The first Rappahannock County, Virginia — generally known as "Old Rappahannock" County — was founded in 1656 from part of
Lancaster County, Virginia
Lancaster County is a county located on the Northern Neck in the Commonwealth of Virginia. As of the 2020 census, the population sits at 10,919. Its county seat is Lancaster.
Located on the Northern Neck near the mouth of the Rappahanno ...
and became extinct in 1692 when it was divided to form
Essex County and
Richmond County, Virginia.
[Morgan Poitiaux Robinson: "Virginia Counties: Those Resulting from Virginia Legislation" in ''Bulletin of the Virginia State Library'', Vol. 9, Nos. 1, 2 and 3, January, April, July, 1916, pp. 86, 189, 264-265.]
Old Rappahannock County was named for the
Native Americans who inhabited the area, ''Rappahannock'' reportedly meaning "people of the alternating (i.e., tidal) stream."
The county's origins lay in the first efforts by
English colonists immigrants to settle the land along the north and south banks of the lower
Rappahannock River in the 1640s.
[Thomas Hoskins Warner: ''History of Old Rappahannock County Virginia, 1656-1692'', Pauline Pearce Warner, Publisher, Tappahannock, Va., 1965, pp. 13-14, 18, 20-21, 26.] The primitive travel capabilities of the day and the county's relatively large area contributed to the settlers' hardship in travel to 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 ...
to transact business, and became the primary reason for the county's division by an Act of the
Virginia General Assembly in 1691 to form the two smaller counties.
In 1833, a new
Rappahannock County was founded from the northwest half of
Culpeper County, Virginia, far up river, at the headwaters of the Rappahannock.
References
{{coord missing, Virginia
Former counties of Virginia