Peninsula In Passage

Pig Point - Colonial Plantation- Civil War Fort – U.S. Military Base-Community College Pig Point was a popular settling place. Francis Hough received 800 acres there in 1635 and John Perrott 900 acres in 1650. Thomas Burbage obtained 2000 acres between 1636 and 1648. Thomas Burbage was listed as a merchant and was transporting immigrants to the Virginia colony in exchange for headright grants at Pig Point. Wm. Wright and L. Ames appear as landowners on 1863 Civil War maps The United States Department of Army owned the property between 1917 and 1929 as the Pig Point Ordnance Depot. During World War I, the facility was used for munitions storage, shipment, classification, and destruction, handling up to 1300 tons of ammunition daily. In 1929, the name of the facility changed from Pig Point Ordnance Depot to Nansemond Ordnance Depot. During World War II, the facility supported operations at the Hampton Roads Port of Embarkation, including storage and transshipment of all types of ammunition overseas. It also received captured enemy munitions for processing and further shipment to other U.S. military facilities. Toward the end of the war, it was used as a distribution depot. Ammunition was reconditioned and loaded there as well. In April, 1945, the depot was charged with demobilization and destruction of unserviceable explosives, ammunition, and chemicals. In November 1950, the Department of the Navy took command and changed the name to the Marine Corps Supply Forwarding Annex. In June 1960, the federal government declared the facility excess. Of the original 975.3 acres, 5.87 acres were being used at that time by the State for road right-of-way. The remaining government property was conveyed to the Beazley Foundation Boys Academy, Crown-Granted Land Knott’s Neck Point was originally part of a 2,750-acre land grant to James Knott in 1635-1637. James Knott was a neighbor of the Bennett family who had huge land grants to the south and west of his plantation. Knott’s massive plantation lay between Bennett’s and Knott’s Creek. William L. Old, current owner of the property is a historian in his own right and shared his thoughts on the earliest farm owners. I believe that James Knott’s story is representative of a successful early Virginia settler and the story is quite interesting. He came over on the ship, George, at age 23. (Note that the George was the ship scheduled to bring Pocahontas back, but she died at Gravesend on the Thames.) He initially settled on the eastern shore in what is now Northampton County. In 1632, he acquired 50 acres at the mouth of the Hampton River for a ‘place of entertainment.’ then in 1635, he applied for and received land patent on 1200 acres between Knott’s Creek and Bennett creek. This patent was based on transportation to Virginia of his wife and 23 other persons… He renewed the patent in 1637 bringing the acres up to 1500. He and his wife, Elinor, had multiple children. He farmed in then “upper Norfolk,” i.e. Nansemond County, from 1635 -1651. There is evidence that he “was of the Puritans” who joined in a trek to the Maryland colony in 1652. He acquired 200 acres of land for a tobacco farm based on moving himself and son to St. Mary’s County (home of St. Mary’s city - the first settlement in Maryland.). There is evidence that he was friend of Lord Calvert, the Maryland governor. This to me is fascinating - as you know Richard Bennett was a Puritan sympathizer and replaced William Berkeley as Virginia Governor during the later Cromwell years. Thus, Richard Bennett and James Knott were not only close neighbors, but also both Puritan sympathizers. It is ironic that Knott would have moved to a Roman Catholic colony and befriended the catholic Calvert family, for, as you know, one of the big complaints of the Cromwell parliamentarians was the Catholic leanings of Charles I and his wife. Or, did maybe Knott

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