A Short History of Richmond

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NATIVE AMERICANS AND HUMANS ON THE HILLS

We laid the foundations of two large Citys. One at Shacco’s, to be called Richmond, and the other at the point of Appamattux River to be named Petersburgh.…The Truth of it is, these two places being the uppermost landing of James and Appamattux Rivers, are naturally intended for Marts, where the Traffick of the Outer Inhabitants must Center. Thus we did not build Castles only, but also Citys in the Air.

—William Byrd II, 1733

The present city of Richmond sits atop land that has been inhabited and utilized by humans for many thousands of years. The geography and climate perhaps made this inevitable. Richmond rests on the Fall Line, the geological and geographical division between the hilly, weathered bedrock of the Piedmont region and the flatter, marshier plains of the Tidewater region, a division that runs north–south roughly along the current route of U.S. Interstate 95. At the Fall Line, the James River becomes unnavigable due to several miles of ledges, rapids, sharp drops and torrents. The exposed granite would later be used to build impressive structures, including official buildings in Washington, D.C., and Richmond. To earlier dwellers, however, the hills on the northern bank of the river simply offered shelter from flooding, easy access to fresh water and transportation, a defensible position and a convenient gathering place.

Early Native Americans, mostly members of the Algonquian tribes (including those near the future city of Richmond—Arrohattoc, Appomattoc, Mattaponi, Pamunkey, Powhatan and Youghtanund), utilized the area as a transient camp for convalescents and as a village during certain lengthy periods. The presence of fresh water and river resources, the high ground and a central location served as an effective gathering point for women, as well as sick or wounded warriors, while men were out on warm-weather forays. Later, when the first European explorers and colonists arrived, they immediately noticed the same characteristics of the area and were attracted to it, despite the presence of established Native American villages.

Only a week and a half after landing at Jamestown in 1607, Captain John Smith and Christopher Newport noted Parahunt’s (Powhatan’s son, a werowance, or subservient chief) town at the Fales on a foray up the James River. They claimed it for the English Crown, placing a crude cross inscribed Jacobus Rex, 1607 on a nearby island. (The village and islands were near the present location of Gambles Hill, below the falls.) Travelers today can follow Smith’s historic route by bike, car or foot.

Like famous Rome, the land of Parahunt’s village and surrounding cornfields (and John Smith’s vision of a future settlement) was composed of seven hills, hence Richmond is still sometimes known as the City of Seven Hills. (Roanoke, Virginia, also claims this name.) Just over a year after the founding at Jamestown, another exploration of the modern site of Richmond was sent out by Christopher Newport. The 1608 mission returned hungry and unsuccessful. In 1609, John Smith organized yet another expedition under Captain Francis West, this time with more than one hundred men and food for six months. This attempt, too, failed for a variety of reasons (including a rebellion against Smith), and Little Powhatan’s Village below the falls remained the only settlement near present-day Richmond for the time being.

Map of the coast of Virginia in 1585. Library of Congress.

Another doomed expedition returned in 1610 to establish a fort and surrounding cornfields on an island just below the falls. Tasked to search the area for minerals, the small party at the fort was lured into a trap by Native Americans and slaughtered except for one man, who escaped to tell the story. To this point, English attempts to settle on present-day Richmond had all failed. It seemed at first that European attempts to settle the area were doomed to failure.

In 1634, the council and general court divided the new colony into eight shires, including Henrico, where Richmond would later be established. But it would not be until 1645 that the legislature would direct attention back to the seven hills with orders to build Fort Charles there to protect settlers moving westward. Although construction started on the north bank, where Richmond would ultimately be sited, the fort was quickly moved to the south side of the river, where sporadic settlement and cultivation had already proceeded more rapidly. Once again, the north side of the river remained for some decades the home to Native Americans and wildlife—and sporadic trading—while the south side expanded.

Henrico Shire (later Henrico County) originally extended westward almost several hundred miles both north and south of the James River. Later in 1728, Goochland County was carved away to the west; in 1749, Chesterfield County was established from Henrico lands to the south. For the better part of almost 175 years, the area and town that became the city of Richmond was part of Henrico County until it was officially incorporated as a city in 1782.

THE CITY BEGINS TO RISE

The early problems and settlement on the river’s south bank didn’t mean that activity didn’t start in the area of the seven hills very soon after the founding at Jamestown, or that settlers did not come through fairly routinely. In 1656, a battle was fought at what today is a stream called Bloody Run (near Marshall and Thirty-First Streets) between allied English forces with Colonel Edward Hill and natives from outside the region seeking expansion space. Severely defeated and at great human cost, the settlers and their native allies (including many Pamunkey tribe members) had to sue for peace, and Hill was severely censored by his own legislature for his actions.

Official government map of Richmond, 1894. Courtesy of the US Geological Survey.

Settlement continued mainly to the south of the river, where Thomas Stegg Jr. and others purchased large tracts of land to establish tobacco plantations. Later, William Byrd I lived in Stegg’s stone house and established a trading post at the falls on the James River. He increasingly owned properties throughout the area that would become Richmond on both sides of the river. Nathaniel Bacon, soon to be famous (or infamous, from the Royalist perspective) for Bacon’s Rebellion (1676), owned land and a trading post adjacent to Byrd in the area now west of Brook Avenue as it fell toward Shockoe Creek. (Shockoe comes from Shacquohocan, from the Powhatan tribe’s word for the large, flat stones at the mouth of Shockoe Creek, also from a 1663 map calling it Shaccoe Creek. The word slip, picked up later, refers to the area’s position on the canal basin where boats loaded cargo.) Still, at this time, there was no permanent town at the site of Richmond, and most of Byrd’s warehouses and businesses were south of the river.

In fact, Byrd’s son William Byrd II, who is usually credited with the founding of Richmond, actively resisted turning the less developed north bank into a settlement at first. Although he owned land ranging from what would be the city of Petersburg to what would be Powhatan County and significant tracts north of the river totaling thousands of acres—an economic empire built on enslaved peoples and tobacco—as late as 1727, he resisted selling the north bank land to the House of Burgesses for the establishment of a town. Later in 1733, when he realized that, due to the new growth of settlement on the north side, a town on the seven hills was inevitable whether he wished it or not, he penned his famous lines, as quoted by Virginius Dabney, about Citys in the Air and laying the foundations of two large Citys. One at Shacco’s, to be called Richmond, and the other at the point of Appamattux River to be named Petersburgh. The area around the falls reminded Byrd of Richmond on the Thames, where he had spent significant portions of his life back in England.

When Major William Mayo formally staked out the outlines of the town in 1737, it was already a settlement, with taverns, tobacco traders, stores, dwellings and churches scattered in the immediate area, as well as a ferry that Byrd had built to allow his businesses to cross the river freely. Just as in the distant past, human traffic and economic exchange had gathered on Richmond’s site naturally without a town being formally declared, despite Byrd’s early objections. The site and noise at the falls and rapids seemed to draw people as well, causing a sarcastic Byrd to state that they murmur loud enough to drown a scolding wife, wrote Virginius Dabney, author of Richmond: The Story of a City.

Mayo surveyed neat lots along the river in the area roughly below today’s Church Hill, and these were widely advertised for sale. (Byrd sent a recruiter to Philadelphia to attract German settlers.) Founders even thought to reserve several larger parcels of land to the west for eventual expansion, perhaps one of the earliest examples of American urban planning. The General Assembly formally acted (after some delay) to charter Richmond as a town in 1742, legislating that the town should hold two fairs a year to facilitate commerce. It would be formally incorporated as a city much later, in 1782. (Although, as it grew, it had begun to function more like a city before then.)

The first church constructed in the new town was the Old Church, built on the appropriately named Church Hill and completed in 1741. It was later to be famous as St. John’s Episcopal Church, where Patrick Henry declared, Give me liberty or give me death! Early Richmond was home to a variety of construction techniques, many of which used native timber and brick or stone, and many that reflected architectural styles of both England and the rough immediacies of the New World. The danger of fire quickly led to a 1744 town requirement that all chimneys be made from brick. Other early notable structures surviving into the present include: the Mason’s Hall (1785, oldest in the United States); Patteson-Schutte House (circa 1750s, oldest frame structure in the city); Woodward House (circa 1784, last surviving building of Rocketts Landing); and Old Stone House, now known as the Poe House, although Edgar Allan Poe never lived there (circa 1754 by one dating, 1783 by formal written records).

The home for the local Freemasons is of particular note. In fact, the Richmond area was one of the earliest regions in the New World to host Freemason activity, as early as the 1750s. During the French and Indian War, a British officer supposedly founded the first lodge in the Richmond environs. The Grand Lodge of Virginia was formally founded in 1778, and Richmond No. 13, now called Richmond No. 10, was the first lodge established officially, in 1780. Famous members have included Solomon Jacobs, William Foushee, John Marshall, Edmund Randolph and William Gault. Although Masonic history is often shrouded in mystery, there is little doubt that Freemasonry in the United States has many important ties—even to this day—to its original Richmond roots.

The growth of stage lines and other interior roads also benefited the inhabitants of Richmond. Situated as it was on the Fall Line, the town was a logical intersection for north–south turnpikes, such as what would become the Main Post Road, in the Confederation Period and east–west routes, like the Old Mountain Road—Powhatan’s other road to the mountains, which quickly became a main route leading west of the city. (The better-known road was Three Notch Road, or what would become Three Chopt Road.) Roads were generally unimproved, meaning that they were essentially mud tracks through the woods and country. Upkeep and improvement of roads consumed much energy and political capital during the Henrico County phase of administration and, later, when Richmond was officially an incorporated city. Landowners were normally responsible for the upkeep of roads that traversed or paralleled their properties. There were chronic complaints about those who didn’t fulfill their duties or were asking for money for work that was only adequately completed or not done at all. Increasing commerce in the town of Richmond and environs led to calls to improve the navigation of the James River, and the assembly passed a law in 1745 facilitating cleaning and clearing of the river. (The actual work never really was completed effectually, only in fits and starts.) Later, bills were passed to build a canal around the falls. The American Revolution would eventually bring these improvement efforts to a halt. Nevertheless, the economy in Richmond continued to grow, and connections were expanded through coach routes north and south into the Carolinas, along with boat traffic out through the bay up to Baltimore and other northern cities. Ships came directly up the James to places like Manchester, a port town directly across the river from Richmond that was incorporated in 1769 and would much later be part of the city, or to Rocketts Landing on the north