Before European colonists arrived, Native American
Monacan people had cleared trees, farmed and constructed a village called Mowhemcho above the falls of the James River. It was the easternmost village of their confederacy, as noted on a map of Virginia in 1612 by Capt.
John Smith. They were Siouan-speaking, like other tribes of the uplands west of the
Tidewater region. However, by 1699, that village had been abandoned for decades, possibly since
Bacon's Rebellion. In that year the English King William III granted 10,000 acres of land in Virginia to the Marquis Olivier de la Muce, a French aristocrat and
Huguenot who had been imprisoned in the Castle of Nantes on the Isle of Re before escaping to England some ten years earlier. Persecution of Huguenots and
Waldensians had increased after French King Louis XIV revoked the Edict of Nantes in 1685 and his cousin Louis Amadeus, Duke of Savoy did similarly two years later. Thus by 1701 several hundred Protestant religious refugees emigrated across the Atlantic Ocean based on the land promised from the
British Crown. Four debarkations left Southampton for Virginia in the summer of 1699, with a total of more than 700 people. Names of three of the ships are known:
Pierre and Anthony (a/k/a Galley of London),
Le Nasseau and
Mary and Ann. Four Huguenot ministers travelled with the expedition: Reverends James Fontaine, Benjamin de Joux, Louis Latane and Claude Philip de Richebourg. The names of two surgeons are also known: Doctors Chastaine and Paul Micou. One French settlement in
Powhatan County became known as Manakin Town (after the native tribe that had evacuated circa 1676); Colonists increasingly developed the area as plantations, with planters shifting from tobacco to wheat and mixed crops in the eighteenth century as the market changed, and increasingly using enslaved labor.
Ben Dover Farm,
Dover Slave Quarter Complex,
Huguenot Memorial Chapel and Monument,
Oak Grove,
Powell's Tavern,
Rochambeau Farm, and
Tuckahoe Plantation are significant sites, built mostly from the colonial through the mid-19th century. Some of these farms and plantations adapted yet remained agricultural into the 20th century. All are now listed on the
National Register of Historic Places. ==Notable people==