The Colony of Virginia, chartered in 1606 and settled in 1607, was the first enduring English colony in North America, following failed proprietary attempts at settlement on Newfoundland by Sir Humphrey Gilbert in 1583, and the subsequent farther south Roanoke Island by Sir Walter Raleigh in the late 1580s.
Hampton Roads is the name of both a body of water that serves as a wide channel for the James, Nansemond and Elizabeth rivers between Old Point Comfort and Sewell's Point where the Chesapeake Bay flows into the Atlantic Ocean, and the surrounding metropolitan region located in the southeastern Virginia and northeastern North Carolina portions of the Tidewater region.
Suffolk is an independent city in the Commonwealth of Virginia, and as such has no county. As of the 2010 census, the population was 84,585. It is the largest city in Virginia by boundary land area as well as the 14th largest in the country.
South Hampton Roads is a region located in the extreme southeastern portion of Virginia's Tidewater region in the United States with a total population of 1,191,937. It is part of the Virginia Beach-Norfolk-Newport News, VA-NC MSA, which itself has a population of 1,724,876.
Phoebus is a formerly incorporated town located in Elizabeth City County on the Virginia Peninsula in eastern Virginia. Upon incorporation in 1900, it was named in honor of local businessman Harrison Phoebus (1840–1886), who is credited with convincing the Chesapeake and Ohio Railway (C&O) to extend its tracks to the town from Newport News.
Elizabeth City Shire was one of eight shires created in colonial Virginia in 1634. The shire and the Elizabeth River were named for Elizabeth of Bohemia, daughter of King James I.
The area around Suffolk, Virginia, which is now an independent city in the Hampton Roads region in the southeastern part of the state, was originally inhabited by Native Americans. At the time of European contact, the Nansemond people lived along the river later known by the same name. The area was first explored by Jamestown colonists led by explorer John Smith soon after the settlements founding in 1607, seeking means to survive the inhospitable environment at Jamestown Island.
Norfolk County was a county of the South Hampton Roads in eastern Virginia in the United States that was created in 1691. After the American Civil War, for a period of about 100 years, portions of Norfolk County were lost and the territory of the county reduced as they were annexed by the independent and growing cities of Norfolk, Portsmouth and South Norfolk.
New Norfolk County is a long-extinct county which was located in colonial Virginia from 1636 until 1637.
Upper Norfolk County is an extinct county which was located in colonial Virginia from 1637 until 1646.
County of Princess Anne is a former county in the British Colony of Virginia and the Commonwealth of Virginia in the United States, first incorporated in 1691. The county was merged into the city of Virginia Beach on January 1, 1963, ceasing to exist.
Kecoughtan was the name of the settlement now known as Hampton, Virginia, in the seventeenth century. In the early twentieth century, it was also the name of a town developed nearby which was annexed into the City of Newport News in 1927.
The history of Virginia Beach, Virginia, goes back to the Native Americans who lived in the area for thousands of years before the English colonists landed at Cape Henry in April 1607 and established their first permanent settlement at Jamestown a few weeks later. The Colonial Virginia period extended until 1776 and the American Revolution, and the area has been part of the Commonwealth of Virginia ever since.
The Byrd Road Act was an Act of Assembly passed in February 1932 by the Virginia General Assembly. Named for former Governor Harry F. Byrd, the legislation was originally presented as measure to relieve the financial pressures of the Great Depression upon the counties, as the state offered to take over responsibility and control of most county roads, creating the Virginia Secondary Roads System.
Whaleyville is a neighborhood of Suffolk, Virginia, United States. It was formerly an incorporated town located in southern Nansemond County, Virginia. Whaleyville is located midway between the former county seat at downtown Suffolk and the North Carolina border along U.S. Route 13.
The history of Norfolk, Virginia as a modern settlement begins in 1636. The city formally was incorporated in 1736. The city was burned by orders of the outgoing Virginia governor Lord Dunmore in 1776 during the second year of the American Revolutionary War (1775–1783), although it was soon rebuilt.
The history of Hampton Roads dates to 1607, when Jamestown was founded. Two wars have taken place in addition to many other historical events.
In the United States, an independent city is a city that is not in the territory of any county or counties and is considered a primary administrative division of its state. Independent cities are classified by the United States Census Bureau as "county equivalents" and may also have similar governmental powers to a consolidated city-county. However, in the case of a consolidated city-county, a city and a county were merged into a unified jurisdiction in which the county at least nominally exists to this day, whereas an independent city was legally separated from any county or merged with a county that simultaneously ceased to exist even in name.
The Tobacco Inspection Act of 1730 was a 1730 English law designed to improve the quality of tobacco exported from Colonial Virginia. Proposed by Virginia Lieutenant Governor Sir William Gooch, the law was far-reaching in impact in part because it gave warehouses the power to destroy substandard crops and issue bills of exchange that served as currency. The law centralized the inspection of tobacco at 40 locations described in the law.
