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Old Point Comfort
Old Point Comfort is a point of land located in the independent city of Hampton, Virginia. Previously known as Point Comfort, it lies at the extreme tip of the Virginia Peninsula at the mouth of Hampton Roads in the United States. It was renamed Old Point Comfort to differentiate it from New Point Comfort 21 miles (34 km) up the Chesapeake Bay. A group of enslaved Africans (first fleet) was brought to colonial Virginia at this point in 1619. Today the location is home to Continental Park and Fort Monroe National Monument.
For more than 400 years, Point Comfort served as a maritime navigational landmark and military stronghold.
According to a combination of old records and legend, the name derived from an incident when the Jamestown settlers first arrived. Captain Christopher Newport's flagship, Susan Constant, anchored nearby on 28 April 1607. Members of the crew "rowed to a point where they found a channel which put them in good comfort". They named the adjacent land Cape Comfort.
Point Comfort formed the beginning of the boundary of the Colony of Virginia. The Second Charter of the Virginia Company, granted in 1609, gave the company:
all those Lands, Countries, and Territories, situate, lying, and being in that Part of America, called Virginia, from the pointe of lande called Cape or Pointe Comfort all alonge the seacoste to the northward two hundred miles and from the said pointe of Cape Comfort all alonge the sea coast to the southward twoe hundred miles; and all that space and circuit of lande lieinge from the sea coaste of the precinct aforesaid upp unto the lande, throughoute, from sea to sea, west and northwest . . .
Because of the ambiguity as to which line was to run west and which northwest, the charter gave the Virginia Company either about 80,000 square miles (210,000 km2) of eastern North America, or about one-third of the entire continent, extending to the Pacific Ocean. The Colony of Virginia chose the interpretation which gave it the larger area, and the Commonwealth of Virginia continued to claim much of the Ohio Valley and beyond, until after the American Revolution. In 1784, Virginia gave up most of these claims, and the relinquished area was organized as the Territory Northwest of the River Ohio (commonly known as the Northwest Territory) on July 13, 1787. In 1789, the remaining claims were abandoned when Virginia allowed Kentucky to become its own state, which it did on June 1, 1792.
In the fall of 1609, a Captain John Ratcliffe built the first English fort in the area, known as Fort Algernon.
In August 1619, the First Africans in Virginia arrived in what was then known as the Colony of Virginia (although the first people of direct African descent on mainland North America were enslaved by a Spanish colony in South Carolina in 1526, and the first recorded birth with direct African ancestry took place in Florida in 1606). Those enslaved arrived in the White Lion, a privateer owned by Robert Rich, 2nd Earl of Warwick, but flying a Dutch flag, which docked at Point Comfort. The approximately 20-25 Africans had been enslaved during a war fought by Portugal and some local African allies, against the Kingdom of Ndongo, in modern Angola, and had been taken off a Portuguese slave ship, the São João Bautista.
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Old Point Comfort
Old Point Comfort is a point of land located in the independent city of Hampton, Virginia. Previously known as Point Comfort, it lies at the extreme tip of the Virginia Peninsula at the mouth of Hampton Roads in the United States. It was renamed Old Point Comfort to differentiate it from New Point Comfort 21 miles (34 km) up the Chesapeake Bay. A group of enslaved Africans (first fleet) was brought to colonial Virginia at this point in 1619. Today the location is home to Continental Park and Fort Monroe National Monument.
For more than 400 years, Point Comfort served as a maritime navigational landmark and military stronghold.
According to a combination of old records and legend, the name derived from an incident when the Jamestown settlers first arrived. Captain Christopher Newport's flagship, Susan Constant, anchored nearby on 28 April 1607. Members of the crew "rowed to a point where they found a channel which put them in good comfort". They named the adjacent land Cape Comfort.
Point Comfort formed the beginning of the boundary of the Colony of Virginia. The Second Charter of the Virginia Company, granted in 1609, gave the company:
all those Lands, Countries, and Territories, situate, lying, and being in that Part of America, called Virginia, from the pointe of lande called Cape or Pointe Comfort all alonge the seacoste to the northward two hundred miles and from the said pointe of Cape Comfort all alonge the sea coast to the southward twoe hundred miles; and all that space and circuit of lande lieinge from the sea coaste of the precinct aforesaid upp unto the lande, throughoute, from sea to sea, west and northwest . . .
Because of the ambiguity as to which line was to run west and which northwest, the charter gave the Virginia Company either about 80,000 square miles (210,000 km2) of eastern North America, or about one-third of the entire continent, extending to the Pacific Ocean. The Colony of Virginia chose the interpretation which gave it the larger area, and the Commonwealth of Virginia continued to claim much of the Ohio Valley and beyond, until after the American Revolution. In 1784, Virginia gave up most of these claims, and the relinquished area was organized as the Territory Northwest of the River Ohio (commonly known as the Northwest Territory) on July 13, 1787. In 1789, the remaining claims were abandoned when Virginia allowed Kentucky to become its own state, which it did on June 1, 1792.
In the fall of 1609, a Captain John Ratcliffe built the first English fort in the area, known as Fort Algernon.
In August 1619, the First Africans in Virginia arrived in what was then known as the Colony of Virginia (although the first people of direct African descent on mainland North America were enslaved by a Spanish colony in South Carolina in 1526, and the first recorded birth with direct African ancestry took place in Florida in 1606). Those enslaved arrived in the White Lion, a privateer owned by Robert Rich, 2nd Earl of Warwick, but flying a Dutch flag, which docked at Point Comfort. The approximately 20-25 Africans had been enslaved during a war fought by Portugal and some local African allies, against the Kingdom of Ndongo, in modern Angola, and had been taken off a Portuguese slave ship, the São João Bautista.