175px|right|thumb|Charles City County, Virginia from 1895 state map
Charles City County is a county located in the U.S. commonwealth of Virginia. The county is situated southeast of Richmond and west of Jamestown. It is bounded on the south by the James River and on the east by the Chickahominy River.
The area that would become Charles City County was first established as "Charles Cittie" by the Virginia Company in 1619. It was one of the first four "boroughs" of Virginia, and was named in honor of Prince Charles, who would later become King Charles I of England. After Virginia became a royal colony, the borough was changed to "Charles City Shire" in 1634, as one of the five original Shires of Virginia. It acquired the present name of Charles City County in 1643.
In the 21st century, Charles City County is part of the Greater Richmond Region of the state of Virginia. As of the 2020 census, the county population was 6,773; it is still relatively rural and one of the smaller counties in Virginia by population. Its county seat is the community of Charles City.
Notable natives include the 9th and 10th presidents of the United States, William Henry Harrison and John Tyler.
History
Native Americans
Various Indian tribes had used this area for thousands of years. When the region was explored by the English in the 17th century, the Algonquian-speaking Chickahominy tribe inhabited areas along the Chickahominy River that was later named for them by English colonists. The Paspahegh lived in Sandy Point, and the Weanoc lived in the Weyanoke Neck area. The latter two tribes were part of the Powhatan Confederacy. At the time of the earliest English settlement, the independent Chickahominy people occupied territory surrounded by numerous tribes of the powerful Powhatan Confederacy, but they were not part of it. Chickahominy descendants still inhabit the region. These three tribes were all Algonquian-speaking tribes, the language family of the varied peoples who occupied the Tidewater and low country in Virginia and along the East Coast from Canada to south of the Carolinas.
The English named the Weyanoke Peninsula after the Weyanoc tribe, whom they encountered in the area. The Weyanoc were gradually displaced by colonial encroachment. They merged with other, larger tribes about the time of Bacon's Rebellion (1676-1677).
English colonization
The English began to colonize the area under the auspices of the Virginia Company, a private company formed to support this effort and gain profits from expected development and trade.
In 1619, the Virginia Company established Charles Cittie as one of the first four "boroughs" or "incorporations" in the region. West of James County, it was named for Prince Charles, second son of King James I of England, who became the Prince of Wales and heir apparent after the death of his older brother Henry in 1612. After his father's death, he became King Charles I of England.
1619 marked the arrival of the first enslaved Africans in the Tidewater area. They had been captured from a Spanish ship and first landed at Point Comfort (present-day Hampton, Virginia). They were treated as indentured servants in the colony, and at least one later became a landowner after gaining his freedom. Weyanoke, remains a rural locality in Charles City County, Virginia.
The Virginia Company lost its charter in 1624 under King James I, and Virginia became a royal colony. Charles City Shire was formed in 1634 in the Virginia Colony by order of the King. Its name was changed to Charles City County in 1643. It is one of the five original shires in Virginia that are extant in essentially the same political entity (county) as they were originally formed in 1634. Colonists developed the land as tobacco plantations and produced this commodity crop for export.
Cultivation and processing of this crop required intensive labor. The wealthier planters recruited indentured servants from the British Isles and Africa, and later purchased numerous enslaved Africans. In Virginia and the Upper South, historians have classified persons holding 20 or more slaves as planters.
The majority of the colonists were English people who arrived as indentured servants and who owed labor, often as much as seven years, to wealthy patrons who had paid for their passage to gain land and laborers. The English government offered land grants to these patrons under a headright system, which was a way to encourage settlement in the colony. During the 17th century, for economic times encouraged many to settle in the North American colonies. In the early years, the Chesapeake Bay Colony had many more men than women, but more women entered began emigrating and families were begun.
As the indentured servants worked off their passage, they would be granted land of their own. By then the most successful planter families already controlled the valuable riverfront property. This gave them ready access to the waterways, the transportation system for trade and travel. Hence, later planters generally settled in the upland section of the county.
The original central city of the county was Charles City Point, located south of the James River at the confluence of the Appomattox River. The first Charles City County courthouses were located along the James River at Westover on the north side and at City Point on the south side. The latter's name was shortened from Charles City Point.
thumb|left|250px|Crossing the James River on [[Benjamin Harrison Bridge from the South to enter Charles City County]]
Breaking off other counties and cities
In 1703, all of the original area of Charles City County south of the James River was severed to form Prince George County. This in turn was later divided, in a pattern typical of colonial development, into several other counties and independent cities. From Charles City County through Prince George County came Brunswick County in 1732; Amelia County in 1735; and Prince Edward County in 1754.
Early Religion
As in other parts of the Tidewater, common planters and merchants of Charles City County were attracted by the appeal of Methodist and Baptist preachers in the Great Awakening in the late 18th and early 19th centuries. Several Methodist and Baptist churches were established in the early 19th century, mostly in the upland areas of the county. The county also had numerous Quaker settlers. The elite planters of the James River plantations tended to remain Anglican; the United States Episcopal Church was founded after the American Revolution.
Black Americans
With the growth of tobacco as a cash crop, demand for workers increased. Twenty-three African slaves were known to have been brought to Charles City County before 1660. During the late 1600s and early 1700s, African slave labor rapidly supplanted European indentured servants. By the eighteenth century, slaves had become the major source of agricultural labor in the Virginia Colony, then devoted primarily to the labor-intensive commodity crop of tobacco.
The earliest record of a free black living in Charles City County is the September 16, 1677, petition for freedom by a woman named Susannah. The Lott Cary House in the county has long been honored as the birth site of Lott Cary, a slave who purchased his freedom and that of his children. In the 19th century, he became a founding father of the new country of Liberia in Africa.
Beginning as early as the 17th century, some planters freed individual slaves by manumission. Some free mixed-race families, established before the American Revolution, were formed by descendants of unions or marriages between white indentured or free women and African men, indentured, slave or free. Colonial law and the principle of partus sequitur ventrem, provided that children were born into the status of their mother. Thus, the mixed-race children of white women were born free. If illegitimate, they had to serve time in lengthy apprenticeships, but freedom gave them an important step forward.
In the first two decades after the American Revolution, numerous planters in Charles City County freed their slaves, persuaded by Quaker, Baptist and Methodist abolitionists. Many free blacks settled together in today's Ruthville, Virginia, a crossroads and one of the first free-black communities in present-day Charles City County and the state of Virginia.
Virginia established statewide legal racial segregation when white Democrats regained control of the state legislature. They disfranchised most blacks at the turn of the century, maintaining this exclusion until after passage of civil rights legislation. In 1968, following passage of the federal Civil Rights Act and Voting Rights Act of the 1960s, and federal enforcement of the black franchise, James Bradby of Charles City County was the first black American Virginian to be elected to the position of County Sheriff.
James River plantations
Charles City County is the location of several historic plantations.
- Berkeley Plantation is the birthplace of William Henry Harrison, ninth president of the United States, born on February 9, 1773.
- Greenway Plantation is the birthplace of John Tyler, the tenth president, was born in 1790.
- Sherwood Forest Plantation was bought by John Tyler in 1842. Tyler descendants have resided at Sherwood Forest Plantation continuously since then.
- Shirley Plantation was the home of the Edward Hill family, including two Speakers of the House of Burgesses in the 17th century. The fourth generation Edward Hill died as a teenager, after one of his sisters married John Carter of Coromatan Plantation in Lancaster County, the son of King Carter. Their son Charles Hill Carter inherited Shirley Plantation before the American Revolutionary War, although he also inherited Coromatan and transferred his main residence there. Nonetheless, Shirley Plantation has remained in the family, operated by three men named Hill Carter in the 19th century, and later by descendants of General Robert E. Lee (his mother, Ann Hill Carter, was Charles Hill Carter's daughter) who still live and work the plantation today.
- Westover Plantation was first occupied in 1619 and was the home of Captain Thomas Palett in 1637. Westover was the home of Richard Bland, William Byrd I, and William Byrd II (founder of Richmond). It was William Byrd the III that built the current mansion around 1750. The plantation is the resting place of William Byrd I, and William Byrd II. The plantation has had eight owners since the Byrd family possessed the property. During the Civil War, Major General Fitz John Porter was stationed at Westover. General Porter was the protégé to Major General George McClellan who occupied nearby Berkeley Plantation.
Geography
According to the U.S. Census Bureau, the county has a total area of , of which is land and (10.5%) is water.
There are multiple census-designated places and unincorporated communities in Charles City County.
Adjacent counties
- New Kent County – north
- James City County – east
- Surry County – southeast
- Prince George County – south
- Chesterfield County – southwest
- Henrico County – west