Charles City County is a county located in the U.S. commonwealth of Virginia. The county is situated southeast of Richmond and west of Jamestown. It is bounded on the south by the James River and on the east by the Chickahominy River.
The area that would become Charles City County was first established as "Charles Cittie" by the Virginia Company in 1619. It was one of the first four "boroughs" of Virginia, and was named in honor of Prince Charles, who would later become King Charles I of England. After Virginia became a royal colony, the borough was changed to "Charles City Shire" in 1634, as one of the five original Shires of Virginia. It acquired the present name of Charles City County in 1643.
In the 21st century, Charles City County is part of the Greater Richmond Region of the state of Virginia. As of the 2020 census, the county population was 6,773; it is still relatively rural and one of the smaller counties in Virginia by population. Its county seat is the community of Charles City.
Notable natives include the 9th and 10th presidents of the United States, William Henry Harrison and John Tyler.
History
Native Americans Various Indian tribes had used this area for thousands of years. When the region was explored by the English in the 17th century, the Algonquian-speaking Chickahominy tribe inhabited areas along the Chickahominy River that was later named for them by English colonists. The Paspahegh lived in Sandy Point, and the Weanoc lived in the Weyanoke Neck area. The latter two tribes were part of the Powhatan Confederacy. At the time of the earliest English settlement, the independent Chickahominy people occupied territory surrounded by numerous tribes of the powerful Powhatan Confederacy, but they were not part of it. Chickahominy descendants still inhabit the region. These three tribes were all Algonquian-speaking tribes, the language family of the varied peoples who occupied the Tidewater and low country in Virginia and along the East Coast from Canada to south of the Carolinas.
The English named the Weyanoke Peninsula after the Weyanoc tribe, whom they encountered in the area. The Weyanoc were gradually displaced by colonial encroachment. They merged with other, larger tribes about the time of Bacon's Rebellion (1676-1677).
English colonization The English began to colonize the area under the auspices of the Virginia Company, a private company formed to support this effort and gain profits from expected development and trade.
In 1619, the Virginia Company established Charles Cittie as one of the first four "boroughs" or "incorporations" in the region. West of James County, it was named for Prince Charles, second son of King James I of England, who became the Prince of Wales and heir apparent after the death of his older brother Henry in 1612. After his father's death, he became King Charles I of England.
1619 marked the arrival of the first enslaved Africans in the Tidewater area. They had been captured from a Spanish ship and first landed at Point Comfort (present-day Hampton, Virginia). They were treated as indentured servants in the colony, and at least one later became a landowner after gaining his freedom. Weyanoke, remains a rural locality in Charles City County, Virginia.
The Virginia Company lost its charter in 1624 under King James I, and Virginia became a royal colony. Charles City Shire was formed in 1634 in the Virginia Colony by order of the King. Its name was changed to Charles City County in 1643. It is one of the five original shires in Virginia that are extant in essentially the same political entity (county) as they were originally formed in 1634. Colonists developed the land as tobacco plantations and produced this commodity crop for export.
Cultivation and processing of this crop required intensive labor. The wealthier planters recruited indentured servants from the British Isles and Africa, and later purchased numerous enslaved Africans. In Virginia and the Upper South, historians have classified persons holding 20 or more slaves as planters.
The majority of the colonists were English people who arrived as indentured servants and who owed labor, often as much as seven years, to wealthy patrons who had paid for their passage to gain land and laborers. The English government offered land grants to these patrons under a headright system, which was a way to encourage settlement in the colony. During the 17th century, for economic times encouraged many to settle in the North American colonies. In the early years, the Chesapeake Bay Colony had many more men than women, but more women entered began emigrating and families were begun.
As the indentured servants worked off their passage, they would be granted land of their own. By then the most successful planter families already controlled the valuable riverfront property. This gave them ready access to the waterways, the transportation system for trade and travel. Hence, later planters generally settled in the upland section of the county.
The original central city of the county was Charles City Point, located south of the James River at the confluence of the Appomattox River. The first Charles City County courthouses were located along the James River at Westover on the north side and at City Point on the south side. The latter's name was shortened from Charles City Point.
Breaking off other counties and cities In 1703, all of the original area of Charles City County south of the James River was severed to form Prince George County. This in turn was later divided, in a pattern typical of colonial development, into several other counties and independent cities. From Charles City County through Prince George County came Brunswick County in 1732; Amelia County in 1735; and Prince Edward County in 1754. The incorporated town of City Point, then in Prince George County, was annexed by the independent city of Hopewell in 1923.
After 1703, Charles City County was limited to land on the north bank of the James River, between James City County to its east and Henrico County to its west (both also previously colonial shires). Charles City County is bordered by New Kent County to its north and Henrico County to its north-west. During the late 19th century, numerous crossroads communities developed among the plantations to serve the religious, educational and mercantile needs of the citizenry of rural Charles City County. Crossroad communities, such as Adkins Store, Cedar Grove, Binns Hall, Parrish Hill, Ruthville and Wayside, typically included a store, church and school. (Public schools were not established until after the Civil War, when the Reconstruction legislature founded the system.)
All told, five counties: Prince George County, Brunswick, Dinwiddie, Amelia, and Prince Edward; and three independent cities: Hopewell, Petersburg and Colonial Heights have been formed from the original territory of Charles City Shire.
Early Religion As in other parts of the Tidewater, common planters and merchants of Charles City County were attracted by the appeal of Methodist and Baptist preachers in the Great Awakening in the late 18th and early 19th centuries. Several Methodist and Baptist churches were established in the early 19th century, mostly in the upland areas of the county. The county also had numerous Quaker settlers. The elite planters of the James River plantations tended to remain Anglican; the United States Episcopal Church was founded after the American Revolution.
Black Americans With the growth of tobacco as a cash crop, demand for workers increased. Twenty-three African slaves were known to have been brought to Charles City County before 1660. During the late 1600s and early 1700s, African slave labor rapidly supplanted European indentured servants. By the eighteenth century, slaves had become the major source of agricultural labor in the Virginia Colony, then devoted primarily to the labor-intensive commodity crop of tobacco.
The earliest record of a free black living in Charles City County is the September 16, 1677, petition for freedom by a woman named Susannah. The Lott Cary House in the county has long been honored as the birth site of Lott Cary, a slave who purchased his freedom and that of his children.Charles City County Historical Markers. In the 19th century, he became a founding father of the new country of Liberia in Africa.
Beginning as early as the 17th century, some planters freed individual slaves by manumission. Some free mixed-race families, established before the American Revolution, were formed by descendants of unions or marriages between white indentured or free women and African men, indentured, slave or free. Colonial law and the principle of partus sequitur ventrem, provided that children were born into the status of their mother. Thus, the mixed-race children of white women were born free. If illegitimate, they had to serve time in lengthy apprenticeships, but freedom gave them an important step forward.Paul Heinegg, Free African Americans in Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Maryland and Delaware, 1999–2005 Freeafricanamercians.com
In the first two decades after the American Revolution, numerous planters in Charles City County freed their slaves, persuaded by Quaker, Baptist and Methodist abolitionists., Charles City County Website Many free blacks settled together in today's Ruthville, Virginia, a crossroads and one of the first free-black communities in present-day Charles City County and the state of Virginia. The unincorporated town of Ruthville was the center of the county's free black population for many years. Following emancipation, Ruthville became the site of the Mercantile Cooperative Company and the Ruthville Training School. The United Sorghum Growers Club also met here. Known previously by several other names, the name "Ruthville" recalls local resident Ruth Brown. Her name was selected for the local Post Office established there in 1880.
When the Union Army began recruiting black troops during the American Civil War, many black Americans from Charles City County enlisted. In 1864, United States Colored Troops stationed at Fort Pocahontas roundly repelled an attack by 2500 Confederate troops commanded by Major General Fitzhugh Lee, nephew of General Robert E. Lee.
Virginia established statewide legal racial segregation when white Democrats regained control of the state legislature. They disfranchised most blacks at the turn of the century, maintaining this exclusion until after passage of civil rights legislation. In 1968, following passage of the federal Civil Rights Act and Voting Rights Act of the 1960s, and federal enforcement of the black franchise, James Bradby of Charles City County was the first black American Virginian to be elected to the position of County Sheriff.Friend Tells Why Sheriff Bradby Took Own Life. The Afro-American.
James River plantations Charles City County is the location of several historic plantations. Berkeley Plantation is the birthplace of William Henry Harrison, ninth president of the United States, born on February 9, 1773. Greenway Plantation is the birthplace of John Tyler, the tenth president, was born in 1790. Sherwood Forest Plantation was bought by John Tyler in 1842. Tyler descendants have resided at Sherwood Forest Plantation continuously since then.