Mowhemencho Indian village See Native American tribes in Virginia Long before the arrival of Europeans in the 17th century, all of the territory of Virginia, including the
Piedmont area, was populated by various tribes of
Native Americans. They were the historic tribes descended from thousands of years of succeeding and varied indigenous cultures. Among the historic tribes in the Piedmont were the
Monacan, who were
Siouan-speaking and were recorded as having several villages west of what the colonists later called Manakin Town on the James River. They and other Siouan tribes traditionally competed with and were in conflict with the members of the
Powhatan Confederacy,
Algonquian-speaking tribes who generally inhabited the coastal Tidewater area along the Atlantic and rivers feeding it. They also were subject to raids by
Iroquois from the north, who were based south of the
Great Lakes in present-day New York and Pennsylvania. By the end of the 17th century, the Monacan had been decimated by warfare and
infectious diseases carried by the mostly English colonists and traders; their survivors were absorbed into other Siouan tribes.
Manakin Town In 1700 and 1701, about 700-800 French
Huguenot religious refugees on five ships arrived at
Jamestown from London, having been promised land grants and settlement in
Lower Norfolk County by the Crown. Many of them had been merchants and artisans in London, which was overflowing with refugees from French Catholic persecution after the Revocation of the
Edict of Nantes in 1685. Others had found temporary refuge in Holland, Switzerland, Germany, and Ireland. As the
tobacco plantations along the
James River were dependent upon shipping and water transport, the area in the Piedmont above the
head of navigation at the
fall line had not yet been settled. Claiming the
Norfolk area was unhealthful (although it became an area of entrepreneurs),
Francis Nicholson, governor of the colony, and
William Byrd II, a wealthy and influential planter, offered the French refugees 10,000 acres to settle at what became known as Manakin Town, on land abandoned by the Monacan Indians about above the falls of the James River. They also offered land on the north side of the James River, in what became Goochland County. They wanted the French there as a buffer from
Virginia Indians for the English settlements. Byrd also hoped to develop land that he held in that area. The falls area was later developed as the settlement of
Richmond, which became capital of the state. The first years on the frontier were harsh for the urban French; of the 390 French who settled at Manakin Town, only 150 lived there by 1705. The French became established and assimilated in colonial Virginia; services at the Manakin Episcopal Church (King William Parish) were gradually held more in English than French. The French ultimately adopted the English language and elements of culture, intermarried with many planter families of English descent in the area and to the west, and purchased
African slaves as laborers when they could afford them. Many of the Huguenot descendants migrated west into the Piedmont and across the
Appalachian Mountains into Kentucky and Tennessee, as did neighboring English colonists, as well as south along the coast, with some ultimately settling in
Texas. Today that state has the largest number of members in the
Huguenot Society, a lineage association. Present-day
State Route 288 and
State Route 711 run about a mile east of the former town. The 1895 Huguenot Memorial Chapel and Monument, the fourth church building constructed there, is maintained by the Huguenot Society. It is listed on the
National Register of Historic Places. In addition, the nearby Manakin Episcopal Church, built in 1954, continues full services for a regional congregation.
Powhatan County In May 1777, the
Virginia General Assembly created Powhatan County out of land from the eastern portion of
Cumberland County between the
Appomattox and James rivers. Residents named the county in honor of
Chief Powhatan, paramount chief of the Powhatan Confederacy. He had allied with Algonquian-speaking tribes in the Tidewater, numbering about 30,000 in population at the time of the Jamestown settlement. He was also the father of
Pocahontas, whom colonists perceived as friendly. While in captivity, she accepted
Christianity and married English settler
John Rolfe. Many of their descendants were counted among the
First Families of Virginia. For the first two years after the county was formed,
Mosby Tavern served as the Powhatan County courthouse. When a new courthouse was built in 1778, the immediate area was named "Scottville" after General
Charles Scott, a
Revolutionary War soldier. He was later elected governor of the
Commonwealth of Kentucky after it was formed in 1792 as a separate state from land ceded by Virginia. The courthouse area was later named
Powhatan. During the late 18th and early 19th centuries, the county became more developed with expansive
plantations as the frontier moved west. Yeomen farmers moved further into the backcountry where land was more affordable. The larger planters used numerous
Black American slaves to cultivate and process tobacco, and later mixed crops, including wheat. Even after
Reconstruction, Powhatan County used
Convict lease workers (chiefly African American) to build roads in 1878. The county continued to be organized on an agricultural economy until after World War II. It still has rural areas and historic plantations but is being developed with suburban residential housing and related retail. ==Geography==