Manakin Sabot, Virginia

Manakin Sabot, consisting of the villages of Manakin and Sabot, is an affluent unincorporated community in Goochland County, Virginia, United States. It is located northwest of Richmond in the Piedmont and is part of the Greater Richmond region.

History

Prior to the arrival of European colonists, the area was settled by the Native American Monacan people, who constructed a village called Mowhemcho above the falls of the James River. It was the easternmost village of their confederacy as noted on a map of Virginia in 1612 by Capt. John Smith. They were Siouan-speaking, like other tribes of the uplands.

However, by 1699, that village had been abandoned. In that year the English King William III granted 10,000 acres of land in Virginia from to the Marquis Olivier de la Muce, a French aristocrat and Huguenot who had been imprisoned in the Castle of Nantes on the Isle of Re before escaping to England some ten years earlier. Fellow Huguenots ultimately created the colony of Manakin on the banks of the James River in the cleared former location of the former native village.The Huguenot (periodical). Published by the Huguenot Society: Founders of Manakin, Virginia. 1924 (Vol. 1), Forward

Thus by 1701 several hundred Protestant religious refugees emigrated to the Virginia colony via London based on the land promised from the British Crown. Four debarkations left Southampton for Virginia in the summer of 1699, with a total of more than 500 people. Names of three of the ships are known: ''Pierre and Anthony'' (Galley of London), ''Le Nasseau'' and ''Mary and Ann''. Four Huguenot ministers travelled with the expedition: Reverends James Fontaine, Behjamin de Joux, Louis Latane and Claude Philip de Richebourg. The names of two surgeons are also known: Doctors Chastaine and Paul Micou. While they had expected to be settled near existing settlements of Jamestown or in Lower Norfolk County (both in the Tidewater region), officials gave them land in areas 20 miles above the falls of the James River in the Piedmont then sparsely occupied by the Monacan. One French settlement in Powhatan County became known as Manakin Town (after the native tribe); two villages in Goochland were Manakin and Sabot.

Virginia government officials welcomed the refugees, as many of them were ex-aristocrats and noblemen with education and wealth, which they had brought with them on their emigration from France. The Colony exempted the French Huguenots from taxation for a period of seven years. On arriving in Virginia, they displaced the natives and wrested homes and plantations out of the wilderness; they built a church, a school, a hospital, and a smithy.

The first group of Huguenots encountered great hardship, as many were urban people unprepared for the frontier. French Huguenot leaders petitioned the government for more assistance as another ship of refugees landed at the Virginia Colony. Gradually the pioneers adapted and moved out of the village to their farms in the area. By 1750, the village was again defunct. Over the decades, the French and their descendants intermarried with English settlers. Many of their descendants moved west or south with other migrants, including into Kentucky and other areas."MANAKIN TOWN / The French Huguenot Settlement in Virginia * 1700-ca. 1750"
(includes primary sources), ''Becoming American: The British Atlantic Colonies, 1690-1763'', National Humanities Center, 2009; accessed 11 January 2019

Colonists increasingly developed the area as plantations, with planters shifting from tobacco to wheat and mixed crops in the eighteenth century as the market changed. Ben Dover Farm, Dover Slave Quarter Complex, Huguenot Memorial Chapel and Monument, Oak Grove, Powell's Tavern, Rochambeau Farm, and Tuckahoe Plantation are significant sites, built mostly from the colonial through the mid-19th century, which are listed on the National Register of Historic Places. Some of these farms and plantations adapted yet remained agricultural into the 20th century.

Notable residents

* Justin Verlander, Major League Baseball player, was raised in Manakin-Sabot.

References

{{Goochland County, Virginia

Unincorporated communities in Goochland County, Virginia
Unincorporated communities in Virginia