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Old Point Comfort

March 09, 2024

Old Point Comfort is a point of land located in the independent city of Hampton, Virginia. Previously known as Point Comfort, it lies at the extreme tip of the Virginia Peninsula at the mouth of Hampton Roads in the United States. It was renamed Old Point Comfort to differentiate it from New Point Comfort 21 miles (34 km) up the Chesapeake Bay.[1] A group of enslaved Africans was brought to colonial Virginia at this point in 1619. Today the location is home to Continental Park and Fort Monroe National Monument.

History edit

17th and 18th centuries edit

 
Old Point Comfort, c. 1900

For more than 400 years, Point Comfort served as a maritime navigational landmark and military stronghold.

According to a combination of old records and legend, the name derived from an incident when the Jamestown settlers first arrived. Captain Christopher Newport's flagship, Susan Constant, anchored nearby on 28 April 1607. Members of the crew "rowed to a point where they found a channel which put them in good comfort".[2][3] They named the adjacent land Cape Comfort.[1]

Point Comfort formed the beginning of the boundary of the Colony of Virginia. The Second Charter of the Virginia Company, granted in 1609, gave the company:

all those Lands, Countries, and Territories, situate, lying, and being in that Part of America, called Virginia, from the pointe of lande called Cape or Pointe Comfort all alonge the seacoste to the northward two hundred miles and from the said pointe of Cape Comfort all alonge the sea coast to the southward twoe hundred miles; and all that space and circuit of lande lieinge from the sea coaste of the precinct aforesaid upp unto the lande, throughoute, from sea to sea, west and northwest . . .[4]

Because of the ambiguity as to which line was to run west and which northwest, the charter gave the Virginia Company either about 80,000 square miles (210,000 km2) of eastern North America, or about one-third of the entire continent, extending to the Pacific Ocean.[5] The Colony of Virginia chose the interpretation which gave it the larger area, and the Commonwealth of Virginia continued to claim much of the Ohio Valley, and beyond, until after the American Revolution. It relinquished its claims to the Northwest Territory only in 1784, allowing them to become the state of Kentucky in 1790. Kentucky was officially admitted as a state on June 1, 1792.

In August 1619, the First Africans in Virginia arrived in what was then known as the Colony of Virginia (although the first people of direct African descent on mainland North America were enslaved by a Spanish colony in South Carolina in 1526,[6][7] and the first recorded birth with direct African ancestry took place in Florida in 1606[8]). Those enslaved arrived in the White Lion, a privateer owned by Robert Rich, 2nd Earl of Warwick, but flying a Dutch flag, which docked at Point Comfort. The approximately 20 Africans had been enslaved during a war fought by Portugal and some local African allies,[9] against the Kingdom of Ndongo, in modern Angola, and had been taken off a Portuguese slave ship, the São João Bautista.[10][11]

In 1665, Colonel Miles Cary, a member of the Virginia Governor's Council, was assigned to place armaments at the fort during heightened tensions resulting from the Second Anglo-Dutch War. Cary was hit by a cannonball from a Dutch frigate, and died of those wounds on June 10, 1667.[12]

19th century edit

 
Old Dominion Steamship Company New York to Chesapeake Bay Ports advertisement, March 19, 1898

The lighthouse was captured by the British during the War of 1812, when a Royal Navy fleet sailed into the Chesapeake. After their futile attempt to seize the town of Norfolk, the British landed at Old Point Comfort and used the lighthouse tower as an observation post. From there they invaded and captured Hampton on June 25, 1813. Afterwards, they routed an American force at Bladensburg before marching on to capture and burn Washington, D.C. in retaliation for the American destruction of York.[13]

Construction on Fort Monroe began in 1819 and it was first garrisoned in 1823, though construction continued for nearly 25 years afterwards.[14] Initially named Fortress Monroe, it was officially renamed as a fort in 1832, though it has often been called by the original name ever since.[15] During the Marquis de LaFayette's famous trip to the United States in 1824-1825, the Marquis admired the Old Point Comfort stronghold which had been designed by French born engineer Simon Bernard.[16]

In the 19th and first half of the 20th centuries Old Point Comfort served as the terminus and connection point for passenger and express freight ships connecting cities of Chesapeake Bay by both water and rail routes with Boston, New York and along the southeastern coast.[17][18] A steamship service example was the Baltimore Steamship Packet Company's Old Bay Line. Old Point Comfort was a stop on a Norfolk-Old Point Comfort-Baltimore circuit.[19]

20th century edit

Rail lines, including the New York, Philadelphia and Norfolk Railroad, provided rail car through ferry service from Old Point Comfort to Cape Charles on the Eastern Shore of Virginia, across the Chesapeake Bay. At Cape Charles, land route connections to points north could be made with the New York, Philadelphia and Norfolk Railroad (and its successor parent company, the Pennsylvania Railroad) on the eastern peninsula to Wilmington, Delaware and Philadelphia.[17][20] The Zero Mile Post for the Chesapeake and Ohio Railway is also here, and represents the end of the line from which all main line distances were measured between Fort Monroe and Cincinnati.[21] The station at Fort Monroe closed in 1939.[22] And the Zero Mile Post was shifted north to Phoebus.[23]

For most of the 19th and 20th centuries, Old Point Comfort was a summer and winter resort in the town of Phoebus in Elizabeth City County. Old Point Comfort is the location of historic Fort Monroe, The Chamberlin, and the Old Point Comfort Light.[24]

The pier that was used by government vessels as well as being a routine stopping point for commercial shipping lines was government owned. In 1952 the residents of both the town and county voted to be consolidated with the independent city of Hampton.[24]

On November 12, 1959, the Army issued notice it was closing the pier and that it would be removed. On January 2, 1960 the Army announced the pier would be open only "at your own risk" to visitors from shore, including guest of the Chamberlin Hotel that overlooked the pier, but closed to boat traffic and travelers. Steamship travel had declined after World War II and the last line using the Old Point Comfort stop was the Baltimore Steam Packet Company operating as the Old Bay Line. The line's City of Richmond made the last stop at the pier December 30, 1959. Despite a court injunction based on the terms under which Virginia ceded the land to the Federal Government in 1821 the pier was destroyed after federal courts overruled the injunction. The pier was demolished by the end of May 1961.[25]

Old Point Comfort was the site in 1909 where Southern Baptists and Northern Baptists inaugurated negotiations toward a comity agreement.[26][27]

It was near Old Point Comfort that the USS Missouri (BB-63), then the only U.S. battleship in commission, was proceeding seaward on a training mission from Hampton Roads early on January 17, 1950 when she ran aground 1.6 miles (3.0 km) from Thimble Shoal Light,(near Old Point Comfort. She hit shoal water a distance of three ship-lengths from the main channel. Lifted some seven feet above waterline, she stuck hard and fast. With the aid of tugboats, pontoons, and an incoming tide, she was refloated on 1 February 1950 and repaired.[28]

References edit

  1. ^ a b "New Point Comfort". InterMarket Advertising. Retrieved February 4, 2011.
  2. ^ "Virginia, A Guide to the Old Dominion, (1952), pg.483, By Federal Writers' Project
  3. ^ Encyclopædia Britannica, 11th Edition, Search.com
  4. ^ The Second Virginia Charter (May 23, 1609)
  5. ^ Boundaries and Charters of Virginia. Accessed 2010.08.27.
  6. ^ Peck, Douglas T. (2001). "Lucas Vásquez de Ayllón's Doomed Colony of San Miguel de Gualdape". The Georgia Historical Quarterly. 85 (2): 183–198. ISSN 0016-8297. JSTOR 40584407.
  7. ^ Milanich, Jerald T. (2018). Florida Indians and the Invasion from Europe. Gainesville: Library Press at UF. ISBN 978-1-947372-45-0. OCLC 1021804892.
  8. ^ "Civil Rights in Colonial St. Augustine (U.S. National Park Service)". www.nps.gov. Retrieved August 7, 2020.
  9. ^ Painter, Nell Irvin. (2006). Creating Black Americans: African-American history and its meanings, 1619 to the present. New York: Oxford University Press. pp. 23-24. ISBN 0-19-513755-8. OCLC 57722517.
  10. ^ Deetz, Kelley Fanto (August 13, 2019). . National Geographic. Archived from the original on August 20, 2019. Retrieved May 18, 2021.
  11. ^ Waxman, Olivia B. (August 20, 2019). "The First Africans in Virginia Landed in 1619. It Was a Turning Point for Slavery in American History—But Not the Beginning". Time. Retrieved May 18, 2021.
  12. ^ "Miles Cary". Virginia Humanities. Retrieved August 2, 2019.
  13. ^ "Old Point Comfort, VA". LighthouseFriends.com. Retrieved February 4, 2011.
  14. ^ "Fort Monroe During the Civil War". Kenmore Stamp Company. Retrieved February 4, 2011.
  15. ^ "Hampton Roads Area - Fort Monroe". American Forts Network. Retrieved August 24, 2021.
  16. ^ Erickson, Mark St. John (October 22, 2014). "Hampton Roads swooned over Lafayette's 1824 return as a Revolutionary War icon". Daily Press. Retrieved March 6, 2018.
  17. ^ a b Allen, W.F. (1908). "Search results "Old Point Comfort"". Official Guide of the Railways and Steam Navigation Lines of the United States, Porto Rico, Canada, Mexico and Cuba. National Railway Publication Company. 40 (8). Retrieved October 11, 2014.
  18. ^ "Advertisements: Ocean Steamships". Brooklyn Daily Eagle. March 19, 1898. Retrieved October 11, 2014.
  19. ^ "Baltimore Steamship Packet Company". Official Guide of the Railways. National Railway Publication Company. 54 (1). January 1921.
  20. ^ "Pennsylvania Railroad, Table 78". Official Guide of the Railways. National Railway Publication Company. 78 (12). May 1946.
  21. ^ "Chesapeake and Ohio Railway, Table 2". Official Guide of the Railways. National Railway Publication Company. 54 (1). January 1921.
  22. ^ "The Zero Mile Post Historical Marker". www.hmdb.org. Retrieved October 7, 2019.
  23. ^ "Chesapeake and Ohio Railway, Table 1". Official Guide of the Railways. National Railway Publication Company. 72 (10). March 1940.
  24. ^ a b Old Point Comfort Resort: Hospitality, Health and History on Virginia's Chesapeake Bay. By John V. Quarstein, Julie Steere Clevenger
  25. ^ Brown, Alexander Crosby (1961). Steam Packets on the Chesapeake. Cambridge, Maryland: Tidewater Publishers. pp. 135–138. ISBN 0-87033-111-6. LCCN 61012580. Retrieved August 29, 2019.
  26. ^ "Southern Baptists Nationwide". Cooperative Program and the Annie Armstrong Easter Offering, North American Mission Board, SBC. Retrieved February 4, 2011.[permanent dead link]
  27. ^ William H. Brackney, Baptists in North America: an historical perspective, (2006), p. 70
  28. ^ "USS Missouri (BB-63), Grounding, January 1950", US Navy History, Accessed 2010.8.27.

External links edit

  • Old Point Comfort lighthouse, Lighthouse Friends Website
  • Miles Cary Profile, Encyclopedia Virginia
  • Photo, overview of pier from Chamberlin Hotel roof with City of Norfolk arriving
  • Photo, Old Bay Line's City of Richmond making last stop at Old Point Comfort pier

37°00′02″N 76°18′41″W / 37.00056°N 76.31139°W / 37.00056; -76.31139

March 09, 2024
point, comfort, point, land, located, independent, city, hampton, virginia, previously, known, point, comfort, lies, extreme, virginia, peninsula, mouth, hampton, roads, united, states, renamed, differentiate, from, point, comfort, miles, chesapeake, group, en. Old Point Comfort is a point of land located in the independent city of Hampton Virginia Previously known as Point Comfort it lies at the extreme tip of the Virginia Peninsula at the mouth of Hampton Roads in the United States It was renamed Old Point Comfort to differentiate it from New Point Comfort 21 miles 34 km up the Chesapeake Bay 1 A group of enslaved Africans was brought to colonial Virginia at this point in 1619 Today the location is home to Continental Park and Fort Monroe National Monument Contents 1 History 1 1 17th and 18th centuries 1 2 19th century 1 3 20th century 2 References 3 External linksHistory edit17th and 18th centuries edit nbsp Old Point Comfort c 1900For more than 400 years Point Comfort served as a maritime navigational landmark and military stronghold According to a combination of old records and legend the name derived from an incident when the Jamestown settlers first arrived Captain Christopher Newport s flagship Susan Constant anchored nearby on 28 April 1607 Members of the crew rowed to a point where they found a channel which put them in good comfort 2 3 They named the adjacent land Cape Comfort 1 Point Comfort formed the beginning of the boundary of the Colony of Virginia The Second Charter of the Virginia Company granted in 1609 gave the company all those Lands Countries and Territories situate lying and being in that Part of America called Virginia from the pointe of lande called Cape or Pointe Comfort all alonge the seacoste to the northward two hundred miles and from the said pointe of Cape Comfort all alonge the sea coast to the southward twoe hundred miles and all that space and circuit of lande lieinge from the sea coaste of the precinct aforesaid upp unto the lande throughoute from sea to sea west and northwest 4 Because of the ambiguity as to which line was to run west and which northwest the charter gave the Virginia Company either about 80 000 square miles 210 000 km2 of eastern North America or about one third of the entire continent extending to the Pacific Ocean 5 The Colony of Virginia chose the interpretation which gave it the larger area and the Commonwealth of Virginia continued to claim much of the Ohio Valley and beyond until after the American Revolution It relinquished its claims to the Northwest Territory only in 1784 allowing them to become the state of Kentucky in 1790 Kentucky was officially admitted as a state on June 1 1792 In August 1619 the First Africans in Virginia arrived in what was then known as the Colony of Virginia although the first people of direct African descent on mainland North America were enslaved by a Spanish colony in South Carolina in 1526 6 7 and the first recorded birth with direct African ancestry took place in Florida in 1606 8 Those enslaved arrived in the White Lion a privateer owned by Robert Rich 2nd Earl of Warwick but flying a Dutch flag which docked at Point Comfort The approximately 20 Africans had been enslaved during a war fought by Portugal and some local African allies 9 against the Kingdom of Ndongo in modern Angola and had been taken off a Portuguese slave ship the Sao Joao Bautista 10 11 In 1665 Colonel Miles Cary a member of the Virginia Governor s Council was assigned to place armaments at the fort during heightened tensions resulting from the Second Anglo Dutch War Cary was hit by a cannonball from a Dutch frigate and died of those wounds on June 10 1667 12 19th century edit nbsp Old Dominion Steamship Company New York to Chesapeake Bay Ports advertisement March 19 1898The lighthouse was captured by the British during the War of 1812 when a Royal Navy fleet sailed into the Chesapeake After their futile attempt to seize the town of Norfolk the British landed at Old Point Comfort and used the lighthouse tower as an observation post From there they invaded and captured Hampton on June 25 1813 Afterwards they routed an American force at Bladensburg before marching on to capture and burn Washington D C in retaliation for the American destruction of York 13 Construction on Fort Monroe began in 1819 and it was first garrisoned in 1823 though construction continued for nearly 25 years afterwards 14 Initially named Fortress Monroe it was officially renamed as a fort in 1832 though it has often been called by the original name ever since 15 During the Marquis de LaFayette s famous trip to the United States in 1824 1825 the Marquis admired the Old Point Comfort stronghold which had been designed by French born engineer Simon Bernard 16 In the 19th and first half of the 20th centuries Old Point Comfort served as the terminus and connection point for passenger and express freight ships connecting cities of Chesapeake Bay by both water and rail routes with Boston New York and along the southeastern coast 17 18 A steamship service example was the Baltimore Steamship Packet Company s Old Bay Line Old Point Comfort was a stop on a Norfolk Old Point Comfort Baltimore circuit 19 20th century edit Rail lines including the New York Philadelphia and Norfolk Railroad provided rail car through ferry service from Old Point Comfort to Cape Charles on the Eastern Shore of Virginia across the Chesapeake Bay At Cape Charles land route connections to points north could be made with the New York Philadelphia and Norfolk Railroad and its successor parent company the Pennsylvania Railroad on the eastern peninsula to Wilmington Delaware and Philadelphia 17 20 The Zero Mile Post for the Chesapeake and Ohio Railway is also here and represents the end of the line from which all main line distances were measured between Fort Monroe and Cincinnati 21 The station at Fort Monroe closed in 1939 22 And the Zero Mile Post was shifted north to Phoebus 23 For most of the 19th and 20th centuries Old Point Comfort was a summer and winter resort in the town of Phoebus in Elizabeth City County Old Point Comfort is the location of historic Fort Monroe The Chamberlin and the Old Point Comfort Light 24 The pier that was used by government vessels as well as being a routine stopping point for commercial shipping lines was government owned In 1952 the residents of both the town and county voted to be consolidated with the independent city of Hampton 24 On November 12 1959 the Army issued notice it was closing the pier and that it would be removed On January 2 1960 the Army announced the pier would be open only at your own risk to visitors from shore including guest of the Chamberlin Hotel that overlooked the pier but closed to boat traffic and travelers Steamship travel had declined after World War II and the last line using the Old Point Comfort stop was the Baltimore Steam Packet Company operating as the Old Bay Line The line s City of Richmond made the last stop at the pier December 30 1959 Despite a court injunction based on the terms under which Virginia ceded the land to the Federal Government in 1821 the pier was destroyed after federal courts overruled the injunction The pier was demolished by the end of May 1961 25 Old Point Comfort was the site in 1909 where Southern Baptists and Northern Baptists inaugurated negotiations toward a comity agreement 26 27 It was near Old Point Comfort that the USS Missouri BB 63 then the only U S battleship in commission was proceeding seaward on a training mission from Hampton Roads early on January 17 1950 when she ran aground 1 6 miles 3 0 km from Thimble Shoal Light near Old Point Comfort She hit shoal water a distance of three ship lengths from the main channel Lifted some seven feet above waterline she stuck hard and fast With the aid of tugboats pontoons and an incoming tide she was refloated on 1 February 1950 and repaired 28 References edit a b New Point Comfort InterMarket Advertising Retrieved February 4 2011 Virginia A Guide to the Old Dominion 1952 pg 483 By Federal Writers Project Encyclopaedia Britannica 11th Edition Search com The Second Virginia Charter May 23 1609 Boundaries and Charters of Virginia Accessed 2010 08 27 Peck Douglas T 2001 Lucas Vasquez de Ayllon s Doomed Colony of San Miguel de Gualdape The Georgia Historical Quarterly 85 2 183 198 ISSN 0016 8297 JSTOR 40584407 Milanich Jerald T 2018 Florida Indians and the Invasion from Europe Gainesville Library Press at UF ISBN 978 1 947372 45 0 OCLC 1021804892 Civil Rights in Colonial St Augustine U S National Park Service www nps gov Retrieved August 7 2020 Painter Nell Irvin 2006 Creating Black Americans African American history and its meanings 1619 to the present New York Oxford University Press pp 23 24 ISBN 0 19 513755 8 OCLC 57722517 Deetz Kelley Fanto August 13 2019 400 years ago enslaved Africans first arrived in Virginia National Geographic Archived from the original on August 20 2019 Retrieved May 18 2021 Waxman Olivia B August 20 2019 The First Africans in Virginia Landed in 1619 It Was a Turning Point for Slavery in American History But Not the Beginning Time Retrieved May 18 2021 Miles Cary Virginia Humanities Retrieved August 2 2019 Old Point Comfort VA LighthouseFriends com Retrieved February 4 2011 Fort Monroe During the Civil War Kenmore Stamp Company Retrieved February 4 2011 Hampton Roads Area Fort Monroe American Forts Network Retrieved August 24 2021 Erickson Mark St John October 22 2014 Hampton Roads swooned over Lafayette s 1824 return as a Revolutionary War icon Daily Press Retrieved March 6 2018 a b Allen W F 1908 Search results Old Point Comfort Official Guide of the Railways and Steam Navigation Lines of the United States Porto Rico Canada Mexico and Cuba National Railway Publication Company 40 8 Retrieved October 11 2014 Advertisements Ocean Steamships Brooklyn Daily Eagle March 19 1898 Retrieved October 11 2014 Baltimore Steamship Packet Company Official Guide of the Railways National Railway Publication Company 54 1 January 1921 Pennsylvania Railroad Table 78 Official Guide of the Railways National Railway Publication Company 78 12 May 1946 Chesapeake and Ohio Railway Table 2 Official Guide of the Railways National Railway Publication Company 54 1 January 1921 The Zero Mile Post Historical Marker www hmdb org Retrieved October 7 2019 Chesapeake and Ohio Railway Table 1 Official Guide of the Railways National Railway Publication Company 72 10 March 1940 a b Old Point Comfort Resort Hospitality Health and History on Virginia s Chesapeake Bay By John V Quarstein Julie Steere Clevenger Brown Alexander Crosby 1961 Steam Packets on the Chesapeake Cambridge Maryland Tidewater Publishers pp 135 138 ISBN 0 87033 111 6 LCCN 61012580 Retrieved August 29 2019 Southern Baptists Nationwide Cooperative Program and the Annie Armstrong Easter Offering North American Mission Board SBC Retrieved February 4 2011 permanent dead link William H Brackney Baptists in North America an historical perspective 2006 p 70 USS Missouri BB 63 Grounding January 1950 US Navy History Accessed 2010 8 27 nbsp This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain Chisholm Hugh ed 1911 Old Point Comfort Encyclopaedia Britannica Vol 20 11th ed Cambridge University Press p 74 External links editOld Point Comfort lighthouse Lighthouse Friends Website Miles Cary Profile Encyclopedia Virginia Photo overview of pier from Chamberlin Hotel roof with City of Norfolk arriving Photo Old Bay Line s City of Richmond making last stop at Old Point Comfort pier 37 00 02 N 76 18 41 W 37 00056 N 76 31139 W 37 00056 76 31139 Retrieved from https en wikipedia org w index php title Old Point Comfort amp oldid 1177772062, wikipedia, wiki, book, books, library,

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