Grove, Virginia
Grove is an unincorporated community in the southeastern portion of James City County in the Virginia Peninsula subregion of Virginia, United States. It is located in the center of the Historic Triangle of Colonial Virginia, communities linked by the Colonial Parkway. This area is one of the busiest tourist destinations in the world.
Grove is located approximately east of Williamsburg along U.S. Route 60. Grove is bordered by the James River and separated from the Newport News city limits near Lee Hall by Skiffe's Creek.
Historic places in Grove related to Virginia colonial past include the archaeological site of Wolstenholme Towne, the administrative center of Martin's Hundred. It was rediscovered in 1976 on the grounds of Carter's Grove Plantation, built in 1755. The plantation was occupied by private owners through the 1960s. It was owned and operated by the Colonial Williamsburg Foundation and open to the public from the 1970s until 2003. In 2007 the property was sold back into private ownership.
Grove's contemporary development began with African-American settlement by freedmen from Carter's Grove and other plantations following the Civil War. Its population was fewer than 100 people until after the turn of the twentieth century. During the two World Wars, Grove increased markedly in population; in part, this was due to attracting hundreds of displaced people, mostly African American, who were uprooted by federal land acquisition for major waterfront military installations in nearby James City and York counties. Navy bases established were the Naval Weapons Station Yorktown, the Cheatham Annex supply complex, and Camp Peary.
As of early 2008, many new homes were under construction in Grove. Along the southeastern edge, available sites and frontage on the James River and Skiffe's Creek are zoned for industrial purposes. These have been attractive to developers of new and expanded businesses.
Geography
Grove occupies part of the narrowest portion of James City County, bordering the James River to the south and York County to the north. With the exception of lowlands near the river, most of Grove was originally heavily wooded and remains so today.Grove Creek and Skiffe's Creek, each tributaries of the James River, provide local drainage. The latter also constitutes the eastern border of Grove, which adjoins the Lee Hall area of the independent city of Newport News.
The former Chesapeake and Ohio Railway runs along the northern edge of Grove. It is now part of the Peninsula Subdivision of CSX Transportation.
Early history: 17th through 19th centuries
Native Americans
For thousands of years, various cultures of indigenous peoples occupied areas along the waterways. Prior to the arrival of Spanish and English settlers in the 16th and 17th centuries, they were semi-nomadic hunter-gatherers, although more complex civilizations arose among the Mississippian culture. Scholars believe a major historic American Indian village is located somewhere nearby, although the site has not been identified. The site of the historic Kiskiack Indian village, Chiskiack, was a few miles to the north. The Kiskiack were one of a number of Algonquian-speaking historic tribes at the time of encounter with the English.When the English settlers established Jamestown in 1607, the Powhatan Paramount Chiefdom included most Native tribes in the area. There were a few that were unaffiliated. The paramount chief, known as the Powhatan, had created his powerful empire in the late 16th and early 17th centuries. He conquered or affiliated by agreement with approximately 30 tribes whose territory covered much of southeastern Virginia. This was called Tenakomakah. A capital of this confederacy, Werowocomoco, was located near the north bank of the York River in present-day Gloucester County, about as the crow flies from Grove.
By the mid-17th century, the English had forced Native Americans remaining in the area on to reservations north of the York River. By working and living together, some had assimilated into the general population of European colonists and freed slaves of African heritage. Over the decades, white indentured servant women, African men, and few Indians married and created free mixed-race populations before the American Revolution.
Martin's Hundred, Wolstenholme Towne
Initially, the English of the Virginia Company of London chose Jamestown for their first settlement of the Virginia Colony. They arrived in 1607 in a fleet of three ships commanded by Christopher Newport. '' After five difficult years, the new colony gradually began expanding. Settlers established plantations along the James River, largely to grow non-native strains of tobacco. This was introduced and successfully exported in 1612 by colonist John Rolfe, who later married Pocahontas, daughter of the Powhatan.About downstream from Jamestown on the north bank of the river, just east of Grove Creek, the Grove area was originally settled by English colonists in 1618 as part of Martin's Hundred. The proprietary plantation of over 20,000 acres was an enterprise of the Martin's Hundred Society, a London-based investment group operating under the auspices of the Virginia Company of London. Not far from the riverfront, the new Wolstenholme Towne, the Martin's Hundred administrative center, was established.
Most of the population of Wolstenholme Towne was killed in the Indian massacre of 1622, one of the largest incidents of loss of life by Virginia settlers during the colonial years. Colonists rebuilt the settlement a few years later, and protected it by a cross-peninsula palisade to the west completed in 1634. They abandoned Wolstenholme Towne around 1643 after Williamsburg was made the capital. The structures fell into ruin and the site became taken over by vegetation; it was lost until 1976.
Martin's Hundred Parish Church was established by the Church of England, and served the area including Wolstenholme Towne. It was later combined with Yorkhampton Parish in adjacent York County.
Royal colony, creation of shires (counties)
When the privately owned Virginia Company lost its charter in 1624, Virginia became a royal colony. In 1634, the English Crown created eight shires in the colony of Virginia, which then had a total population of approximately 5,000 inhabitants. James City Shire, as well as the James River and Jamestown, took its name from King James I, the father of the then-king, Charles I. About 1642–43, the name of the James City Shire was changed to James City County.Slavery, freedom
James City County received the first slaves whom the English imported to Virginia. Beginning in 1619, the English brought Africans to the colony as indentured servants. Increasingly toward the end of the 17th century, they hardened the labor system to create a racial caste of slavery for African workers and their families. Dutch and British ships transported large numbers of slaves from Africa to the Virginia Colony. On the labor-intensives tobacco plantations, planters replaced indentured laborers with slaves, who also served as household and skilled workers. In the later 17th and 18th centuries, economic conditions improved in England, so the supply of indentured laborers decreased.Early Africans became free after serving their period of indenture. Some individual slaves were freed as early as the mid-17th century by manumission. Some earned their freedom by separate labor, and others escaped. By far the greatest number of free African-American families in Virginia during colonial times were formed by marriage and unions between white working-class women and African men, whether indentured servant, slave or free. The children and their descendants were free because they had the status of the white mother, under the principle of partus sequitur ventrem, which Virginia had adopted into law in 1662.
Known as free Negroes or free people of color, some of the people stayed in the area. Others migrated to urban or frontier areas away from the plantation areas where racial strictures were more severe. Richmond, which was an economic center, and Petersburg, which had industrial jobs, became early centers of free blacks in Virginia.
There was mass emancipation of slaves during the years of the American Civil War. Despite Virginia's secession from the Union in 1861, the US Army retained control of Fort Monroe at the eastern end of the Virginia Peninsula. It became a destination for slaves seeking freedom behind Union lines. By 1863, many heard President Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation read under the Emancipation Oak. This tree is now within the grounds of Hampton University, a historically black college established soon after the war.
After the War, many freedmen settled in inland areas of the Peninsula, either as landowners, tenant farmers, or renters who worked as watermen. While the southern side of the peninsula along the James River had long been occupied by large plantations, the northern side along the York River, west of Yorktown, had not been as heavily developed. Many freedmen moved into this area, establishing close-knit communities in mixed towns, as well as majority-black towns such as Lackey and Magruder.
Carter's Grove
More than 100 years after Wolstenholme Towne was abandoned, Carter's Grove Plantation was built on part of the Martin's Hundred land for Carter Burwell. He was the son of Elizabeth Carter Burwell and her husband Nathaniel Burwell. Carter Burwell was the grandson of the wealthy planter Robert "King" Carter. He bequeathed the land before his death, requiring that it be called Carter's Grove.The new plantation house was completed in 1755. In its long occupancy since then, the Carter's Grove mansion was renovated by a series of owners, the last major changes being of the late 1920s era. The last private owner died around 1964. The plantation moved into philanthropic ownership.
The Colonial Williamsburg Foundation owned the plantation from 1969 until 2007. It furnished the mansion in many period pieces, primarily of the 19th and early 20th centuries. Some of these were antiques acquired in the 1920s from an auction at Westover Plantation, long the home of descendants of William Byrd III. A landmark in the Grove Community, Carter's Grove Plantation was opened to the public by the CW Foundation for tours and interpretation of the mansion and reconstructed slave quarters. Public access was ended in 2003.
In 1976 the Foundation conducted an archeological survey of the grounds. Near the river, the survey team rediscovered the long-lost site of Wolstenholme Towne. Noted archaeologist Ivor Noel Hume documented the archaeological dig that explored the site. The Foundation reconstructed part of Wolstenholme Towne and added it to the public tours and interpretation of the large plantation.
In 2003, CW Foundation decided to concentrate on attractions closer to its Historic Area near downtown Williamsburg. It closed public access to Carter's Grove Plantation, which reduced tourist interest and revenue for the Grove community. Closer to the Historic Area, the CW Foundation developed another interpretive site for the African-American colonial experience in Virginia.
CW sold Carter's Grove to private owners in 2007, with certain protective covenants to help preserve the nature of the site. Carter's Grove Country Road formerly offered a one-way, narrow, paved link to the Historic Area of Colonial Williamsburg. After it was damaged during Hurricane Isabel in late 2003, it was closed permanently to traffic. The primary access to the plantation on U.S. Route 60 was reopened shortly after the storm. The property has been closed to the public since 2003.