Urbanna's origins reach back to June 1680, when Virginia's Colonial Assembly passed the Act of Cohabitation encouraging the establishment of 19 tobacco port-of-entry towns and requiring each county to set aside 50 acres for a port and market town, with 10,000 pounds of tobacco authorized as payment to Ralph Wormeley of Rosegill for the land. Its establishment was delayed because Wormeley accepted payment but discouraged development by sending his slaves across the creek to dissuade surveyors and settlers. After 25 years, on October 23, 1705, the Assembly in Williamsburg officially created a town in Middlesex County and named it Urbanna, meaning "City of Anne" in Latin in honor of Queen Anne of England. A custom house and public tobacco warehouses were built there to inspect, register, and store tobacco, and the town prospered in the Colonial period as the tobacco trade brought Scottish factors from Great Britain. Middlesex County moved its seat to Urbanna in 1848, where it remained for 104 years. The town was raided and pillaged by the British during the Revolutionary War and the War of 1812, and during the Civil War Union gunboats and troops occupied it. After the war, a new economy developed as oystermen from New York, Connecticut, and New Jersey came south to harvest and purchase oysters, and Urbanna's deepwater harbor supported a nearly century-long oyster-based economy that spurred waterfront industries including broom factories, tomato and vegetable canning factories, oyster shucking houses, an ice plant, flour mills, and other businesses. Urbanna Creek and the Rappahannock River also drew tourists and people seeking water recreation, and fishing, crabbing, boating, and swimming contributed to the community's economy and way of life across generations. After centuries of national, social, and economic upheavals, Urbanna remains one of the oldest surviving English-settled colonial towns in North America.