"A Nest of Tobacco Towns:" An Urban History of Petersburg, Part Two

Sequence of Growth

1630-1700

The intersection of a network of ancient Indian paths with the navigable water below the falls of the Appomattox River resulted in the growth of an important control depot for Indian-settler relations, which grew after 1670 into a major economic driver for the region. Abraham Wood’s Fort Henry land was the site of a small trading settlement.  

1700-1760

 After Abraham Wood’s death in 1682, his land was subdivided in ways that would affect the growth of the town. The small settlement on the low ground at Appomattox Point, still the focus of trade routes extending far into the back country, was expanded at mid-century by landowners intending to capitalize on the successful trade in backcountry tobacco based just below the falls.  A new church on a hill overlooking near Blandford indicated that the falls area was becoming a center as well for a growing rural population.

1760-1780

As the country population increased, the commercial, industrial, and craft center had expanded into the higher, healthier land south of the river by the second half of the eighteenth century. Robert Bolling II likely began building on his land in the center well before he had it officially recorded in 1783.  Pre-existing roads, swampy land, pronounced hills, and old property boundaries determined the complex shape and form of the new town.

1780-1800

The residents requested incorporation as a borough in 1779 and received it in 1784. The existing towns were incorporated into the new city. New “towns,” some of which existed only on paper, were laid out over the next several decades within its boundaries, including Ravenscroft (1786) and Gillfield (1790) on the land of Abraham Jones’ grandaughter, Sarah Newsum. Public squares were created to house the essential buildings associated with community life:  a market, court house, and jail. Center Hill and Poplar Spring were used for assembly and recreation purposes. Undeveloped lots in older sections were infilled with new buildings.

1800 and after

The urban fabric remained porous and small in scale until a great fire in 1815 and an overheated economy prompted a rapid rebuilding and expansion. Continuous lines of brick buildings now lined the main streets downtown and new streets, such as Bank, South Market, and Washington, and connected the formerly diffuse neighborhoods. As transportation systems matured and buisness boomed, Sycamore joined Bollingbrook Street to form one long route lined with basic commerical/residential buildings.

[Maps from the Battersea Design Guidelines. Drawn by Dolly Holmes and Gibson Worsham]

Narrative

As we have seen, most of the land at the falls of the Appomattox was originally controlled by one man, Abraham Wood, who dominated local political and commercial life. He appears to have divided his land among four grandchildren, thereby creating a complex and counter-intuitive series of urban forms that developed over many years. The city extended piece-meal over its hilly and swampy terrain and the street pattern avoided low-lying ground and incorporated irregularities resulting from a variety of owners and developers. That legacy, and the decisions made by the powerful Bolling family after 1706, determined the shape of the city to this day.   

William Byrd II

It is useful to compare Richmond and Petersburg. At the similar site at the falls of the James River, William Byrd II, after years of industrial and agricultural development around the falls, founded two formal towns there in order to forestall anyone else doing so. Byrd appears to have preferred leasing tracts to merchants rather than selling outright. Such leaseholds, in the form of ground rent, were a popular practice among landowners. also used by landowners in Petersburg and Norfolk.   Byrd had complained in 1727 that he would have to lose money by turning over 50 acres of his land at the tobacco inspection point to create a town, in response to a bill for that purpose presented to the House of Burgesses. While he realized that he could profit from the sales, he was afraid that someone was pressing for the bill in order to set up a rival tobacco warehouse.  He soon after had lots laid out for sale at the towns of Richmond and  Manchester.

The planning of Petersburg is also often attributed to William Byrd II (1674-1744) and his surveyor friend William Mayo (1684-1744). Although Byrd owned an important store downriver from the falls and owned lots in the town of Petersburg, he had no other direct interest in the improvement of the land around Appomattox Point. The actuality of Byrd’s “founding” is less literal and more humorous. In 1733, William Byrd II and William Mayo, surveyor, left the Falls of the Appomattox, joined by John Banister, Robert Mumford, and Peter Jones IV to travel along the Trading Path on what Byrd named the "Journey to the Land of Eden" to survey land they had previously claimed on the Roanoke River. Byrd’s tract was named Blue Stone Castle after a blue stone found there in a creek bed “sufficient,” he said, “in quantity to build a large castle.” 

After he returned from a canoe tour of inspection to the modest overseer’s house at Blue Stone Castle, Byrd and “the company” discussed the potential value of laying out cities at the falls of Appomattox, on land owned by the Jones, and on the James, on land owned by Byrd. Byrd related that they metaphorically “laid the foundation of two large cities. One was at Shacco's, to be called Richmond, and the other was at the point of Appomattox river, to be named Petersburg. These Major Mayo offered to lay out into lots without fee or reward. The truth of it is, these two places being the uppermost landing of James and Appomattox rivers, are naturally intended for marts, where the traffic of the outer inhabitants must centre. Thus we did not build castles only [referring to his tract of land at Blue Stone Castle], but also cities in the air.” 

Within four years Richmond was actually laid out by Mayo on land just below the falls of the James. One year later, the smaller town called Petersburg was also platted, and although the exact circumstances are not clear, it does appear that Peter Jones IV returned from the trip determined to enlarge the settlement at the falls with a grid of lots. It is hard not to believe that the town is named for Peter Jones IV, given his ownership of the land. It is equally likely that the satirical William Byrd, in reference to the immense efforts of his near contemporary Peter the Great of Russia to built a great city in a much more swampy location, christened the new town as a jest based on his friend’s name.  All four of the companions on the Journey to Eden, with the exception of Mayo, purchased one or more lots in the town of Petersburg.    

Sketch of the Skirmish at Petersburg between the Royal Army... and the American Army, April 25th, 1781 [London : William Faddon, 1784]. Blandford is inaccurately shown extending into the Bollingbrook section across Lieutenant's Run.

The initial settlements at Appomattox were placed on the first terrace above the river, where the creeks were more easily forded. Streets were aligned with the river and related to the tobacco warehouses, mills, and other activities that supported the local economy (as seen in the 1783 map). Landings above the point made it easy to pull boats onshore. Wharfs were added later and extended the usefulness of the banks well beyond the original landings. Log canoes and, after the 1770s, light-weight batteaux brought tobacco down the river, but these would have all landed safely above the falls. 

An urban setting was necessary to foster and control a commercial economy. The colonial government had encouraged the creation of cities and towns through the seventeenth century with only limited success. 

By the second quarter of the eighteenth century, three major landowners developed provisional towns at the falls. These included Petersburg (by 1738), Blandford (by 1738), and Wittontown, later Pocahontas (by 1749), all placed close to the river’s edge. It seems possible that the marshy central area near the landing, purchased by county surveyor and tobacco merchant Robert Bolling II and named Bolling Brook, was also informally platted in the mid-eighteenth century. Unfortunately, Bolling’s use of ground rent and leases for his lot-holders and the loss of Dinwiddie County records, make its evolution opaque, but the 1781 British military map does seem to show several rows of buildings already built along Bollingbrook and Back Street, two years before the layout was officially recorded.

Copy of the plat of the town of Petersburg, 1738 from City of Petersburg Clerk's Office. View from north.

Copy of the plat of the town of Blandford, 1738 from City of Petersburg Clerk's Office. View from north.

Copy of the plat of the town of Wittontown (Pocahontas), by 1749 from City of Petersburg Clerk's Office. View from south.

Blandford was laid out in 1738 for William Poythress (1695-1763), brother of the Indian trader Peter Poythress. William’s wife, Sarah Eppes (1702-1750), was the daughter of Col. Francis Eppes, merchant of Bermuda Hundred. Poythress, who was from the part of Prince George to the east of Petersburg, acquired large grants of land in what was later Dinwiddie County and moved there before his death.  

The trading node at the falls became a major center in the international tobacco trade when the colonial government established warehouses there for the collection and inspection of the cash crop beginning in 1730.  George Washington said that 1/3 of the tobacco in North America came through Petersburg. In 1762, a petition to expand the town indicated that it “had very greatly increased, and become a place of considerable trade.” 

Petersburg and Blandford, for which only copies of the original plats survive, were unofficially laid out in lots by their owners, as were a number of other early Virginia towns. They may have been professionally surveyed by Robert Bolling, although William Mayo, Goochland County surveyor, had offered to do so for free in 1733. While Petersburg was made up of generous one-acre lots lining the single main street, Blandford and Pocahontas were composed of the standard half-acre lots. 

Copy of the plat of Gillfield, before 1784, from the City of Petersburg Clerk's Office

Each town was laid out along a main road. The road that became Water Street in Petersburg was likely the route used to roll hogsheads of tobacco down from boats and farms above the falls.   Church Road in Blandford was not only the route to the church, but the road to South Key and other lands to the southeast (later developed as the Jerusalem Plank Road). Witttentown (Pocahontas) was laid out at the north end of the bridge over the river just off the main road to Richmond. It was the site, beginning in 1722 of the prosperous tobacco warehouse of John Bolling, great-grandson of Pocahontas, for whom the town was named years later. William Byrd II is thought to have said that Bolling enjoyed "all the profits of an immense trade with his countrymen, and of one still greater with the Indian."

As time passed, additional “towns,” including New Petersburg (1762) and New Blandford (1769) coalesced along these roads leading out of the falls area. Some of these, including Ravenscroft and Gillfield (both laid out before 1784), were clearly speculative and took an additional century to realize their promise. Gillfield eventually became the center of one of the South’s largest and most prosperous free Black community.

Copy of the plat of New Blandford, before 1784, from the City of Petersburg Clerk's Office

In 1783, however, a plat for the Bolling land (by now in the hands of Robert Bolling III) was recorded, filling in the missing center. Within a few years, the entire urban area was incorporated as the self-governing borough of Petersburg with Bollingbrook at its center. 

Continue to Part Three