Bermuda Hundred was the first incorporated town in the English colony of Virginia. It was founded by Sir Thomas Dale in 1613, six years after Jamestown. At the southwestern edge of the confluence of the Appomattox and James Rivers opposite City Point, annexed to Hopewell, Virginia in 1923, Bermuda Hundred was a port town for many years. The terminology "Bermuda Hundred" also included a large area adjacent to the town. In the colonial era, "hundreds" were large developments of many acres, arising from the English term to define an area which would support one hundred homesteads. The port at the town of Bermuda Hundred was intended to serve other "hundreds" in addition to Bermuda Hundred.
The area of the peninsula between the James and Appomattox rivers on which Bermuda Hundred is located was part of the Bermuda Hundred Campaign during the American Civil War (1861–1865).
No longer a shipping port, it is a small community in the southeastern portion of Chesterfield County, Virginia.
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The town of Bermuda Hundred was settled by the English in 1613 by Sir Thomas Dale, and was incorporated the following year. The town, described as a fishing village, was situated "on the peninsula at the confluence of the Appomattox and James rivers, southeast of Richmond, and northeast of Petersburg."
Sir Thomas Dale, who served as Governor of Virginia for about three months in 1611, and from 1614–1616, hoped to replace the settlement of Jamestown in a more suitable location a few miles from the town of Bermuda Hundred at Henricus.
Governor Dale initially named the location across the Appomattox River from the town of Bermuda Hundred as "Bermuda Cittie" (sic). The latter was later renamed Charles City Point, and eventually just City Point, before it was annexed by the independent city of Hopewell in 1923. Some sources indicate that Dale called the entire region "New Bermuda" after the island.
Bermuda Hundred was named for Bermuda, which became part of the Virginia Colony for a few years after the shipwreck of the ill-starred Sea Venture, the new flagship of the Virginia Company of London. With most of the leaders and supplies aboard the Sea Venture, it was leading the Third Supply mission from England to Jamestown in 1609 when the eight ships ran into a major storm. What was thought to be a hurricane separated them. The new caulking on the Sea Venture caused it to take on water. After the crew fought the storm and bailed water from the holds for three days, the Admiral of the fleet, Sir George Somers, drove the foundering ship onto a reef of the uninhabited archipelago which became known as Bermuda, saving the 150 passengers and crew (and one dog) aboard. Among these were the newly-appointed Governor, future Governor Sir George Yeardley, Sir Thomas Gates, Vice-Admiral Christopher Newport, and future authors William Strachey and Samuel Jordan, as well as John Rolfe, who would later marry Pocahontas.
The fate of the Sea Venture was unknown until the following year. The rest of the fleet sailed on to Jamestown, delivering hundreds of additional colonists. They had little in the way of food, supplies, or leaders, all of which had been principally carried on the Sea Venture. Samuel Argall, the Captain of one of the other ships, delivered his passengers and what supplies he had, and hurried back to England to advise of the dire situation at Jamestown.
The lack of food and supplies combined with additional colonists, weak leadership, and several other factors to cause over 80% of the 500 colonists at Jamestown to perish during what came to be called the "starving time" between the fall of 1609 and the spring of 1610.
Meanwhile, the survivors on Bermuda used salvaged parts of the shipwreck and native materials to build two new, smaller ships, the Deliverance and Patience. Most set sail for Jamestown ten months later, leaving several men to establish possession of Bermuda. It would remain permanently settled, and Virginia's boundaries were extended in 1612 to include Bermuda. In 1615, Bermuda, also known as the Somers Isles (after Admiral Somers), was transferred to a new company formed by the same shareholders, the Somers Isles Company, which oversaw it 'til 1684, when the Crown revoked the company's charter. Bermuda and Virginia continued to maintain close links, although there was no possibility of Bermuda joining Virginia and the other mainland colonies in their 1776 rebellion, and Bermuda remains part of the United Kingdom. Bermudians settled in North America in large numbers in the 17th and 18th Centuries, and many places on the continent are named for the archipelago.
Among the colonists who survived the shipwreck of the Sea Venture at Bermuda and sailed to Virginia was John Rolfe. At Bermuda Hundred, he cultivated and exported several non-native strains of tobacco, providing the proprietary Colony with a crucial cash crop to export. Bermuda Hundred became a major shipping point for hogsheads of tobacco grown on plantations nearby.
Rolfe became wealthy, and lived at Bermuda Hundred for a time. He is believed to have been living at a plantation at or near Bermuda Hundred at the time of the Indian Massacre of 1622 which destroyed Henricus and the Falling Creek Ironworks upstream on the James River. Although records indicate that he died in 1622, it is not known if he was a victim of the widespread coordinated attacks of the Powhatan Confederacy, which killed one third of the colonists.
The Bermuda Hundred Campaign was a series of battles fought in the vicinity of the town during May 1864, in the American Civil War. Union Maj. Gen. Benjamin Butler, commanding the Army of the James, threatened Richmond from the east, but was stopped by Confederate forces under Gen. P.G.T. Beauregard.
After the American Civil War, a narrow gauge railroad, the Farmville and Powhatan Railroad, later renamed the Tidewater and Western Railroad, was built from the headwaters of the Appomattox River at the town of Farmville through Cumberland, Powhatan, and Chesterfield counties to reach Bermuda Hundred. The narrow gauge railroad did not generate sufficient traffic. Like another railway about 15 miles downstream at Claremont, the railroad and port facilities were largely abandoned by the Great Depression.
In modern times, Bermuda Hundred is settled by approximately four families: the McWilliams, the Hewletts, the Johnsons, and a Gray.
Established circa 1850, the Baptist church was built in the Greek Revival style with a symmetrical three-bay, gable-front facade on land that served as the market square of the town. The land on which the church sits was the southside chapel of the 17th-century Varina Parish and the main church of Bristol Parish. The whites who established the church required enslaved and free blacks to sit in the balcony. Before the war, white congregants formed the Southern Baptists, separating from the national association over the issue of slavery. The white congregants went on to form what is presently known as Enon Baptist Church, a religiously conservative Southern Baptist congregation.
After the Civil War, freedmen split from the minority white congregation to be independent of their supervision. As the larger congregation, they took over the First Baptist Church and developed a thriving worshiping community. This religious community generated several black Baptist congregations in Chesterfield County and Hopewell. First Baptist Church Bermuda Hundred has nurtured leading African-American ministers, who have gone on to serve diverse roles in church and society. One was noted in 2010 by Ebony Magazine.
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