History of Hampton and Elizabeth City County, Virginia

Dear old Hampton, with its colonial, Revolutionary, 1812, and Civil War memories, has endured and survived much. We of the present Hampton, we who love this old place either because it is our home by inheritance or adoption must carry on and remember that we are its guardians and makers and that the Hampton of the future will be the sort of place we are making it today.

With a deep and abiding love for the place of his birth and a keen interest in her welfare the first steps were taken by Hunter E. Booker, youngest son of Major and Mrs. George Booker, of Sherwood estate, now Langley Field, Elizabeth City County, who brought to the attention of his fellow towns and countrymen his wish that a history of Hampton be compiled as a matter of civic concern.

In accord with this viewpoint the Retail Merchants Association of Hampton gave the money for this project and the history was written by Dr. Lyon G. Tyler, eminent Virginia genealogist and former President of the College of William and Mary.

With commendable public spirit the Board of Supervisors of Elizabeth City County made up of Messrs. W. R. Rawlins, A. L. Dixon, Hunter R. Booker, as members, and H. H. Holt, clerk, made an appropriation for the publication of this history.

 

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There are few more picturesque regions in the world than the Peninsula on which the town of Hampton is situated. The wealth of water scenery is of mingled advantage and beauty. On the east, parallel to the coast line of the ocean, stretches the noble basin of the Chesapeake Bay twenty miles wide. On the north are the blue waters of the magnificent York River, and on the south is the great bay called Hampton Roads, into which the rushing James pours its yellow tide. The land is a fertile, sandy, alluvial and remarkably level, and the landscape is beautiful with the silvery windings of Back River, Hampton River, Mill Creek and Harris' Creek.