Part of Henrico Citie, Henrico Shire, Henrico County During the early 17th century, shortly after the settlement of
Jamestown in 1607, English settlers and explorers began settling other areas. One of the more progressive developments in the colony was
Henricus, founded under the guidance of
Sir Thomas Dale. It was to include a college to help educate
Virginia Indians, as well as the children of settlers. Dale was accompanied by men known as the "Hammours". These veterans of the
Low Country wars were heavily armed and better trained than settlers of Jamestown. Dale wrote about the site: "Eighty miles up our river from Jamestown, I have surveyed a convenient, strong, healthie and sweete site to plant a new towne (according as I had instructions upon my departure) there to build whence might be removed the principal site." Today known as
Farrar's Island, the site was on a neck of land with and a shoreline of on the James River. The English settlers soon built a
palisade and moat-like ditch to protect entrance to the wide neck from the shore area. Dale named the new settlement Henricus in honor of
Henry Frederick, Prince of Wales, the elder son and heir apparent of King
James I. When finished in 1619, "Henricus Citie" contained three streets of well-framed houses, a church, storehouses, a hospital, and watchtowers. 1619 was a watershed year for the
Virginia Colony. Henrico and three other large citties (sic) were formed, one of which included what is now Chesterfield County. That year
Falling Creek Ironworks, the first in what is now the United States, was established slightly west on the creek near its
confluence with the
James River. In the
Indian massacre of 1622, Native Americans destroyed Henrico City and the ironworks to try to drive away the English. These were not rebuilt. The colony did not gain a college until 1693, when the
College of William and Mary was awarded a
royal charter in the capital. In 1634, the
King of England directed the formation of eight
shires (or
counties) in the colony of Virginia. One of these was
Henrico County, which incorporated a large area on both sides of the James River.
Chesterfield County formed , whom Chesterfield County was named after On May 25, 1749, the
Virginia House of Burgesses separated Chesterfield from Henrico County and created the new county. The first county seat was established at
Chesterfield Court House. It has continued as county seat except for 1870–1876, during
Reconstruction, when the county government was located at
Manchester. The latter community has been subsumed by South Richmond. The legislature named the county after the British politician and writer
Philip Stanhope, 4th Earl of Chesterfield, who was famed for his "good manners and writings". Many years later, Chesterfield Cigarettes were named after this county. In 1939 during the
Great Depression, the
Virginia State Police moved their offices from downtown
Richmond to a seven-room farmhouse located on of land 3½ miles west on route 60. This structure served as administrative headquarters and barracks. The State Police have since built a new administrative headquarters and an academy there.
Early ports, coal, roads, turnpikes and railroads Prior to the
American Revolutionary War, a thriving port town named
Warwick was located at the northwestern confluence of Falling Creek and the James River. It was destroyed during that war, and not rebuilt. (Near the present-day
DuPont facility at
Ampthill, the site is not open to the public.) Another early port town was
Port Walthall on the north shore of the
Appomattox River, near the current Point-of-Rocks Park.
Coal mining in the
Midlothian area of Chesterfield County began in the 18th century. Around 1701, French
Huguenot settlers to the area discovered coal. In a 1709 diary entry
William Byrd II, the wealthy planter who had purchased of land in the area, noted that "the coaler found the coal mine very good and sufficient to furnish several generations". Commercially mined beginning in the 1730s, the coal fueled the production of cannon at
Westham (near the present
Huguenot Memorial Bridge) during the
American Revolutionary War. In 1831, the
Chesterfield Railroad was constructed to transport coal by gravity and mule power to
Manchester, Virginia on the south side of the
James River across from
Richmond, Virginia. From the 1740s through the 1800s rivers above the
Fall Line were used for transportation to the West with
James River bateau, which could carry about a ton, and boats several times larger from
Eppington. The
Appomattox River on the Southern border was the lower end of the
Upper Appomattox Canal Navigation System connecting to
Farmville, Virginia. The
James River and Kanawha Canal on the northern border of Chesterfield connected past the
Blue Ridge Mountains.
Port Walthall connected ships that carried more than 200 tonnes to the East with Ports on the
Atlantic Ocean. A canal was built in the Manchester section of Chesterfield to enable transporting coal around the James River falls. Portions are extant and may be seen near the south end of Richmond's
Mayo Bridge. The
Manchester Turnpike in Chesterfield County, completed in 1807, was the first graveled roadway of any length in Virginia. The
toll road ran between the
coal mining area of Midlothian near the headwaters of
Falling Creek and the James River port of
Manchester. The current
Midlothian Turnpike (
U.S. Route 60) generally follows the earlier route. Created in 1816, the
Virginia Board of Public Works was a governmental agency which oversaw and helped finance the development of Virginia's internal transportation improvements, including canals, during the 19th century. In that era, it was customary to invest public funds in private companies, which were the forerunners of the
public service and utility companies of modern times.
Claudius Crozet (1789–1864), a
civil engineer and
educator who helped found the
Virginia Military Institute (VMI), was Principal Engineer and later Chief Engineer for the Board of Public Works. He supervised the planning and construction of many of the
canals,
turnpikes,
bridges and
railroads in Virginia, including the area which is now
West Virginia. The Board partially engineered and funded new turnpikes, which were operated by private companies to collect
tolls. The Manchester and Petersburg Turnpike, which preceded much of the current
Jefferson Davis Highway (U.S. Routes 1–301), was one of these. To improve access to markets, in 1825, a group of mine owners, including
Nicholas Mills, Beverley Randolph and Abraham S. Wooldridge, resolved to build a
tramway. (The Wooldridge brothers hailed from
East Lothian and
West Lothian in
Scotland, and named their mining company Mid-Lothian, the source of the modern community name). In 1831, the
Chesterfield Railroad opened as the first
railroad in Virginia; it carried coal from mines near Falling Creek to the docks at the fall line on the James River. By the early 1850s, railroad lines connecting these areas included the
Richmond and Danville Railroad (R&D) (which put the Chesterfield Railroad out of business) and the
Richmond and Petersburg Railroad. They were both completed before the
American Civil War, in which they provided important transportation for Southern supplies and men. The
Clover Hill Railroad was built to haul coal, mined in Chesterfield at the
Clover Hill Pits to ports at Osborne's Landing. This railroad was replaced by the
Brighthope Railway, which was, in 1881, narrowed into a
narrow gauge railroad and rerouted to the tiny village of
Bermuda Hundred, a port on the James River near the mouth of the
Appomattox River. The Brighthope Railway was sold in foreclosure and restructured as the
Farmville and Powhatan Railroad, later renamed the
Tidewater and Western Railroad, extended to
Farmville in
Prince Edward County. Although long gone, portions of the old rail bed may be seen along Beach Road near the entrance to
Pocahontas State Park. A
water stop station in the Park remains and
Beach Station remains as a national historic landmark.
American Civil War During the
American Civil War (1861–1865),
Drewry's Bluff became a key defensive point for
Confederate forces to block the
Union's vastly superior Navy from taking Richmond by way of the James River. During the
Siege of Petersburg (1864–65), a long defensive works through the county was part of the Confederacy's
Richmond-Petersburg line of land defenses. Railroad lines passing through Petersburg finally proved the key to the fall of Richmond in 1865, effectively ending the War.
Reconstruction A
normal school founded by the state after the
American Civil War primarily to help educate
freed men eventually became
Virginia State University, located in the
Ettrick area near
Petersburg and
Colonial Heights. The U.S. Government rebuilt damaged railroads. After
Reconstruction, Chesterfield County used
Convict lease to build roads in 1878. The Richmond and Danville Railroad became part of the
Southern Railway in 1894. It is now part of
Norfolk Southern Railway. The Richmond and Petersburg Railroad became part of the
Atlantic Coast Line Railroad. In 1900, a mostly parallel line was built by the
Seaboard Air Line Railroad, with a branch line to
Hopewell. Through the restructuring of the railroad industry beginning in 1960, the
CSX Transportation system eventually absorbed parts of both these lines.
Former areas lost to new independent cities prior to the 1910 annexation of Manchester.
Manchester (directly across the James River from the
City of Richmond) was the
county seat of Chesterfield County from 1870 until 1876, when it was moved to the present location at Chesterfield Court House. The City of Manchester had meanwhile left Chesterfield in 1874 to become an
independent city and merged with the City of Richmond by mutual agreement in 1910. It is now known as a part of South Richmond.
Colonial Heights was formerly an
incorporated town in Chesterfield County and became an
independent city in 1948. Over half a century later, the two neighbors continued to share provision of some governmental services.
Annexation issues Chesterfield County shares borders with three independent cities and was long exposed to annexation suits from any of them under Virginia law. The county lost territory to the City of Richmond through several annexations in the 20th century, including one in 1944. The city tried to annex more of the county in 1970, an action that created controversy. While the annexation lawsuit filed by Richmond in 1965 was being heard, with the city seeking of the county, the leaders of the two jurisdictions, Irvin G. Horner, Chairman of the Chesterfield County Board of Supervisors, and Phil J. Bagley, Jr., the Mayor of Richmond, met privately and agreed to a compromise. In May 1969, the city and Chesterfield County approved what was called the Horner-Bagley Compromise, incorporated in a court decree of July 12, 1969. This effectively shut out a number of third parties attempting to block the annexation, and they believed they had been excluded from the process. A small commuter bus company held operating rights in the county, but the expanded city granted the franchise to a competitor. Richmond annexed of the county, including fire stations, parks, and other infrastructure, such as water and sewer lines. Under the agreement, the county school system also conveyed about a dozen
public schools, support buildings, and future school sites to the City of Richmond to be operated by
Richmond Public Schools. Residents of the annexed area were unhappy about this change, as Richmond Public Schools was already involved in a contentious racial
desegregation lawsuit in the Federal courts because of its failure to integrate. The transferred schools included
Huguenot High School, Fred D. Thompson Middle School, Elkhardt Middle School, and eight elementary schools. In 1971, the federal court ordered these schools included in a citywide
desegregation busing program. This ended in the 1990s. Many of the 47,000 residents who lived in the annexed area had been opposed to the action. They fought unsuccessfully for more than 7 years in the courts to have the agreement reversed. Some called the annexed area "Occupied Chesterfield." Many black residents of Richmond also opposed the annexation, claiming that it violated the
National Voting Rights Act of 1965. They said the city had deliberately diminished their voting power by adding the white voters of the annexed area, which diluted the black vote within the city. In 1970 the pre-annexation population of the city was 202,359, of which 104,207 or 52% were black citizens. The annexation added 47,262 people, of whom 45,705 were non-black and 1,557 were black. The total post-annexation population was 249,621 and 42% black. The plaintiffs prevailed in federal court. The city created an electoral ward system to ensure blacks did not lose their voting power, changing what had been a system of electing all city council positions at large (by which the majority population would more easily prevail). Under the ward system, four wards had a predominantly white population, four wards had a predominantly black population, and one ward had a population that was 59% white and 41% black. Unless new revenue sharing or other agreements are reached, the county is at risk to annexation suits by any of the smaller independent cities of Colonial Heights, Hopewell, and Petersburg which adjoin it. ==Highways, transportation, tolls==