Bermuda Hundred, Virginia
Bermuda Hundred was the first administrative division in the English colony of Virginia. It was founded by Sir Thomas Dale in 1613, six years after Jamestown. At the southwestern edge of the confluence of the Appomattox and James Rivers opposite City Point, annexed to Hopewell in 1923, Bermuda Hundred was a port town for many years. The terminology "Bermuda Hundred" also included a large area adjacent to the town. In the colonial era, "hundreds" were large developments of many acres, arising from the English term to define an area which would support 100 homesteads. The port at the town of Bermuda Hundred was intended to serve other "hundreds" in addition to Bermuda Hundred.
The area of the peninsula between the James and Appomattox Rivers on which Bermuda Hundred is located was part of the Bermuda Hundred Campaign of May 1864 during the American Civil War.
No longer a shipping port, Bermuda Hundred is now a small community in the southeastern portion of Chesterfield County.
Mattica
Prior to English contact, the site was an Appomattoc village shown as "Mattica" on the 1608 Tindall map. On May 26, 1607, Christopher Newport led a party of 24 English colonists to Mattica. They were welcomed with food and tobacco. He noted the village was surrounded by cornfields, which the Indians cultivated. A weroansqua, Oppussoquionuske, led the village. Their larger village nearby on the north bank of Wighwhippoc Creek, now called Swift Creek, was ruled by the weroance ''Coquonasum, brother of Oppussoquionuske''. Anglo-Native relations deteriorated in 1609, culminating in the First Anglo-Powhatan War by 1610. In the summer of 1610 Opossunoquonuske invited fifteen settlers, who had been collecting water upriver from the settlement at Jamestown, to come to her town. Claiming that the women of the village would be afraid of their weapons, she persuaded the men to leave them in the boat; she then invited them to sit down for a meal, at which she had them ambushed. Her men killed all but one who managed to escape; the survivor, Thomas Dowse, managed to return to the boat and protect himself with the rudder. The men's manner of death is not recorded, nor is it noted if they were tortured. In retaliation, the colonists burned the town and killed several of its inhabitants. Opossunoquonuske herself was reported to have been mortally wounded and to have died that winter. John Smith, in his narrative of the colony, discusses the burning of the town but not the reason behind it, calling the motive only the "injurie done us by them of Apomatock".Around Christmas 1611, in reprisal for an Appomattoc ambush on a group of colonists a year before, Sir Thomas Dale seized Oppussoquionuske's village and the surrounding cultivated land. He renamed it "New Bermudas".
Establishment
The town of Bermuda Hundred was settled by English colonists in 1613 by Dale and was incorporated the following year. The town, described as a fishing village, was situated "on the peninsula at the confluence of the Appomattox and James Rivers, southeast of Richmond, and northeast of Petersburg." Thomas Dale annexed to his New Bermuda plantation "many miles of champion and wood land ground in several hundreds by the names of Nether Hundred, Shirley Hundred" and so on.Sir Thomas Dale, who served as Governor of Virginia for about three months in 1611, and from 1614 to 1616, hoped to replace the settlement of Jamestown in a more suitable location a few miles from the town of Bermuda Hundred at Henricus.
Governor Dale initially named the location across the Appomattox River from the town of Bermuda Hundred as "Bermuda Cittie". The latter was later renamed Charles City Point, and eventually just City Point, before it was annexed by the independent city of Hopewell in 1923. Some sources indicate that Dale called the entire region "New Bermuda" after the island.
John Rolfe and tobacco
Among the colonists who survived the shipwreck of the Sea Venture at Bermuda and sailed to Virginia was John Rolfe. At Bermuda Hundred, he cultivated and exported several non-native strains of tobacco, providing the proprietary Colony with a crucial cash crop to export. Bermuda Hundred became a major shipping point for hogsheads of tobacco grown on plantations nearby.Rolfe became wealthy and lived at Bermuda Hundred for a time. He is believed to have been living at a plantation at or near Bermuda Hundred at the time of the great Indian massacre of 1622 which along the murdering of much of the colony's population, destroyed Henricus and the Falling Creek Ironworks upstream on the James River. Although records indicate that he died in 1622, it is not known if he was a victim of the widespread coordinated attacks of the Powhatan Confederacy, which committed the murder of one third of the colonists in several days or if he died by other means.
Early colonial period
With the subsequent victories in the Anglo-Powhatan Wars, and other Indian campaigns, the Bermuda Hundred was able to expand and develop. The area at first was a combined settlement of a few mid-sized plantations, several smaller-sized farms, and the small port town which shipped their produce and needs. For most of the remaining two-thirds of the century, this mixed-use economy marked the Bermuda Hundred, thereby helping the community to grow. In turn, slowly the population recovered from the Indian attacks, and although outbreaks of Indian diseases continued to occur, new colonists arrived to keep the colony and Bermuda Hundred growing.However, starting in the second half of the 17th century and gaining momentum, a huge growth in demand first in sugar and then in tobacco occurred causing the countryside to slowly change crops despite earlier colonial policy. Additionally, the Indians were pushed back in several campaigns, allowing for the expansion in size of the plantation, and another growth of population which put additional pressures on land and small farms.
Slowly, over the remaining century and into the early 18th century, the farms turned to the valuable but land-depleting sugar and tobacco crops. As the soil depleted, requiring more and more land, large numbers of African slaves were brought into work the mortgaged land cheaply, thereby creating an economy of capital centralization. Consequently, most of the smaller surrounding Yeoman farms were absorbed into the plantations, their inhabitants falling into dependency to the planter class, turning to the town, or moving westward for cheaper land.
Later colonial period
With this growth and evolving economy, the port and town also experienced expansion. Ironically, while originally serving both as a local tide-water port and an oceangoing port, as the cash crops pushed out the local consumption crops, thereby reducing the number of farms, and more slaves caused an increase in acreage and corresponding decrease in the number of plantations, the shippers required larger boats to carry the produce. Simultaneously, the growth in farmland starting increasing silt downriver into the port. Thus, as the port began silting up it was only maintained by dredging which required additional costs on the shippers already competing for capital to build larger boats.Nonetheless, despite this increased competition, the port retained a good number of merchants devoted to the tidewater trade and import and export trade with the Great Britain and Ireland. Additionally, its shippers served in transporting and off-loading the continually growing numbers of settlers migrating from Europe into the American colonies. Most of these migrants went on to settle further westward of the Tidewater, later into the Piedmont, and finally into the Great Wagon Road, and the Wilderness Road which led them further west. The combination of import and export trade, indenture transportation, slave importations, and the consequent requirements in parts and repair to maintain this small merchant fleet resulted in a flourishing mercantile community and an increase in the towns population.
By the time of independence, the area had long ceased being the mixed economy of the 17th century and turned into becoming slow, easy going and peaceful area of a few rich plantations and a slowly declining port. Several of the original colonial families remained but had become a minority as indentured servants from Europe, arrived, intermingled with the original colonists, new settlers replaced those old families who left west, and finally large numbers of black indentured servants and then slaves pushed out most of the original middling and working settler classes.
French and Indian War and Pre-Revolutionary War period
By the 1760s, the threat of Indian violence and economic deprivation in the tidewater region including the Bermuda Hundreds had dissipated as a result of victory and integration between Virginia and other British colonies. Despite restrictions on trading with other parts colonies, the Tidewater had full participation in the British Atlantic World and many of its families were educated in Britain and Ireland. The merchant firms had developed deep and lasting relationships with other firms in the Empire and cash was readily available for capital improvement. The old colonial planters had developed into a strong plantocracy noted for supporting additional colonial expansion westward. Indeed, many of the frontier families had come from older colonial settlers originally from the tidewater region and places like the Bermuda Hundreds. Many of the Tidewater's plantocracy's junior members and cadet branches had moved westward and played leading roles in establishing new settlements and networks thereby keeping the unity of colonial society. Thus, an economic, social, and political expansion had developed in which the Tidewater plantocracy played a key role in integrating the frontier with the Tidewater and henceforth with the larger British Empire.Indeed, many of the frontier families had come from older colonial settlers originally from the tidewater region and places like the Bermuda Hundreds. Many of the Tidewater's colonial junior members and cadet branches had moved westward and played leading roles in establishing new settlements and networks thereby keeping the unity of colonial society. Thus, the massive eruption of Indian violence and full-scale war on the frontier effected the Tidewater keenly despite not being directly attacked. The genocide of large numbers of the frontier families, the desperate battles in the forests, and sieges of the settler forts, recalled the days of the older Tidewater Indian wars which had almost destroyed the colony entirely. Now the battles and losses were even larger. The threat of a full-scale collapse of the frontier and the arrival of huge Franco-Indian armies presaged notions of annihilation. Consequently, with the outbreak of massive Indian wars on the frontiers and the involvement of large French armies, the Bermuda Hundreds was notably involved in supplying the arms, men, officers, and materials for the war effort.
The war resulted in a severe check on the migration westward of new British settlers as well as colonial natives from the Hundreds. The horror of the losses gave pause to further expansion. More importantly, the Royal government had broken its obligations toward settlers, and thus with the Tidewater plantocracy when it refused to honor recent frontier treaties with the Proclamation of 1763. The proclamation was the result of secret negotiation between the Royal government and Indian tribes by which the frontier settlers were deprived of their land and property and any further expansion westward of British colonies was permanently halted.
Economically, socially, and politically, the war, peace treaty and proclamation was decisive in changing the life of the Bermuda Hundreds. Indeed, it was a major check on the continued evolution of the socio-economic live of the area. Previously, the change from a mixed economy featured by small farmers and shippers to a commercial economy of planters and merchants had only occurred without widespread social upheaval through the growth of new opportunities westward. Land pressure was relieved, smaller yeoman farmers were able to maintain their existence by providing for the larger Tidewater region as well as the frontier, merchants were prosperous from supporting both, and the planter class maintained its wealth and position.
However, the proclamation and halt to further expansion threatened this existence. More importantly, such perfidy by their own government caused a political upheaval in the Hundreds as middle-class locals and those frontier families being agitating against the presumed treason of the crown. Consequently, the planter classes debated how best to respond. Despite this continual economic growth and the increasing numbers of colonists arriving in the port, the consequence of a slave economy and globalism began to become apparent. Starting in the first quarter of the 18th century, the population of the colonial hundreds peaked. Slowly, a combination of capitalistic centralizing movements created by prevailing theories of mercantilism and the use of slavery by Virginian planters, caused an actual reduction in the numbers of European colonists in the Hundreds, as the middling level of planters, farmers, merchants, and arts and craftsmen were driven out or turned westward for better opportunities. At first, they were replaced by indentured servants, and then as slavery became all powerful, they were replaced by cheap black slaves, thereby causing further pressures on the remaining colonial working classes to move elsewhere. Nonetheless, the area maintained a slight majority of European colonists despite the large numbers of African slaves until just prior to the Revolutionary period.
Thus, by the time of independence, the area had long ceased being the mixed economy of the 17th century and had become interdependent with the wider British Empire. Rather than a mixed local economy, it was integrated with the much larger Virginia Colony, much of the remaining American colonies, and yet was still dependent upon Great Britain both socially, politically, and even economically. For the Bermuda Hundreds, the majority of the remaining planters and especially what remained of the yeoman and town folk the answer was clear. Secession from the British Empire and the Declaration of Independence despite whatever economic losses might occur. The French and Indian war had proven to become a decisively changing event in the direction of the colony.