Delaware withdrew the guards at these two forts, and sent the men on a fruitless expedition to the falls of James River to search for gold, but after his depaurture in 1611, from Virginia, Sir Thomas Dale restored the settle- ment.
Fort Henry probably occupied the site of the Kecough- Page fourteen
tan village that stood in a field of 100 acres on the "Straw- berry Bank," having John's Creek as its eastern boundary. Its situation was thus identical with that of the present Soldiers' Home. A mile further east was Fort Charles. Each of these forts, in 1613, had fifteen soldiers, but no ordnance; and, in 1614, Captain George Webb was the principal commander of both. In the latter year, Hamor describes them as "goodly seats and much corn about them, abounding with the commodities of fish, fowle, Deere and fruits, whereby the men lived there with halfe that maintenance out of the store which in other places is al- lowed." In 1616, John Rolfe reported that there were at Kecoughtan twenty-one men including Captain Webb, and of the number Mr. William Mease was minister and eleven were farmers, who maintained themselves.
The year 1619 saw great changes made in the govern- ment of Virginia. Hitherto the settlers were only soldiers and martial law prevailed. Now the free laws of England were proclaimed, and to every man was assigned a certain area of land. On July 30, a general assembly met at James- town, according to the summons of the governor, in which William Tucker and William Capps, prominent colonists, were the representatives for Kecoughtan. Four corpora- tions were established to include all the settlements. The region from the bay on both sides of the river, to Chucka- tuck on the south side and to Skiffe's Creek on the North side constituted Elizabeth City Corporation, a name pre- ferred by the inhabitants to the heathen name of Kecough- tan and bestowed in honor of King James' daughter Eliza- beth, the Queen of Bohemia. In pursuance of the command of the London Company to set aside certain areas in each corporation for public uses, the government appropriated for Elizabeth City the land from the mouth of Hampton River to the Bay. Three thousand acres were reserved for the Company's own use; 1500 acres for the common use, and 100 acres for a glebe. Tenants were placed upon these lands for the public benefit. Of this stretch of country the portion from Hampton River to the beginning of the modern Mill Creek was called "Strawberry Bank," a name sug- gestive of the abundant growth of a luscious berry well known to a Virginia table; and the portion along Mill Creek
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300 acres, was known as "Buck Roe," after a place in Eng- land of that name.
In 1620, the company sent some Frenchmen to Buck Roe to teach the colonists how to plant mulberry trees and grape vines, raise silkworms, and make wine. They were selected by John Bonnell, silkworm raiser to the King at Oakland, from Languedock in France, and among them were Anthony Bonnell', Elias La Guard', James Bonnell, Peter Arundell and David Poole.
In 1621, Capt. Thomas Newce from Newce's Town in Ireland came over as manager of the Company's lands in the different corporations, was made a member of the Vir- ginia council, and given six hundred acres at Fort Henry for his support.
At this time one of the ministers of Elizabeth City was Jonas Stockton, son of William Stockton, parson of Barkes- well, County Warwick, England; and in May, 1621, he wrote a letter regarding the treacherous character of the Indians and the futility of any attempt to convert them till "their Priests and Ancients" were put to death. He appears to have been the earliest exponent of the doctrine that "the only good Indian is a dead Indian." March 22, 1622 occurred the massacre at which time 346 settlers out of a total of 1240 were slaughtered; and the warning of Mr. Stockton may have served the people of Elizabeth City to good pur- pose, for no one was killed there.
After the first news Captain Newce called all his neigh- bors together at his home, which he defended with three cannon, and took measure not only for their relief, but built two houses and a "faire well of water mantled with brick" for the reception of immigrants daily expected from Eng- land; and, forseeing the famine that must necessarily ensue, caused a large crop of corn to be planted around the fort. We are told that in all these works the captain acted the part of a sawyer, carpenter and laborer, but met with many difficulties. In the latter part of June Governor Wyatt, ac- companied by his council and many other gentlemen, spent three or four days with him and ate up the crop of corn near the fort, before the ears were half grown. However, Captain Newce, sick and weak as he was, never tired of well
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