Mathews County

Mathews County has numerous historic sites reflecting a rich history dating to the first English settlement in the early 1640s. Formed in 1791 from the Kingston Parish section of Gloucester County, it was named for Gen. Thomas Mathews, then speaker of the Virginia House of Delegates. The courthouse square in the county seat includes two original jails, the courthouse, and the clerk’s office, with Tompkins Cottage and Thomas James Store, two of the oldest buildings in the courthouse area, nearby; the Confederate monument there was erected in 1912. New Point Comfort Lighthouse, the third oldest lighthouse on the Chesapeake Bay, was commissioned by President Thomas Jefferson in 1804, and the 55-foot-high octagonal structure stands on an island separated from the mainland by the hurricane of 1933. Kingston Parish, established in 1652, managed both ecclesiastical and civil affairs, and its church, built early in the 1700s, had fallen into ruins by 1841 before being restored as Christ Church through the efforts of Capt. Sally Tompkins’s sister Elizabeth; both women are buried in the churchyard. Christ Church was rebuilt after a fire in 1904, when its rector was the Rev. Giles Cooke, a former member of Gen. Robert E. Lee’s staff during the war. In July 1776, Gwynn’s Island was the scene of the Battle of Cricket Hill, where Gen. Andrew Lewis and Virginia militia forced the royal governor, Lord Dunmore, to abandon Virginia. Gwynn’s Island, Williams Wharf, and Fitchett's Wharf also reflect Mathews County’s shipbuilding and seafaring traditions.

Virginia · United States