Elizabeth City County was a county in southeastern Virginia from 1634 until 1952 when it was merged into the city of Hampton . Originally created in 1634 as Elizabeth River Shire , it was one of eight shires created in the Virginia Colony by order of the King Charles I . In 1636, it was subdivided, and the portion north of the harbor of Hampton Roads became known as Elizabeth City Shire. It was renamed Elizabeth City County a short time later.
24-647: Elizabeth City was originally named Kikotan (also spelled Kecoughtan and Kikowtan), presumably a word for the Native Americans living there when the English arrived in 1607. They were friendly to the English, but Sir Thomas Gates either worried about safety (including potential attack by the Spaniards and the Dutch) or coveted their corn fields after the "starving time" of the 1609–10 winter. The English seized their land while
48-583: A Native American people and U.S. state , all later called "Delaware", were named. A member of the House of Lords , from the death of his father in 1602 until his own death in 1618, he served as the governor of Virginia from 1610 to 1611. There have been two creations of Baron De La Warr , and West came from the second. He was the son of Thomas West, 2nd Baron De La Warr , of Wherwell Abbey in Hampshire , and Anne Knollys , daughter of Catherine Knollys ; making him
72-556: A consolidation with Hampton in 1952, forming the current City of Hampton . Through Fort Algernon and the Kecoughtan settlement, Hampton can claim to be the oldest continually occupied English-speaking settlement in the United States , by virtue of Jamestown (which usually claims this distinction) having been abandoned for two days in June 1610, and also because after 1698, when the capital of
96-527: A contingent of 150 men and outfitted three ships at his own expense, and sailed from England in March 1610. In 1610 captain Samuel Argall named Delaware Bay in honor of Lord De La Warr. Shortly afterwards Dutch settlers along the bay gave it a different name, but the name Delaware Bay was restored when the English took control of the area in 1665. Lord De La Warr contracted malaria or scurvy in 1611. He left
120-415: A great-grandson of Mary Boleyn , the sister of Anne Boleyn , the second wife of King Henry VIII . He was born at Wherwell, Hampshire, England, and died at sea while travelling from England to Virginia . Counting from the original creation of the title, West would be the 12th Baron. As the eldest son of the 2nd Baron De La Warr, Thomas West received his education at Queen's College, Oxford . He served in
144-650: The Hampton Roads area in 1607. According to William Strachey , Chief Powhatan had slain the weroance at Kecoughtan in 1597, appointing his own young son Pochins as successor there, while resettling some of the tribe at the Piankatank River . Powhatan annihilated the inhabitants at Piankatank in 1608. The Kecoughtan village was where Captain John Smith and his group of settlers received their first welcome in 1607. The tribe remained generally friendly to them until
168-789: The Azores helped him recover. Later that year, De La Warr published a book titled The Relation of the Right Honourable the Lord De-La-Warre, Lord Governour and Captaine Generall of the Colonie, planted in Virginea . The work was mockingly subtitled: A Short Relation made by the Lord De-La-Warre, to the Lords and others of the Councill of Virginea, touching his unexpected returne home, and afterwards delivered to
192-581: The Elizabeth City County town of Kecoughtan was also annexed into the City of Newport News. Since English settlers occupied the former Indian village of Kecoughtan in 1610, and the town at Jamestown was abandoned in 1699, the city of Hampton now claims to be the oldest continuously settled English-speaking city in North America . Kecoughtan, Virginia In the seventeenth century, Kecoughtan
216-560: The English army under Robert Devereux, 2nd Earl of Essex , and, in 1601, was charged with supporting Essex's ill-fated insurrection against Queen Elizabeth I , but acquitted of those charges. He was a Member (MP) of the Parliament of England for Lymington in 1597. He succeeded his father as Baron De La Warr in 1602. It was said that he became a member of the Privy Council , but this has been disproved. In 1645 Dame Cicly petitioned
240-608: The General Assembly of said Company... , written by Company employee Samuel Calvert. In the autumn of 1616, Baron De La Warr and his wife Lady Cecilia introduced John Rolfe and his wife, Pocahontas , into English society. The visitors from Virginia were in London to raise funds for the Virginia Company of London and to encourage colonization of Virginia. De La Warr remained the nominal governor, and after receiving complaints from
264-619: The House of Lords to continue the pension that King James had granted her husband. There is only one supposedly contemporaneous portrait of Thomas, from 1605, but its authenticity has been questioned on the basis of the sitter's attire and physical attributes. Lord De La Warr was the largest investor in the London Company , which received two charters to settle colonists in the New World, and furnished and sent several vessels to accomplish that aim. He
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#1732844645901288-657: The Virginia colony and the parish seat moved from James town to Williamsburg, the buildings at Jamestown, including the church, were abandoned. In an area immediately to the southwest of the original settlement, the incorporated town of Kecoughtan was formed on January 1, 1916, within Elizabeth City County . It was located between Salters Creek and Hampton Roads and was developed by the Newport News, Hampton, and Old Point Development Company. The major business located in
312-567: The arrival of Lord De La Warr , the colonists seized the native village on July 9, 1610, by luring them out with a tambourine player, then attacking them. The surviving Kecoughtans fled to merge with other groups in the Powhatan Paramount Chiefdom. On the same date in 1610, the Elizabeth City Parish was founded. The area and the parish has since been continuously occupied. Renamed St. John's Episcopal Church in 1830,
336-540: The colonists about Argall's tyranny in governing them on his behalf, he set sail for Virginia again in 1618 aboard the Neptune to investigate those charges. He died at sea on 7 June. It was thought for many years that Lord De La Warr had been buried in the Azores or at sea. By 2006, researchers had concluded that his body was brought to Jamestown for burial. In October 2017, archaeologists excavated remains from underneath one of
360-578: The colony on a ship captained by Argall headed to the West Indies to recover but was blown off course by a storm, ending up in Faial Island , Azores . West returned to London, England in June, 1611. He requested a private audience from King James I to explain why he wasn't governing in Virginia. He was summoned by the Virginia Company where he explained his health conditions (" flux ", cramps, gout , and scurvy) in detail and his diet of oranges and lemons in
384-416: The men were out hunting, and for some reason, the natives never attacked the settlement in response. The shire and county were named for Elizabeth of Bohemia , daughter of King James I , sister of Princes Henry and Charles. The town of Hampton , established in 1680, became the largest city in Elizabeth City County, and was the county seat . Hampton became an independent city in 1908, though it remained
408-488: The parish is the oldest English-speaking parish in the US today. The current church, constructed in 1728, is the fourth built for the parish. Kecoughtan became part of Elizabeth River Shire in 1634, and Elizabeth City County in 1637. In the 1690s, Kecoughtan became part of the newly incorporated Town of Hampton, which later became an independent city . Elizabeth City County and its only incorporated town, Phoebus , both agreed to
432-486: The seat of Elizabeth City County and continued to share many services with the county. In 1952, Elizabeth City County and the only incorporated town in the county, Phoebus , merged with and into Hampton. This merger was the first in a series of municipal consolidations in Hampton Roads that resulted in most of the area being split into independent cities. With few exceptions, modern-day Hampton encompasses nearly all of what
456-706: The summer of 1609, when president John Smith sent Captain Martin to forcibly take over the island inhabited by the Nansemonds , across the mouth of the James. A company of 17 men mutinied from Martin and absconded to Kecoughtan to buy corn, where they were all killed. Martin abandoned the Nansemonds' island and returned to Jamestown. The colonists then built Fort Algernon at Old Point Comfort beside their main village in October 1609. After
480-423: The town was Elizabeth Buxton Hospital. It was served by Woodrow Wilson School and a town hall and firestation. Eleven years later it was annexed by the independent city of Newport News on January 1, 1927. At that time the town's population was 1,198 and the total length of its streets five miles. The hard surface roadway connecting the area to the city of Hampton opened in 1910 and was named Kecoughtan Road for
504-421: The town. It was incorporated into US Route 60 . 37°00′52″N 76°20′47″W / 37.01444°N 76.34639°W / 37.01444; -76.34639 Thomas West, 3rd Baron De La Warr Thomas West, 3rd Baron De La Warr ( / ˈ d ɛ l ə w ɛər / DEL -ə-wair ; 9 July 1576 – 7 June 1618), was an English nobleman, for whom the bay , the river , and, consequently,
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#1732844645901528-673: Was Elizabeth City County. The main exceptions are portions of Elizabeth City County that are now part of Newport News. At the time of the Peninsula Extension of the Chesapeake & Ohio Railway , part of the western portion of the county became part of Warwick County . This enabled the entire southern end of the extension to be in Warwick County. The City of Newport News was formed out of this portion of Warwick County, and in January 1927
552-694: Was appointed governor-for-life and captain-general of the Virginia, to replace the governing council of the colony under the presidency of Captain John Smith . Subsequently, in November 1609, the Powhatans killed John Ratcliffe , the Jamestown Colony 's Council President, and attacked the colony in what became the First Anglo-Powhatan War . As part of England's response, De La Warr recruited and equipped
576-598: Was the name of the settlement now known as Hampton, Virginia . In the early twentieth century, it was also the name of a town nearby in Elizabeth City County . It was annexed into the City of Newport News in 1927. Kecoughtan in Virginia was originally named Kikotan (also spelled Kiccowtan , Kikowtan ), the name of the Algonquian Native Americans living there when colonists led by Captain John Smith arrived in
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