USA > Virginia > City of Hampton > City of Hampton > Early history of Elizabeth City County, Virginia, 1607-1783 > Part 7
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shoes, one wool, fur or felt hat or leather cap. Thus in- formally was the Army of Continental Establishment uniformed.
The county militia saw much active duty in 1781. On March 8 it attacked Lieutenant Colonel Dundas near Big Bethel in the interior of the county in an attempt to cut him off from his supply ships at Newport News, then a part 19 of Elizabeth City County. In this engagement Colonel Francis Mallory, one of the county's most prominent citizens, lost his life. In October it had the pleasure of lending its slender but spirited assistance to Generals LaFayette 20
and Washington in the capture of Cornwallis at Yorktown.
The social life of Hampton in these later years of the war must have been much enlivened by the presence of the French, who had a hospital in town. In November, 1781, they were using the courthouse for that purpose; the General Assembly passed a special statute empowering the justices to meet wherever they found convenient while their court- house was thus occupied. 21
At another and probably later
17. Hening, Statutes at Large, IX, 280.
18. Ibid, x, 338.
19. Jacob Heffelfinger, Kecoughtan, 27.
L. G. Tyler, History of Hampton, 43.
20. 21. Hening, Statutes at Large, X, 495.
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time they were using as hospital a building called the "Pas- ture House." Here one of Hampton's own veterans, Captain Stephen Turnbull, died at the close of the war, according to 22 the later testimony of his heirs. The Virginia Navy had been intermittently active all through this war, and Hamp- ton was its headquarters,
23 Colonel Thomas Whiting of town being president of the Board of Naval Commissioners. It was a fleet subject to elastic variations in number. Tyler says that at one time it numbered as many as seventy vessels, counting everything, from frigates to barges. In case of emergency it increased its forces by impressing any craft that came handy. Thus in 1786 John Lowry, loyalist, was valiantly making another claim on the Commonwealth, this time for having impressed his sloop for seven days during the war "at a time when said sloop was ladden with beer." On this oc- casion he won his case and was allowed thirty shillings for 24 each day of the impressment.
In 1779 the Navy was reduced by the sale of several 25 ships no longer needed, only six being retained; these latter included the brig Jefferson, the Liberty, and Patriot, on all of which were Hampton seamen. James Burk in 1832 gave an account of his service as gunman on the Patriot, 1777-1780 under the command of that distinguished Hampton seadog, 26 Captain Richard Barron. He reports that the Patriot gen-
22. Court Records, April 26, 1832. 23. Tyler, History of Hampton, 41.
24. Court Records, July 28, 1786.
25. Hening, Statutes at Large, X, 217.
26. court Records, July 28, 1832.
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erally cruised in the waters of the James and York Rivers and the Chesapeake Bay, and that it had had several skir- mishes with the British. £ Another Hampton man aboard the Patriot was William Jennings, who left it just before the capture of Cornwallis to act as pilot on a French ship. This job eventually brought him to Martinique where he was discharged with a letter to Count Rochambeau recommending that he be paid. On his journey home he was captured by the British, his letter to Rochambeau destroyed, and he endured four months imprisonment aboard the prison ship Jersey in New York until an English friend got him released. 27 Thereupon he went back to the Patriot.
It is especially interesting that two of Hampton's naval heroes were the Negroes Joseph Ranger and Casesar Tarrant. The former served the duration of the war as private aboard the galley Hero, the Dragon, the brig Jeffer- son, and the Patriot. He was with the Jefferson when it was blown up at Osborne-on-the-James by the British, and was taken prisoner with the rest of the Patriot crew 28 shortly before Cornwallis' surrender.
Caesar Tarrant's service is not specifically ac- counted for, aside from the fact that he was a pilot, but it had so impressed the General Assembly that they passed a special act in 1789 to give him his liberty from his owner 29 Mary Tarrant of Elizabeth City County. By this act the
27. Court Records, August 23, 1832.
28. Ibid, October 25, 1832.
29. Hening, Statutes at Large, XIII, 102.
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governor was directed to purchase the slave's liberty with money from the lighthouse fund. His case apparently had not been covered by an earlier act of 1783 which provided for the emancipation of slaves who had served as substitutes for their masters on the grounds that they had "contributed towards the establishment of American liberty and independence" and "should enjoy the blessings of freedom as a reward for 30
their toils and labour. " The loyal service of such slaves as Ranger and Tarrant (to be sure it is not definitely on record that the former had ever been a slave) probably was an important factor in causing the wave of emancipation in Elizabeth City County and Virginia generally in the decades immediately after the war.
Reward for service was made partly by land grants, a reservation of lands between the Green and Tennessee Rivers in the Alleghanies being set aside for that purpose 31 in 1779. The local records make occasional mention of
such grants, some of them pretty lavish. Burk of the
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Patriot reported in 1832
Others were getting pensions,
that he had received from Virginia 2,646 2/3 acres; Richard Hill had two allottments of 444} and 777 1/3 acres respectively. 32 though the only one specifically mentioned is that of Captain Thomas Fenney or Finn, disabled in the artillery 33
And service, who put in a claim for 50 L yearly in 1787. 34
Act of Assembly in 1792 increased this to 75 L yearly.
30. Hening, Statutes at Large, XIII, 102.
31. Ibid, X, 159.
32. Court Records, March July 28, 1853.
33. Ibid, March 22, 1787.
34. Hening, Statutes at Large, XIII, 617.
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All in all it may be safely stated that Hampton played as spirited a part in the actual conduct of the war as any town in Virginia. The result of so much patriot- ism, however, was disillusioning. American independence was achieved at the expense of trade with the West Indies, and with the loss of that trade came Hampton's eclipse as a port. Her importance as a commercial center was from that time to decline as that of Norfolk, across the Roads, increased. Like Marblehead in Massachusetts she was to become a pleasant little backwater town. But in this very fact lies the in- tensely human interest of her later dramatic story; for it was to be Hampton's fate to demonstrate how an average Am- erican community could meet and surmount some of the supreme crises of American history.
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XIV
CONCLUSION
The Indian village of Kecoughtan was discovered in the spring of 1607, and was occupied by the British after the ousting of the unoffending Kecoughtans in 1610. This settle- ment, variously known as Kecoughtan, Southampton, and Eliza- beth City, became the nucleus of the town of Hampton and the county of Elizabeth City. It was of sufficient importance to send two burgesses to the first legislative assembly in Virginia in 1619. Governor John Pott placed its adminis- tration in the hands of eight county commissioners in 1629, and in 1634 Elizabeth City County became one of the eight original shires or counties into which the Colony was then divided.
In the following year Benjamin Syms made possible the establishment of the first free school in America by his substantial bequest to the county. His example was followed by Dr. Thomas Eaton in 1659 when he willed his land and slaves to be administered for the support of a charity school. The Syms and Eaton free schools have had a contin- uous existence.
The settlement of Hampton became a town by the act of assembly of 1680, and a port in 1691. In this natural center of the county were established the warehouses for the inspection of tobacco, the courthouse, prison, public wharfs. Politically, however, the town had no separate ex- istence in this period. As a port it was of considerable
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consequence; ships put in the Hampton River from the West Indies, New England, New York, and London.
The history of the town and county up until the
Revolution is uneventful. Nevertheless the records throw much light on the development of local institutions in Colonial Virginia. County government was neighborly and local, though not democratic; it was in the hands of eight justices, who in effect appointed their own successors. These officers, together with the sheriff, handled all minor civil and criminal court cases, levied the county taxes, supervised public works, and experimented with such innovations as free public ferries. The church wardens, subject to the approval of the justices, supervised public morals and social welfare. They were active in enforcing compulsory education, church going, and in combatting illegitimacy and miscegenation.
One of the most interesting social developments of the period is the gradual supplanting of white and Indian indentured servants by Negro slaves. This process was vir- tually complete by the time of the outbreak of the Revo- lution. There were also a few free Negroes in the county, and it is of significance that the Revolution caused a little wave of emancipation on the part of local slave owners, thanks to the loyalty with which Elizabeth City county Negro sailors fought for the independence of Vir-
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ginia.
The county played a lively part in the Revolution. The very first engagement in Virginia was an attack on Hamp- ton by British sloops of war in October, 1775. Later the town became the official headquarters of the virginia Navy, and it was here that the French allies established a hospital shortly before the surrender of Cornwallis. A minor land engagement was fought in 1781 at Big Bethel, within the county limits.
With the end of the war, however, and the inter- ruption of trade with the West Indies, Hampton lost forever her position as one of the chief ports of Virginia.
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BIBLIOGRAPHY
H
I Primary Sources
A
Documents in Manuscript
All of these documents are in the vaults of the Elizabeth City County Courthouse in Hampton, Virginia. I have been through each page of every one of them, and have based the main body of my thesis primarily on these sources.
Court Records and Deeds, 1689-1699. Court Records and Deeds, 1715-1721.
Court Records and Deeds, 1723-1729. (This volume in incorrectly marked 1704-1730. )
Court Records, 1731-1747.
Court Records, 1747-1755.
Court Records, 1755-1760.
Court Records, 1760-1769.
Court Records, 1784-1788. Deeds and Wills, 1758-1764.
Deeds and Wills, 1763-1771. Photostats of Wills, 1701-1904. 2 v.
These were made at the Virginia State
Library from the loose collection of originals also found at the courthouse. Court Records, 1827-1835.
Court Records, 1844-1861.
B
Printed Documents
Travels and Works of Captain John Smith, 1560-
1631. Edited by Edward Arber and A. G. Bradley. Edinburgh: John Grant, 1910.
Of the documents included in these two volumes I have consulted "A True Relation of Occurences and Accidents in Virginia", by John Smith; "A Generall History of Virginia, New England and the Summer Isles", edited by John Smith.
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The Statutes at Large, being a Collection of all the Laws of Virginia from the First Session of the Legislature in the Year 1619. Edited and compiled by William Waller Hening. New York: R.W. G. Bartow, 1823.
Next to the court records this has been my most indispensable source. I have ransacked every page of the thirteen volumes in search of material about Elizabeth City County.
Volume I 1619-1660.
Volume II
1660-1682.
Volume III 1682-1710.
Volume IV 1711-1736.
Volume V
1738-1748.
Volume VI 1748-1755.
Volume VII 1756-1763.
Volume VIII 1764-1773.
Volume IX
1775-1778.
Volume X 1779-1781.
Volume XI 1782-1784.
Volume XII
1785-1788.
Volume XIII
1789-1792.
Maryland Archives. Volume V, Proceedings of the Council of Maryland, 1667-1687/8. Published 1887 by the Maryland Historical Society. Consulted.
Virginia, Journal of the House of Delegates. Volume 1773-1776. Edited by John Pendleton Kennedy. Richmond, Va., 1905. Consulted.
Scrapbook collected by the late H.R. Booker of Hampton, Va. Although this consists mainly of newspaper clippings col- lected in the period following the Civil War, some of them are of interest in that they embody forgotten traditions of early Hampton.
II Secondary Sources A
Local Histories
Armstrong, Mrs. F.M., The Syms-Eaton Free School. Published for the benefit of the D. A.R. and the Association for the Preservation of Virginia Antiquities, 1902. A slight but very useful compilation.
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Arthur, Robert. £ History of Fort Monroe. Privately published in 1930.
Consulted for material about the old forts at Kecoughtan and Old Point Comfort.
Garber, Mrs. Virginia Armistead. The Armistead Family. Richmond, Va., Whittet and Shepperson, 1910.
Consulted for material on old families of Elizabeth City County.
Heffelfinger, Jacob. Kecoughtan, Old and New. Hampton, Va., The Houston Publishing House, 1910.
I found this a valuable source for the early history of the county especially in connection with the growth of St. John's Church. Mr. Heffelfinger based his work on the vestry books which I never had a chance to examine.
Tyler, Lyon G. History of Hampton and Elizabeth City County. Published by the Board of Supervisors of Elizabeth City County, Hampton, Va., 1922.
A loosely organized but helpful comilation of events in the history of early Hampton, which I found helpful.
Tyler, Lyon G. "Old Kecoughtan or Elizabeth City County" in William and Mary College Quarterly October, 1900.
Read.
Bruce, Philip Alexander, Economic History of Virginia in the Seventeenth Century. 2 v. New York, MacMillan and Company, 1896.
Bruce, Philip Alexander, Institutional History of Virginia in the Eighteenth Century. New York, Putnam, 1910.
These four volumes by Bruce are indispensable source books for anyone trying to understand the development of early Virginia. I have read nearly all of them, and have used them constantly in checking up my own investigations.
Cooke, J. Esten. Virginia. American Commonwealth Series. Boston, Houghton Mifflin Co., 1903. Consulted.
Eckenrode, H. J. The Revolution in Virginia. Boston, Houghton Mifflin Co., 1903.
The classic of the period and locality, which I have read and reread.
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Fiske, John. Old Virginia and Her Neighbors. 2 v. Boston, Houghton, Mifflin Co. 1899. I read all of this as an introduction to my subject, and found it excellent for my purpose.
Harrell, Isaac, Samuel. Loyalism in Virginia. Durham, N.C , Duke University Press, 1926.
Consulted for information about Hampton's part in the Revolution.
Howe, Henry, Historical Collections of Virginia. Charleston, S.C., Babcock & Co., 1846. Pages 248-259 relate to Elizabeth City County and Hampton. Published before the War between the States, the author had access to sources since lost.
Jones, Allan D., "The Character and Service of George Wythe", pages 325-339 of the Proceedings of the 43rd Annual Meeting of the Virginia State Bar Association. Richmond, Va., Richmond Press, 1932.
A brief but careful account of Hampton's most famous citizen.
Meade, Bishop William, Old Churches, Ministers and Families of virginia. Philadelphia, Lippincotts, 1908. Consulted. The chief interest of this volume is that Bishop Meade, writing in 1857, had access to Elizabeth City County records that have since been lost.
Tyler, Lyon G. Williamsburg. Richmond, Va., Whittert and Shepperson, 1907. Consulted.
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BOSTON UNIVERSITY 1 1719 02546 6196
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