USA > Virginia > City of Hampton > City of Hampton > Early history of Elizabeth City County, Virginia, 1607-1783 > Part 6
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One of the most important of the early projects in highway building was the Sawyers' Swamp Road, begun in July, 1720 as a result of the petitions in March of "several gentlemen of the county", among whom was the energetic Henry Irwin. 4
This road, often called "the back road to Newport News" is especially interesting because, a dirt road still, it goes by its old name, and runs its ancient
Court Records, March 16, 1719/20.
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course through farmlands, peach orchards, tall pine groves and swamps where the peepers jangle in March. In order to build it the justices ordered that "every male laboring tythable person of the county and town meet the overseer and arrange to work two days each on clearing and making the road. " 5
Even after its construction labor had to be called from nearby communities to keep it up. Thus in July, 1734, the justices divided it into two precincts and ordered that Captain Armistead's hands be taken off the "Back Road to Yorktown" to work under Overseer John Skinner on the piece of road that went from Armistead's mill to the Widow Wilson's, and commanded all the hands of the upper Back Road to work under Overseer Samuel Tomkins on the rest of it up to Finches' Dam. 6
Occasionally a planter was able to drive a bar- gain in return for permitting a new road to run through his land. Thus in 1732, when a group of petitioners headed by John King appealed for a road "to a convenient landing", one of the Westwoods agreed to let the road pass through his property "provided what tythables he has or ever shall have on the plantation shall be exempted from working on 7 that or any other roads. "
In a terrain so interrupted with waterways as
5. Court Records, March 16, 16, 1719/20, July 22, 1720.
6. Ibid, July 17, 1734.
7. Ibid, January August 16, 1732.
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Elizabeth City County, an immediate problem was how to get the traffic across the creeks and inlets. In January, 1698/9 there is an obscure reference to a "road over the 8 old wading place" to the town of Hampton , but few inlets were so shallow as to permit "wading places", and the usual way of getting across was by ferry.
The most important of these ferries was that from the town of Hampton to Brooks Point. In order to get to court, to church, to market, all of the people on the east shore of the river in the districts of Fox Hill, Buck Roe, Mill Creek and Old Point Comfort were dependent on this ferry. Its rates were fixed by the Burgesses in 1702, and confirmed at the same figure at intervals until the county was authorized to experiment with a new arrangement in 1764. These rates were threepence a passage for a man, and six- pence for a man and horse; and in addition to this com- pensation the ferryman had special privileges. He was free of tax paying and other public duties, and at the discretion of the county court could have a free license to keep an ordinary at his landing. No one else in his district could carry a passenger for hire unless to a church service. He was bonded to 20 L and was required to carry certain passen- 9 gers free.
A woman, Rachel Skinner, kept the ferry 1736-1738 and the ordinary that went with it. It is a pity that there is
8. Court Records, January 18, 1698/9.
9. Hening, Statutes at Large, III, 291.
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no way of getting acquainted with the vigorous Rachel. But she wasn't a success. In 1738 her security, Samuel Sweny, was complaining to the court that she wasn't keeping the 10 ferry according to law, which probably, to judge from other cases, meant that she wasn't always at hand when needed, and presently another had her place. In 1756 John Proby, who had been ferryman three years, came into court to resign 11 because he couldn't find boats enough for his passengers.
But by that date dissatisfaction with the ferry system was becoming acute. It was costing too much for Fox Hill people to come over to St. John's for communion. So in 1764 they petitioned the Burgesses to give them free ferriage, and the Burgesses obliged. Their act provided that in place of receiving fares the ferryman was to be paid a yearly sum out of the county levy. 12
For some reason this act was rescinded in 1769, but the rescindal did not affect 13 Hampton. Starting in 1765 the justices proceeded to farm out the ferry to the lowest bidder, the sums ranging from 25 L to such odd amounts as 12/11/6. And this practice con- tinued for more than half a century, lasting in fact several years after the building of the toll bridge across the river in the third decade of the next century.
At least two long distance ferries were operated from the public wharf in Hampton. One was from the town
10. Court Records, August 16, 1738.
11. Ibid, December 8, 1756.
12. Hening, Statutes at Large, VIII, 52.
13. Court Records, June 4, 1765.
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across Hampton Roads to Sewell's Point. The fare was set in 1705 at three shillings for a man, and six for a man and 14 Another was operated across the Chesapeake to Hungar's horse.
River in Northampton County on the Eastern Shore. . was 1745 twenty shillings apiece for a man and a horse if they were the sole passengers, and if there were others, 15
The fare
thirty shillings for man and horse together. Coaches, chariots, chaises, hogsheads of tobacco, cattle and hogs were also carried on this ferry, the fare for a hog being 16
in 1748 "one fourth of the ferriage of one horse. "
References to bridges, some of them impossible to place, are common, but it is doubtful if any of them were very impressive pieces of engineering. However, the bridge over Finches' Dam, built in 1760 in collaboration with York County, connected with the Sawyers' Swamp Road, and must have filled an important need. 17
The county's
share in its construction costs was 7 L. A still more expensive bridge was completed for the county at Mill Dam 18 Creek in 1764 by Henry Allen at a cost of 20 L.
14. Hening, Statutes at Large, III, 471. 15. Ibid, v, 364.
16. Ibid, VI, 19.
17. Court Records, January 30, 1760.
18. Ibid, August 7, 1764.
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XII
TOWARDS THE REVOLUTION
The yearly levies indicate that town and county were growing rapidly throughout the Colonial period. The population was approximately doubled between the years 1722 and 1768. 1
In the former year it was represented by 2 667 tithables ; by 1731 the tithables had jumped to 852 ;
the following decade showed a lesser rate of increase, the 3
tithables numbering 972 in 1741 : In the next decade there was a jump in the population followed by a slight decline. 4 5 There were 1125 tithables in 1747 and only 1079 in 1752 in 1761 6 they had increased to 1155; and in 1768, the last levy previous to the Revolution whose record has survived, there were 1196. 7
No statistics on births and deaths were kept in these days, and as has been pointed out before, the levy totals are only an index to the real population, not a census. The total was certainly double and possibly as much as treble these figures. Thus in 1721 there were 1,3334 inhabitants in Elizabeth City County at the most
1,334
conservative estimate, and in 1768 at least 2,396.
A visitor to Hampton in 1716, John Fontaine, says that it was then a community of 100 houses and the
1. Court Records, January 31, 1721/2.
2. Ibid, December 21, 1731.
3. Ibid, November 25, 1741.
4. Ibid, January 29, 1746/7.
Ibid, February 30, 1751/2.
5. 6. Ibid, February 16, 1761.
7. Ibid, December 8, 1768.
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most active center of commerce in Virginia. "All the men- of-war lay before this arm of the river, and the inhabitants 8 drive a great trade with New York and Pennsylvania." But the records themselves indicate that some of the 100 houses were empty. In 1713 a rambling, complaining, but very human letter from Jane Lowry in England to Captain Bosel in 9 Hampton was entered in the court order book. Referring to some empty houses belonging to her, Mrs. Lowry instructed the captain, "but if they could be inhabited with good tenants, I had rather have something coming in than to have them sold for little or nothing .-- And if Mrs. Elkins be in Hampton, let her live in one of them for nothing till you can better dispose of them. "
It was just at this time that the county was undertaking the construction of the newcourthouse that with periodic additions, improvements and repairs was to serve until the burning of the town by its own embattled citizens at the outbreak of the Civil War in 1861.
William Bosel donated the land for its site
Captain
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and Samuel Sweny offered to build it for 137 L in pounds Sterling or tobacco.
11 A new prison was built for the county by
Simon Hollier in the same year. The records thereafter are full of references to the upkeep of the courthouse. Thomas Howard was cleaning it for 200 pounds of tobacco
8. Lyon G. Tyler, History of Hampton, 31.
9. Court Records, September 15, 1713.
10. Ibid, November 16, 1715, February 21, 1716/7.
11. Ibid, July, 1715.
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a year in 1743
13 but lost his job to Judith Hatton four years later. The sheriff was ordered to attend to the repair of its "plaistering" in 1750, and also to bolster up the dignity of the law by "finding one dozen of cloth quoshings for the justices and a cloth for the judge of 14 this court." John Almond received a pound Sterling for 15 the wool in said "quoshings" at the subsequent levy. Three years later the approach to the courthouse had been beautified by the building of steps by William Randolph, and the planting of trees and digging of a drainage ditch 16 by Captain Selden.
Getting back to the general appearance of the town, there is an exasperating reference to the laying off of the public streets thereof in 1729. 17 Exasperating be- cause though the justices gave the order to the county sur- veyor, the latter's report, which would be invaluable in creating a picture of the old town, is missing. One thing is certain, however, that King and Queen Street, named in the days of William and Mary, were then as now the main streets, with the difference that King Street, which went down to the public wharf, was then the more important of the two thoroughfares.
Precautions against fire were taken in 1734 when
12. Court Records, December 22, 1743.
13. Ibid, May 6, 1747.
14 Ibid, October 2, 1750.
15. Ibid, November 21, 1750.
16 Ibid, March 10, 1753.
17. Ibid, February 21, 1738/9.
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in compliance with an act of Assembly the justices ordered 18 the sheriff to pull down all the wooden chimneys in town. Three years later they valiantly tried to suppress one of the most entertaining bits of town life. "Order'd that the constable do kill all the hoggs that shall come within the limits of the town from the last of this month. " 19 That
the hogs might be further restrained from investigating King and Queen Streets the burgesses in 1742 passed an act, renewed in 1744 and 1748, empowering the judges to erect as many pounds as circumstances required for the roundup of livestock found out of bounds. The county lands were then described as being "chiefly in pasture", and much was said of "ill designing people who pull down their fences", meaning the fences of the law abiding, "lay open their pastures and cornfields and turn in their horses and cattle in the night."
A new county wharf was completed by John Bushell in 1751. His price was 20 L, "to be paid when the court re- 21
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ceives the said wharf and not till then. " Subsequently he was allowed 10 L more for "an addition in the form of a tea. " There is no direct evidence that this wharf was at the foot of King Street, but tradition and common sense would have it so. There the ferry came in from Brooks Point, Norfolk and Cape Charles, and there also the tenders put in from ships inbound from the West Indies, England and the North.
22
18. Court Records, August 21, 1734. 19. Ibid, March 16, 1736/7.
20. Hening, Statutes at Large, V, 486.
21. Court Records, November 21, 1750.
22. Ibid, December 4, 1750.
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The history of this whole period is amazingly placid for a town that was to become celebrated for plunderings, pillagings and sackings. There must have been no inconsid- erable flutter of excitement in 1718, to be sure, when Cap- tain Henry Maynard came sailing up the river with the head of the pirate Blackbeard, whom he had captured in Pamlico Sound, N.C. 23 This prize was placed on a pole on that point of land between Hampton River and Sunset Creek which is to this day known as Blackbeard's Point.
There was more excitement in May, 1746, when Vir- ginia's quota of troops for the invasion of Canda set sail from Hampton. 24
And of course there was the hurricane three years later, already mentioned in connection with the tobacco warehouse. According to Tyler this hurricane com- pletely destroyed the walls of Fort George at Old Point Comfort, and Captain Samuel Barron, ancestor of those Bar- rons who were to distinguish themselves in the naval en- gagements of the Revolution and the War of 1812, saved the barracks only by mustering his garrison and all the weighty 25 articles they could lay hands on on the second floor.
Of high importance to the future of Virginia was the fact that George Wythe was growing up and beginning to practice law in Hampton during this period; that the Eliza- beth County courts trained the young lawyer who was to be- come the teacher of the great John Marshall is one of
23. Jacob Heffelfinger, Kecoughtan, 24.
24. Lyon G. Tyler, Williamsburg, 32.
25. Tyler, History of Hampton, 36.
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the county's proudest distinctions. Born in 1726 on his father's plantation "Chesterville" on Back River, he is said to have been educated by his talented mother after his father's death, and instructed in law by an uncle in Prince 26
George County. There is a legend that he was a dissi- pated young man, but inasmuch as he was barely twenty when he produced his commission to practice in Hampton as attorney in 1746 27 and went forward rapidly on his brilliant career as justice in the county court and burgess at Williamsburg, his dissipations cannot have been prolonged. The records are full of his autographs, since as presiding justice he frequently signed them, and in 1765 there is a record of
the poll that was taken for him as burgess. 28 He received
100 votes against Captain James Wallace's sixty-nine and Colonel Wilson Miles Cary's eighty-one. This poll, according to Allen D. Jones, demonstrated the county's approval of his recent activity in opposing as unseasonable Patrick Henry's 27
opposition to the Stamp Act. His opposition to Henry, however, did not involve any opposition to the impending revolution. He had already drawn up a remonstrance to the House of Commons which his fellow burgesses had found too bold to send, and he was presently to become one of the signers of the Declaration of Independence.
In those days in Williamsburg he had as a pupil
26. Allen D. Jones in Proceedings of the 43rd Annual Meeting of the Virginia State Bar Association, 325. 27. Court Records, June 18, 1746.
28. Deeds and Wills, August 23, 1765.
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a promising and charming young gentleman from Albermarle County named Thomas Jefferson, who was to become not only the author of said declaration, but an architect of vast influence in early America. We have Captain R. S. Hudgins' word for it 29
that this young architect designed a house for his "beloved master" on the Wythe estate on Back River. Whether Captain Hudgins knew this for authentic fact, or merely as another bit of popular tradition no longer matters, since the Wythe house survived the ravages of the Civil War only to be destroyed by fire in more recent years.
29. R. S. Hudgins in an undated clipping describing the burning of Hampton in the Civil War in a scrapbook compiled by the late H.R. Booker of Hampton, Va.
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XIII
THE REVOLUTION
The legend that Hampton was completely destroyed by the British in the course of the Revolution exaggerates the facts. 1 The town suffered indeed from raids and minor skirmishes and from one organized attack, but it was never destroyed for the reason that its people never permitted the British to stop off long enough to do any great damage. In fact all sources indicate that town and county gave the enemy as good and rather better than they got.
From the point of view of general activity and sheer excitement the Revolution marked the climax in Hamp- ton's career as a port, and was indeed its last appearance as one of the chief ports of entry in Virginia. To judge from the records of Revolutionary veterans half the able- bodied males of the county seem to have served in the hap- py-go-lucky Virginia Navy. Certainly the county furnished a huge number of pilots, boatswains, and general all round seamen, and such captains as the illustrious Barrons. And the craft of this navy, the brigs, galleys, frigates and hastilly impressed sloops, made Hampton their headquarters and frequently put in for repairs, supplies, or refuge from the British men o' war. The French allies later in the war made temporary use of the courthouse for a hospital, and throughout the Revolutionary period there was a bustle of coming and going in the river, a drilling of militia on pasture lots, and always the thrilling necessity of
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keeping a lookout at Old Point Comfort to spy out the move- ment of the enemy, from Lord Dunmore to General Cornwallis. Life was interesting for everyone in the county.
Its political history at this time cans be all too quickly summarized. Following the general closing of the Virginia courts in 1774, the government of Elizabeth City County was put into the hands of a county committee by or- der of the Continental Association in 1774. The committee- men were, as elsewhere in Virginia, merely the old justices under new titles with the added power of suppressing the
7 demonstration of loyalist sentiment. In 1776 the county was headed back towards the old fashioned court system by 2 way of the "courts of inquiry".
How all this worked out in detail locally is un- likely ever to be known inasmuch as the county records kept during the Revolution were among those lost in the Civil War. And it is for the same reason impossible to gauge the number of loyalists that lived in the county. Harrell says that the merchants of Virginia were predominatingly loyalist, 3 and there had been important merchants in Hampton. It is known that some loyalist property was sequestered, notably that of Osgood Hanbury, which forty citizens of Hampton petitioned the House of Delegates in
1778 to be annexed to the town and sold. Eckenrode indi-
4 1. H. J. Eckenrode, The Revolution in Virginia, 44.
2. Ibid, 147.
3. Isaac Samuel Harrell, Loyalism in Virginia, 179.
4. Ibid, 86.
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dicates that John Lowry, Member of one of the county's oldest families was a Tory when in 1782 he got himself in 5 trouble by suing Colonel Dabney for impressing four cows. And most depressing of all from the point of view of pat- riotic fervor is Harrell's allegation that few in the county held out when Cornwallis demanded that everyone take the British oath. 6
One the other hand the county committee of safety that formed November 23, 1775, was made up of those local families who for generations past had been furnishing the county justices and sheriffs. They were Wilson Curle, chairman, John Tabb, George Wray, John Allen, Miles King, Augustine Moore, Edward Cooper, Wilson Miles Cary, Westwood Armistead, George Booker, James Wallace Bayley, John Parsons, Henry King, Jacob Wray, John Jones, John King, Joseph Cooper, William Mallory, Simon Hollier, John Cary, Mosley 7 Armistead, Robert Bright. And as has already been suggested, the large enrollment in the state navy indicates that loyalist sentiment was anything but overwhelming.
On September 2, 1775, Hampton had the honor of opening the Revolution so far as Virginia was concerned with 8
the first show of violence in the Colony. It was, to be sure, a bloodless engagement, and more of an act of God than a premeditated assault. A storm had forced Captain Mathew Squier of the British sloop-of-war, the Otter to take refuge
5. H. J. Eckenrode, The Revolution in Virginia, 283. 6. Isaac Samuel Harrell, Loyalism in Virginia, 54. 7. Lyon G. Tyler, History of Hampton, 39. .
8. Eckenrode, The Revolution in Virginia, 60.
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in the river, and the alert townspeople took advantage of his predicament by seizing his guns and burning his tender. Their excuse for this aggression was the fact that the captain had been raiding the neighborhood for provender. He and his crew were unmolested, however; indeed it is said that the latter were hospitably entertained that night by Major Finn, 9 Eventually Squier about to become a revolutionary patriot.
was able to get back to the sloop and plan to avenge himself.
He first, however, eight days after this indignity, formally demanded of the county committee of safety the re- turn of his stores. The latter suggested that he first undertake to return a slave belonging to Henry King and promise to stop his plundering. 10 Meanwhile the British cap-
tain had further cause for exasperation in that Richard and James Barron, together with some young sailors of Hampton, had been cruising about the Roads in a pair of pilot boats giving annoyance to Lord Dunmore's fleet and flying into Hamp-
ton when pursued. 11
Just what form this molestation took is not clear from the records, but what with its connection with these two young naval aggressors and the repeated ultimatums and threats of the outraged. Captain Squiers, the county began to take measures to protect itself. It blocked the entrance to Hampton River by sinking five sloops in the channel, and went to Williamsburg for military protection. Several hours before the reinforcements could ar-
9. L. G. Tyler, History of Hampton, 40.
10. Ibid, 41.
11. Henry Howe, Historical Collections of Virginia, 248.
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rive, however, on October 24, Squiers turned into the creek with six tenders and treated the town to the most exciting night of its early history. He couldn't get his ship into the river because of the sunken sloops, but he could and did cannonade the town while he attempted to get ashore with his tenders. But Hampton vigorously opened fire on the latter from the protection of her waterfront willows and fine brick houses with such good effect that Squier was forced to withdraw and wait until morning before resuming operations.
It must have been a memorable night in Hampton. Surely the committee of safety held a consultation at the courthouse, and there was an agitated flitting of laterns through the town, and a thudding of horses' hooves as town cousins rode to summon outlying county cousins to the emer- gency, and a general smell of powder and fire, and an overhauling of ancient musketry. There was plenty of reason for anxiety. No one had been killed, but several buildings had been battered by the cannonading, and St. John's Church 12 and George Cooper's house had been damaged by fire. No one could tell what the morning would bring.
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Fortunately for Hampton morning brought the con- tingent from Williamsburg. Just before daybreak they came trotting in on their weary horses, 100 mounted riflemen from the Culpepper battalion under Colonel William Woodford,
12. L. G. Tyler, History of Hampton, 41.
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and Hampton was rescued from the destruction which shortly thereafter was visited upon Norfolk. There was, to be sure, still much doubt about her salvation, for the dawn which brought the militia had also revealed that Squiers had maneuvred his fleet of schooners and sloops into a position to enfilade; and presently he resumed his bombardment. Colonel Woodford's men, strategically distributed in the waterfront buildings and shelters along the shore, returned the fire with such coolly gauged precision, however, that the ships were forced to slip cable and retire. 13
Two of Squiers' men were killed and two woundered, whereas not a Virginian had been killed.
Hampton, in common with other towns along the Chesapeake, suffered from the raids of the privateers the next few years, and knew many moments of suspense, but this engagement of October, 1775, was her last bit of supreme excitement until the concentration of Cornwallis' forces in Virginia in 1781. The intervening years did not lack for incident, however. On December 2, 1775, people of the county boarded a British schooner and helped themselves to 14 its supplies. In 1776 and 1777 the House of Delegates recognized the danger to which the county was exposed first 15 by authorizing the erection of fortifications in Hampton 16 and providing for a lookout to sea, and then by reducing
13. H. J. Eckenrode, The Revolution in Virginia, 60.
14. Ibid, 128.
15. Hening, Statutes at Large, IX, 192.
4 16. Ibid, 294.
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the county's quota to the militia that its able bodied cit- 17 izenry might attend to the defense of Hampton. In 1780 the county's quota of the Colony's 3,000 troops was placed at ten. Besides the soldiers, it was required to furnish four- teen outfits consisting of two shirts of linen or cotton, one pair of overalls, two pairs of stockings, one pair of 18
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