Farmville, Virginia

Farmville is a town in Prince Edward and Cumberland counties in the Commonwealth of Virginia. It is the county seat of Prince Edward County. The population was 7,473 at the 2020 census. Farmville was a major tobacco growing area in Virginia for over 100 years

Farmville developed near the headwaters of the Appomattox River in central Virginia; the waterway was long its main transportation access to other markets. In the 19th century, a railroad through Farmville was developed, operating until the early 2000s, and subsequently adapted as the High Bridge Trail State Park, a rail trail park, approximately30-mile-in length (48 km). US 15, VA 45 and US 460 now intersect at Farmville. The town is the home of Longwood University and is the town nearest to Hampden–Sydney College, which together comprising the core of the town's modern economy.

Near the headwaters of the Appomattox River, the town of Farmville was formed in 1798 and incorporated in 1912.

Between 1795 and 1890, Farmville was the western terminus of the Upper Appomattox Canal Navigation System. Constructed by Enslaved African Americans, who built the canal system to significantly improve navigation on the river and thereby successfully enabled transport of commodity crops of tobacco and farm produce via bateau on the James River, from Farmville and to Petersburg, Virginia — until the canal system was displaced by railroads.

Many of the boatmen who worked near Farmville were free people of color living in the Israel Hill community which was home to both White people and free African-American laborers, craftsmen, and farmers freed from the end of the Revolutionary War to around 1810. People of African and European descent worked for the same wages, built a church together, and could have resort to the court of law within the 350-acre town.

John Flournoy was the first to mine coal near Farmville. He started in 1833 working on a seam, which was two feet thick. In 1837 the General Assembly granted a charter to the Prince Edward Coal Mining Company to mine and sell coal. This company was still in operation into the 1880s.

Another coal pit in the 1880s was worked on the W.W. Jackson property. The coal from this small pit was used to fuel his blacksmith shop on the same property. The coal deposits are part of the Farmville Basin, one of the Eastern North America Rift Basins west of modern-day Virginia State Route 45.

In the 1850s, the Southside Railroad from Petersburg to Lynchburg was built through Farmville. The route, which was subsidized by a contribution from Farmville, required an expensive crossing of the Appomattox River slightly downstream, which became known as the High Bridge. This became the Atlantic, Mississippi and Ohio Railroad in 1870; the Norfolk and Western Railway took it over, and now the line is part of the Norfolk Southern Railway.