Rosslyn ARL1
Rosslyn traditionally has served as a principal gateway to Arlington and to Virginia. Captain John Smith explored this area in 1608. Awbrey’s Ferry carried travelers across the Potomac for more than a century in the 1700s and 1800s. The Aqueduct Bridge opened in 1843, linking the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal with the Alexandria Canal. One pier of that bridge is visible today near the Virginia shore. In the 1860s, William and Carolyn Ross had a farm in this area which they named Rosslyn. During the Civil War, Federal forces also occupied the region, and Forts Bennett, Haggerty, and Corcoran were built nearby as part of the defensive line around the capital. In the 1900s Rosslyn was one of several areas along the waterfront controlled by a lawless element. In 1904, members of the Good Citizens’ League succeeded in closing down the gambling houses and saloons, restoring peace and safety to Rosslyn. In 1923, the Francis Scott Key Memorial Bridge replaced the Aqueduct Bridge. Throughout the early 1900s Rosslyn evolve

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The Occoquan VA676
Near here in 1608 Captain John Smith found the King’s House of the Doeg Indians. In 1729, King Carter built a landing here to ship copper ore. A town called Colchester was established here in 1753. Occoquan, to the west, was founded in 1804. On December 27, 1862, Wade Hampton raided Occoquan.

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Occoquan E59
Captain John Smith explored this region in 1608. The town of Occoquan began with the opening of a tobacco warehouse on the shore of the Occoquan River in 1734. Occoquan grew as the focus of the commerical and manufacturing activities of John Ballendine, who had an iron furnace, forge, and sawmills at the falls of the river before 1759. After the American Revolution, Occoquan emerged as a flour-manufacturing center with one of the nation’s first gristmills to use the labor-saving inventions of Oliver Evans. In 1804, Occoquan was established as a town and thrived as a commercial and industrial center into the 1920s.

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Smith's Fort Plantation K233
Captain John Smith began Smith’s Fort in 1609, two years after the first permanent English colony in the New World was established at Jamestown. The remains of the fort, a two-foot-high earthwork, constitute the oldest extant structure of English origin in Virginia. The fort stands on a high bluff overlooking Gray’s Creek and encloses a triangle of about two hundred feet on each side. Thomas Rolfe, the only child of John Rolfe and Pocahontas, probably owned this tract. The house is a mid- 18th-century Tidewater plantation dwelling likely built for Jacob Faulcon, Surry County clerk from 1781 to 1801.

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Pochahontas V28
Matoaka, nicknamed Pocahontas (playful one), the daughter of Powhatan, was born about 1595. At age eleven, she befriended Captain John Smith and later visited the English Colonists. In 1613, Samuel Argall kidnapped Pochahontas to use her as a negotiating pawn. According to tradition, she wsa brought to Henrico Town and cared for by the Rev. Alexander Whitaker. She was baptized and renamed Rebecca, and on 5 April 1614, she married John Rolfe. In 1616, Rolfe and their son, Thomas, accompanied her to England, where King James I and Queen Anne received her. Preparing to return home, she died at Gravesend England, in March 1617.

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Fort James W23
A mile and a half south of here on the Chickahominy River stood Moysonec, an Indian village. Some of the Chickahominy Indians residing there captured Captain John Smith in 1607. In the wake of the 1644 Indian uprising, the colonists sought to control Native American access to the lower Peninsula. Thomas Rolfe, son of Pochahantas and John Rolfe, constructed Fort James at Moysonec in exchange fo the land on which it stood. The colonists manned the fort for only three years.

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Chickahominy Indians W22
One mile south is the home of descendants of the Chickahominy Indians, a powerful tribe at the time of the settlement of Jamestown. Chickahominies were among the Indians who took Captain John Smith prisoner in December 1607. Currently two state-recognized Chickahominy tribes reside in the area.

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Fredericksburg E46A
Captain John Smith was here in 1608; Lederer, the explorer, in 1670. In May 1671 John Buckner and Thomas Royster patented the lease land grant. The town was established in 1727 and lots were laid out. It was named for Frederick, Prince of Wales, Father of George III. The court for Spotsylvania County was moved here in 1732 and the town was enlarged in 1759 and 1769. Fredericksburg was incorporated as a town in 1781, as a city in 1879 and declared a city of the first class in 1941.

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Origins of Richmond SA39
There was no place so strong, so pleasant, and delightful in Virginia, for which we called it None-such. So wrote Captain John Smith about the site he chose in 1609 when he established the first English settlement near the falls of the James River. It stood a few miles south until 1610. William Byrd I founded the second settlement when he patented land here in 1676. He soon built a fortified community, trading post, and warehouses, just across the river near the mouth of Goode Creek. In 1737 his son, William Byrd II, laid out richmond -- which he named for Richmond upon Thames, now a borough of London -- here in the Shockoe valley.

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Tangier Island Q7A
The island was visited in 1608 by Captain John Smith, who gave it the name. A part was patented by Ambrose White in 1670. It was settled in 1686 by John Crockett and his sons' families. In 1814, it was the headquarters of a British fleet ravaging Chesapeake Bay. From here the fleet sailed to attack Fort McHenry near Baltimore. The Rev. Joshua Thomas, in a prayer, predicted the failure of the expedition. It was in this attack that the Star- Spangled Banner was written.

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