Lost Counties of Virginia on the mouth of the James River

Elizabeth City County was a

county A county () is a geographic region of a country used for administrative or other purposesL. Brookes (ed.) '' Chambers Dictionary''. Edinburgh: Chambers Harrap Publishers Ltd, 2005. in some nations. The term is derived from the Old French denoti ...

in southeastern

Virginia Virginia, officially the Commonwealth of Virginia, is a U.S. state, state in the Southeastern United States, Southeastern and Mid-Atlantic (United States), Mid-Atlantic regions of the United States between the East Coast of the United States ...

from 1634 until 1952 when it was merged into the city of Hampton. Originally created in 1634 as Elizabeth River Shire, it was one of eight

shire Shire () is a traditional term for an administrative division of land in Great Britain and some other English-speaking countries. It is generally synonymous with county (such as Cheshire and Worcestershire). British counties are among the oldes ...

s created in the Virginia Colony by order of the King Charles I. In 1636, it was subdivided, and the portion north of the harbor of

Hampton Roads Hampton Roads is a body of water in the United States that serves as a wide channel for the James River, James, Nansemond River, Nansemond, and Elizabeth River (Virginia), Elizabeth rivers between Old Point Comfort and Sewell's Point near whe ...

became known as Elizabeth City Shire. It was renamed Elizabeth City County a short time later. Elizabeth City was originally named Kikotan (also spelled Kecoughtan and Kikowtan), presumably a word for the Native Americans living there when the English arrived in 1607. They were friendly to the English, but Sir Thomas Gates either worried about safety (including potential attack by the Spaniards and the Dutch) or coveted their corn fields after the "starving time" of the 1609–10 winter. The English seized their land while the men were out hunting, and for some reason, the natives never attacked the settlement in response. The shire and county were named for Elizabeth of Bohemia, daughter of King James I, sister of Princes Henry and Charles. The town of Hampton, established in 1680, became the largest city in Elizabeth City County, and was the

county seat A county seat is an administrative center, seat of government, or capital city of a county or parish (administrative division), civil parish. The term is in use in five countries: Canada, China, Hungary, Romania, and the United States. An equiva ...

. Hampton became an

independent city An independent city or independent town is a city or town that does not form part of another general-purpose local government entity (such as a province). Historical precursors In the Holy Roman Empire, and to a degree in its successor states ...

in 1908, though it remained the seat of Elizabeth City County and continued to share many services with the county. In 1952, Elizabeth City County and the only incorporated town in the county, Phoebus, merged with and into Hampton. This merger was the first in a series of municipal consolidations in Hampton Roads that resulted in most of the area being split into independent cities. With few exceptions, modern-day Hampton encompasses nearly all of what was Elizabeth City County. The main exceptions are portions of Elizabeth City County that are now part of Newport News. At the time of the Peninsula Extension of the Chesapeake & Ohio Railway, part of the western portion of the county became part of Warwick County. This enabled the entire southern end of the extension to be in Warwick County. The City of Newport News was formed out of this portion of Warwick County, and in January 1927 the Elizabeth City County town of Kecoughtan was also annexed into the City of Newport News. Since English settlers occupied the former Indian village of Kecoughtan in 1610, and the town at Jamestown was abandoned in 1699, the city of Hampton now claims to be the oldest continuously settled English-speaking city in

North America North America is a continent in the Northern Hemisphere, Northern and Western Hemisphere, Western hemispheres. North America is bordered to the north by the Arctic Ocean, to the east by the Atlantic Ocean, to the southeast by South Ameri ...

Historical Population

Notable people

* Mary Cary Ambler (1732–1781), early American diarist, daughter of Colonel Wilson Cary, owner of the Ceelys on the James plantation in Elizabeth City County, Virginia

Politics

Major communities in Elizabeth City County

* Buckroe Beach * Fox Hill * Kecoughtan * Langley Field * Plum Tree Point * Phoebus * Hampton (before it became an independent city) *

Wythe A wythe is a continuous vertical section of masonry one unit in thickness. A wythe may be independent of, or interlocked with, the adjoining wythe(s). A single wythe of brick that is not structural in nature is referred to as a masonry veneer. ...

* Aberdeen Gardens * Pine Chapel Village

References

External links