(Editor’s note: This is the second in a series of background stories submitted by the organizers of Urbanna Founders Day, which was officially celebrated Saturday, Aug. 1.)
by Paul Malone and Barbara Lovelace –
Urbanna’s origins are full of drama and contention. It’s a tale that needs to be told!
Although a port town to be built on Wormeley Creek was authorized in 1680, the actual establishment of a functioning town was delayed by a decades-long stalemate between Colonel Ralph Wormeley II — the most powerful man in Virginia — who actively resisted founding the town, and Maj. Robert Beverley and Col. Christopher Robinson, who pushed for actually building the town. With the death of Maj. Beverley in 1687, followed by the death of Col. Robinson in 1693, it appeared that the issue of a town was dead for sure. But then, Ralph Wormeley II’s death in 1691 opened the door for possible progress in building a town. A rocky start, to be sure.
Following the deaths of these three senior protagonists, the sons of Maj. Beverley (Captain Harry Beverley) and Col. Robinson (the Honorable John Robinson and Col. Christopher Robinson II) continued their fathers’ alliance to create a town. Hopes were rising.
These young supporters of building a town – or true founders — were successful in their own right and had become powerful forces of change. And yet it still took five more years of very hard work by these sons of our leading families to bring the town to reality.
Their aim was to establish a real town, not just one on paper. In 1702, our three young town supporters gathered the needed signatures on a petition and presented it to the county court asking that they be appointed officers to attempt to revive the town. A town is looking good.
But wait. There were powerful opponents to their petition. Corbin, Kemp and Churchill, three of the most powerful planter-merchants in the county at that time, staunchly opposed this effort. Churchill had earlier fought long and hard against the building of a road to the potential town, and he had successfully stopped a public landing there.
The matter raged in Middlesex courts for some time amid passionate yeas and nays; however, in the end, proponents of a town won. Our three true founders were appointed officers by the county court to revive the town.
But the battle was not over yet. Appeals to the Williamsburg courts by Churchill and Ralph Wormeley III arose, but the court ruled and did not stop the building of a road across their property — or stop the town.
Finally, after approval of yet another port act, the Port Act of 1706, the town was officially created and named the “Burgh of Urbanna,” and by 1708 23 lots were sold in town, and construction of homes and stores began in earnest. Urbanna was finally a reality.
The concerns of Ralph Wormeley II that a town would somehow change the old ways of life in Middlesex proved to be justified. Over the next 50 years, Urbanna grew as a port town with tobacco as its life’s blood. It had tobacco warehouses, taverns, a Scottish factor store, and it would eventually become the county seat. Throughout the county, planter-merchants would gradually disappear, as larger and better stocked stores were located in the town.
Capt. Harry Beverley (1669-1730), the Honorable John Robinson (1683-1749) and Col. Christopher Robinson II (1681-1727) finally brought their real town to fruition and it became the legal and commercial center of the area for over a century.
The town that almost wasn’t, was.
(Sentinel Reporter Larry Chowning contributed to this story. For more background, check out his “Signatures in Time” book.)
