Urbanna was tobacco trading center in 1600s

(Editor’s note: This is the third in a series of background stories submitted as part of Urbanna Founders Day, which was Aug. 1.)

by Larry Chowning – 

Virginia history often highlights Bacon’s Rebellion of 1676 led by the notorious Nathaniel Bacon against Gov. William Berkeley, but very little is mentioned of the Virginia Tobacco Cutting Rebellion in fall and winter of 1681.   

The circumstances surrounding the second rebellion are tied to the creation of the Town of Urbanna and 18 other towns in the state.

Middlesex County’s colonial tobacco economy was tied to international trade. Since the 1660s, the price paid to planters for the county’s sweet-scented tobacco had been declining.

Prior to this, Dutch merchants and ships participated in the buying and selling of colonists’ tobacco, which had expanded to the mainland of Europe. The English, wanting complete control over the market, began to enforce Navigation Acts against the Dutch in the early 1660s to limit their access to the trade.

When Dutch ships were forced out of the trade, cutting off that European market, colonists in Maryland and Virginia were growing more tobacco than there was demand. By 1681, the situation was so serious that Virginia and Maryland were thought to be on the verge of economic ruin. The city of London alone had enough tobacco in warehouses to stock all of England for five years.         

Middlesex growers presented a petition to Middlesex County court and the Virginia Assembly in 1681 to limit the amount of tobacco grown in the colony as a way to raise prices. When the assembly took no action, Middlesex County and King and Queen County tobacco growers began to burn tobacco fields throughout the colony, forcing the assembly to activate county militias to stop the activity.

English officials were anticipating economic changes when in 1680 the Assembly passed the Act of Cohabitation to create a town in each of the counties. Towns were designed to create jobs and a more diverse economy outside of the tobacco economy. With the changing economic times, commercial fishing and crop farming eventually took the pace of tobacco and the port town of Urbanna became a commercial hub in Middlesex.

The town of Urbanna was one of 19 port sites to be designated as a good location for a town and it has remained so for 340 years.