Tag: Suffolk VA

Wikipedia says: Suffolk is an independent city in the Commonwealth of Virginia, and as such has no county. It is the largest city in Virginia by boundary land area as well as the 14th largest in the country.

Suffolk is located in the Hampton Roads metropolitan area. This also includes the independent cities of Chesapeake, Hampton, Newport News, Norfolk, Portsmouth, and Virginia Beach, and smaller cities, counties, and towns of Hampton Roads.

Prior to colonization, the region was inhabited by the indigenous Nansemond people. The settlement of Suffolk was established in 1742 by Virginian colonists as a port town on the Nansemond River. It was originally named Constant’s Warehouse (for John Constant, one of the first founders of the settlement) before being renamed after Royal Governor of Virginia Sir William Gooch’s home country of the same name. During the colonial era, Virginian colonists in the region cultivated tobacco with enslaved labor as a cash crop, before transitioning to mixed farming. Suffolk was designated as the county seat of Nansemond County in 1750.

Early in its history, Suffolk became a land transportation gateway to the areas east of it in South Hampton Roads. Before the American Civil War, both the Portsmouth and Roanoke Railroad and the Norfolk and Petersburg Railroad were built through Suffolk, early predecessors of 21st-century Class 1 railroads operated by CSX Transportation and Norfolk Southern, respectively. Other railroads and later major highways followed after the war.

Suffolk became an incorporated town in 1808.