Hey Folks,

It's been a while since I thought I had something useful to contribute  
to a question, but here it is--thanks to Mr. Terrell and Mick Nicholls.

Below I've pasted a passage from the chapter I wrote for the Rosewell  
Foundation's Blueprint for Preservation of the Ruins at Rosewell,  
Gloucester, Virginia, 2008. If the material proves useful, any  
citation of same should mention this document and the foundation. The  
individual under discussion is Mann Page II of Rosewell.

Camille Wells.

In addition to gaining permission to sell some of his inheritance,  
Page also launched a new venture in 1761: he would found a town on  
some of the land he owned in Hanover County. Though towns historically  
had languished in eastern Virginia, a gradual change in the system by  
which planters sold their tobacco was having its effect.  Increasingly  
after 1720 representatives of Scots merchants had been settling in  
Virginia, establishing stores where they offered a ready, if lower,  
price for hogsheads of cured tobacco as well as immediate access to a  
stock of imported goods. These “factors,” as they often were called,  
sometimes settled in established towns, but in other cases, towns  
developed around their commercial establishments.[1]



Page owned a promising site for a new town.  It lay on the south side  
of the Pamunkey River at the intersection of two roads, one of which  
ran parallel to the river, and the other led to Hanover Courthouse.  
There was a tobacco inspection warehouse nearby, and this meant that  
ships and lesser watercraft were accustomed to landing there.  The  
town should flourish and Page should profit.  Obtaining permission to  
establish “Hanovertown” from the General Assembly, Page had surveyors  
delineate and number 177 lots.  Then he announced an auction to be  
held on November 15, 1763, but foul weather kept most potential  
bidders away, and this bit of bad luck proved prophetic.[2]  Despite  
many subsequent advertisements, a few sales, and—a desperate measure— 
one lottery, Page himself still owned two-thirds of the lots in  
Hanovertown years later.[3]  In 1768 a merchant whose store stood on  
the opposite bank of the river suggested that a bridge across the  
Pamunkey “will add to the value & sale of his lots wch. perhaps he may  
not otherways find out [realize].” If Page considered this suggestion  
he rejected it as a useless expense; nothing seemed to work.[4]


[1] Middleton, Tobacco Coast, pp. 119-123.

[2] Journal of the House of Burgesses, 1761-1765; Virginia Gazette  
(Royle) 4 November 1763, p. 4, c. 3.

[3] Virginia Gazette (Purdie and Dixon), 17 October 1766, p. 4, c. 3;   
“The Port Towns of the Pamunkey,” William and Mary Quarterly Series 2,  
v. 23 (October 1943), pp. 511-512.

[4] Letter of Samuel Gist to John Smith, 15 August 1768, cited in  
Royster, Dismal Swamp, p. 118.



On Jul 28, 2011, at 11:05 PM, Michael Nicholls wrote:

> And, if they did build a bridge over the Pamunkey at  Newcastle in  
> the 1740's, that would have presumably cut off vessels from making  
> it to Hanovertown about two decades before the latter was chartered  
> by the assembly? Is it possible that Hanovertown was never a port  
> for ocean going vessels?  Mick Nicholls
> On Jul 28, 2011, at 8:52 AM, Bruce Terrell wrote:
>
>> Sea-going vessels were able to sail to Hanovertown in the 18th c  
>> and to
>> Newcastle up until the 1830s.  There is an interesting article with  
>> sketch
>> maps in "The Port Towns of the Pamunkey" by Malcom H. Harris.  
>> William and
>> Mary College Quarterly Historical Magazine, 2nd Ser., Vol. 23, No.  
>> 4. (Oct.,
>> 1943), pp. 493-516. I obtained it through JSTOR.
>>
>> I went up there by john-boat about 8 years ago and it is heavily  
>> silted-in.
>> Hard to imagine a schooner making it up (much less turning around).
>>
>> ______________________________________
>> To subscribe, change options, or unsubscribe please see the  
>> instructions at
>> http://listlva.lib.va.us/archives/va-hist.html
>
> ______________________________________
> To subscribe, change options, or unsubscribe please see the  
> instructions at
> http://listlva.lib.va.us/archives/va-hist.html


______________________________________
To subscribe, change options, or unsubscribe please see the instructions at
http://listlva.lib.va.us/archives/va-hist.html