Norfolk, From Earliest Times,
Was Meant To Be A Port

Thomas Lord Culpeper Urged Passage of Bill
Which Resulted in the Creation of Norfolk

The Virginian-Pilot
Monday, 15 Feb 1999
Section: Local, Page: B3
By George Tucker

Of The 19 Tidewater sites selected by the 1680 Virginia Assembly for prospective towns, only Norfolk eventually developed into a mart for overseas trade.

The 1680 act was preceded by two earlier, abortive attempts to concentrate and restrict the burgeoning transatlantic tobacco trade to officially controlled localities.

From 1614, when John Rolfe succeeded in cultivating a mild variety of what was slangily referred to as "the weed" that pleased Virginia and British smokers, tobacco became the money crop for most Old Dominion planters.

As a result, these grandees, as well as many smaller farmers, built wharves near their dwellings along Tidewater's rivers and creeks in order to facilitate the loading of hogsheads onto vessels sent out by private overseas factors to transport Virginia's cash crop to British markets.

In exchange, the same ships brought in much-needed goods such as clothing, household utensils, furniture, guns, farm implements and other commodities the colonists were unable to manufacture.

Although convenient to Virginia agriculturists, this system of direct trade inevitably brought on infringements of customs regulations. To curb these irregularities and try to provide the colony with an initiative toward urban, rather than rural, development, Sir Francis Wyatt, the colonial governor between 1639 and 1642, urged the Assembly to enact laws "to draw tradesmen and handicraftsmen into towns." But this suggestion fell on deaf ears.

Later, in 1662, the Assembly, at the urging of Gov. Sir William Berkeley, was induced to pass "An act for building a town at James City" where all of the tobacco from the nearest counties was to be brought for storage and export. Again, this act came to nothing.

By June 1680, however, King Charles II had become tired of the Assembly's shilly-shallying. And when Thomas Culpeper, Baron of Thoresby, Virginia's royal governor from 1677 to 1683 and a personal friend of the king, arrived at Jamestown, he informed the Assembly that the monarch had commanded him to urge a measure for creating towns in the colony.

Becoming more specific, Culpeper reminded his hearers that no colony had ever thrived until towns were developed, adding that the king was "resolved as soon as storehouses and conveniences can be provided to prohibit ships trading here to load or unload but at certain fixed places."

As a result, the Assembly passed "An act for cohabitation and encouragement of trade and manufacture" in June 1680. This document was responsible for the establishment of Norfolk "on Nicholas Wise his land on the Eastern Branch on Elizabeth River at the entrance of the branch" in October of the same year.

At the same time, four other sites in the Hampton Roads area were selected among others elsewhere as prospective ports. They were:

"Isle of Wight county at Pates ffield att the parting of Pagan Creeke," the present site of Smithfield;

"In Nanzemond county att coll. Dues point als Huffs point," a spot now unidentifiable;

"Accomack county att Colverts neck on the northwest side att the head of an Anchor (or Anancock) Creeke," now Onancock;

and "Northampton county at the north side of Kings Creeke beginning at the mouth and soe along the creeke on the land belonging to Mr. Secretarys office." This last area was near the present site of the town of Cape Charles.

Needless to add, none of these sites ever achieved the commercial importance that Norfolk eventually attained. (Jamestown and Hampton, which had long been in existence) also were designated as sites in the act.

To return to the acreage on which Norfolk was originally built, on Aug. 18, 1680, the justices of Lower Norfolk County, acting on the legislation passed earlier the same year, instructed John Ferebee, the county surveyor, to begin laying out the proposed town site on Oct. 7, 1680.

By Oct. 19 of the same year, Ferebee's plat was completed and he had been paid "for surveying the towne land."

Meanwhile, word was received at Jamestown that Charles II, for some now unknown reason, had changed his mind concerning the establishment of towns in Virginia, whereupon the Assembly suspended the 1680 act.

Even so, the Lower Norfolk County justices decided to go ahead with the project on their own, and on Aug. 16, 1682, they purchased the already surveyed town site for 10,000 pounds of tobacco in cask from Nicholas Wise the younger, a shipwright, who had inherited the land from his father, Nicholas Wise the elder, who had owned it since 1667.

One year after Ferebee had received payment "for surveying the towne land," he received another payment for a second plat that included five thoroughfares. The first, which has always been called Main Street, was laid out on the highest land extending eastward from the Elizabeth River.

The four others were "the street that leadeth down to the waterside," later known as Market Square, the Parade and still later as Commercial Place; "the street that leadeth into the woods," later known as Church Street; "the street that leadeth to the publique spring," later known as Metcalf Lane; and a small right angle of a street north of the eastern end of Main Street that later would be called East Street.

In that way, and as a result of the 1680 "act for cohabitation and encouragement of trade and manufacture," the nucleus of present-day Norfolk was established.