Changes

In 2016 New Kent County was one of top 10 fastest growing counties in Virginia. That fact has been reported on by the County and in the local press.

What is less well know is, that based on growth from 2015 to 2016, New Kent for that time was the 29th fastest growing county IN THE UNITED STATES.¹

There are currently 3,142 counties(or equivalents e.g. parishes, districts, independent cities) in the United States. That would place New Kent within the top 1%.


¹ "Resident Population Estimates for the 100 Fastest Growing U.S. Counties with 10,000 or More Population in 2015: July 1, 2015 to July 1, 2016"
-U.S. Census Bureau, Population Division- March 2017

Virginia Population Increases 2010-2016

Top 11 Localities by percentage population increase . . .

Locality	2010 Pop.	2016 Pop.	Increase	%
Loudon County	312,311	385,327	73,016	23.4%
Falls Church City	12,332	14,123	1,791	14.5%
Arlington County	207,627	236,691	29,064	14.0%
Alexandria City	139,966	159,464	19,498	13.9%
New Kent County	18,429	20,895	2,466	13.4%
Prince William County	402,002	448,050	46,048	11.5%
Fredericksburg City	24,286	27,025	2,739	11.3%
Harrisonburg City	48,914	54,224	5,310	10.9%
Manassas Park City	14,273	15,802	1,529	10.7%
Manassas City	37,821	41,616	3,795	10.0%
Stafford County	128,961	141,915	12,954	10.0%

-Cooper Center Estimates/ July 1, 2016 Estimates

Charles City County Courthouse Named

At its December 2016 meeting the Charles City Board of Supervisors vote unanimously to name the Charles City Courthouse after Iona Whitehead Adkins. Mrs. Adkins was Charles City's first African-American Clerk of Circuit Court and the only African-American serving in that position at the time. She served from 1968 until her retirement in 1988. Iona Adkins passed away in 2004 at the age of 79. 

Iona W. Adkins defeated  the incumbent clerk, Hudson Binns, in 1967. She received 1,188 votes to Binn's 552- Charles City at that time had under 2,600 registered voters.  

Mrs. Adkins is recognized as the first African-American woman to be elected a county clerk in America since Reconstruction. I personally can find no record of any African-American holding the position of Clerk in Virginia before her, during Reconstruction or later.  Edwin P. McCabe was elected a county clerk of Graham County, Kansas in 1881. John Mercer Langston was elected clerk of the small town of Brownhelm, Ohio in 1855 becoming probably the first African-American office holder in the United States- he later returned to his native Virginia after the Civil War where he was elected to Congress.

Historical Markers in the News

From the New Kent Historical Society . . .

The Department of Historical Resources (DHR) will be replacing and updating two older markers in New Kent County;  

(1) New Kent Courthouse WO-16

  

(2) Peninsular Campaign WO-31.  

VDOT notified the DHR that the markers are in need of replacement, and VDOT has some funds on hand to support this work. 

In other "marker news", a new marker for the Highway Marker Program has been approved for King William County . . .

Pamunkey Indians in the Civil War 

Residents of the Pamunkey Reservation, ten miles southeast of here, aided Union troops during the Civil War. About a dozen Pamunkey men enlisted as guides, scouts, gunboat pilots, and spies for Maj. Gen. George B. McClellan’s Army of the Potomac during the Peninsula Campaign in 1862. Women and the elderly provided intelligence, shelter, safe passage, food, and supplies for Union troops. Confederate authorities pressed Pamunkey men into service as laborers and punished others for their Unionism with imprisonment at Richmond’s Castle Thunder. After the war many Pamunkey Indians won compensation from the federal Southern Claims Commission for property damaged or taken by Union soldiers. 

Sponsor: DHR
Locality: King William County
Proposed Location: intersection of King William Rd (Rt. 30) and Powhatan Trail (Rt. 633)

And for some more background on the Historical Marker program here is a 2011 thesis from Joseph D. Bayless III.

Hunting: Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow

The forests in the vicinity of New Kent Courthouse, always a famous resort for deer, are said to be filled with this favorite game to a greater extent the present season than ever. Large numbers have fallen at the crack of the huntsman's rifle, and a day or two since one expert killed two at once with a double hand gun.

-Alexandria Gazette, 29 Aug. 1867


This year marks the 100th Anniversary of the founding of the Virginia Department of Game & Inland Fisheries.

"Up until that point, hunting had been considered the right of every person in the state with no fees or bag limits. Now, knowledge of these new rules and regulations needed to be disseminated to the general public and new permits and licenses enforced.

Wardens were hired for every county in the Commonwealth from a list of  'suitable persons' selected and delivered by the town councils. Such willing individuals were provided 'with badges, copies of the game laws, application blanks for hunters’ licenses, notices to hunters to be posted in their counties, and … advised to travel their territories as much as possible.' "*

New Kent has always been one of the outstanding hunting counties of the Commonwealth, not merely in 1867 but down to this day. In May of this year the Department purchased some 2,600 acres in the county in the area of Ware Creek for a new Wildlife Management Area.



*- "A Brief History of Terrestrial Game Species Management in Virginia: 1900 – Present"
      Banisteria, Number 41, 2013 Virginia Natural History Society

Three Historical Markers for Cumberland Landing

At the historic Cumberland Platation at Cumberland Landing, New Kent County, Thursday, October 6, three new markers were dedicated by the Virginia Department of Historic Resources.
Speakers were:

Camilla Tramuel, President New Kent Historical Society; Kent Radwani, local historian; Mark Daniels, local historian; Julie Langan, Department of Historic Resources; John Poindexter, owner of Cumberland Plantation.

McClellan's Camp at Cumberland Landing- WO-23

French Cannon at Cumberland Landing- WO-22
(See also April 1847 issue of Southern Literary Messenger)

Cumberland Town- WO-21

Very exciting news . . .

"Nearly 300 pages of Charles City County records that were pilfered by Union soldiers during the Civil War have returned to Virginia — filling in some of the blanks on wills, deeds and other court filings from the 1600s.

It’s a godsend, an absolute godsend,” said John Metz, deputy of collections and programs at the Library of Virginia. “I’m a historian. This is the kind of thing we live for.”

The records of Charles City County figured in big city news 154 years ago also . . .

At 8 o'clock A.M., the head of the column halted at Charles City Court-House, the old county seat, where half an hour was spent in preparing and eating the morning meal. All the city there is here consists of the two buildings constituting the Court-House and Clerk's Office, which contained the county records. There is an old hotel building on the opposite side of the road, with a wide-spreading porch, whose frameless windows and vacant doorways testify that it was long since abandoned to the owls and bats.

The Court-House is a very old structure, built of brick and covered with slate. It was erected during the last half of the seventeenth century, and contains the oldest records of any other county in the State. I regret to say that all these old books, with the records of real estate titles and other papers, which must be of great value to the country, have been wantonly scattered in confusion about the premises' covering the floors and dooryards, and are almost wholly destroyed. A more impressive exhibition of the destructive effects of war could scarcely be imagined, than to see those old and cherished books of record and title papers scattered to the winds or trodden under foot. Some portion of these records date back to 1600 and 1675, and exhibit some neat and masterly specimens of penmanship. Charcoal caricatures, of fierce and mustachoed horsemen, ornamented the whitewashed walls, evidently intended to counterfeit some cavalry officer of the German persuasion. The premises are thickly overgrown with rank weeds, and neglect and decay are stamped on everything around. I cannot persuade myself that New-England soldiers would be guilty of such vandalism.

-New York Times, August 20, 1862

Charles City Courthouse 1864

The Washington Papers . . . on tour

I don't always link to Facebook pages . . . but when I do it's the Washington Papers.

Seen here on their tour of sites in New Kent County associated with the life of George Washington.


 

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