Seventeenth-Century Hampton

Jamestown-bound English settlers landed at Strawberry Banks on April 30, 1607, and after an initially wary reception by native villagers, shared food and tobacco with them. During Christmas week the following year, Captain John Smith and his crew were warmly received at Kecoughtan. Relations between the English and the Indians soon deteriorated. In the fall of 1609, the English built Fort Algernourne at Point Comfort, and the following July they attacked Kecoughtan, killing several inhabitants, driving out the rest, taking over their cultivated fields, and erecting forts near the entrance of Hampton River. In 1619, the General Assembly changed the name from Kecoughtan to Elizabeth City in honor of King James's daughter, and that same year about 20 Africans were landed there. They were likely treated as indentured servants, but the tobacco-based economy soon tightened slavery's legal restraints. Elizabeth City quickly became Virginia's leading port and population center, where merchant ships were required to stop and pay customs duties and a tobacco inspection warehouse stood on the waterfront. In 1691, a town was laid out and half-acre lots were sold, and in 1706 the town's name was officially changed to Hampton.

Hampton, Virginia · United States