Petersburg is an independent city in the U.S. state of Virginia. As of the 2020 census, the population was 33,458. The Bureau of Economic Analysis combines Petersburg (along with the city of Colonial Heights) with Dinwiddie County for statistical purposes. The city is south of the commonwealth (state) capital city of Richmond. It sits at the fall line of the Appomattox River, a tributary of the longer, larger James River which flows east to meet the southern mouth of the Chesapeake Bay at the Hampton Roads harbor and the Atlantic Ocean.
In 1645, the Virginia House of Burgesses ordered the building of Fort Henry, which attracted traders and settlers to the area. Three settlements were incorporated into the Town of Petersburg in 1748.A. Wilson Greene, Civil War Petersburg: Confederate city in the crucible of war (University of Virginia Press 2006) pp. 3-4 Petersburg rebuilt after a devastating 1815 fire and became a transportation and industrial hub. It was the final destination on the Upper Appomattox Canal Navigation System, which opened in 1816. When its Appomattox River port silted up, investors built an 8-mile railroad to City Point on the James River, which opened in 1838—one of four railroads built before the American Civil War.
In 1860, it was the state's second-largest city, after Richmond. It connected commerce from Farmville, Virginia, at the foothills of the Blue Ridge and the Appalachian Mountains chain, to shipping into the Chesapeake Bay and North Atlantic Ocean.
During the American Civil War (1861–1865), the railroad network made Petersburg critical to Union plans to capture Richmond, the Confederate States' national capital. The city was devastated by the 1864–65 Siege of Petersburg, which included the Battle of the Crater and nine months of trench warfare. Battlefield sites are partly preserved as Petersburg National Battlefield by the National Park Service of the U.S. Department of the Interior. Petersburg rebuilt its railroads, including a connecting terminal, by 1866, but it never regained its economic position because much shipping traffic continued to the Norfolk seaport. After the consolidations of smaller railroads, the CSX and Norfolk Southern railway networks serve Petersburg.
Petersburg has the oldest free black settlements in the state, at Pocahontas Island. Two Baptist churches in the city, whose congregations were founded in the late 18th century, are among the oldest black congregations and churches in the United States. In the post-bellum period, a historically black college which later developed as the Virginia State University was established nearby in Ettrick in Chesterfield County. In the 20th century, these and other black churches were leaders in the national Civil Rights Movement of the 1950s-1960s. Richard Bland College, located in nearby Prince George, was originally established as a branch of Williamsburg's famed College of William and Mary.
Petersburg remains a transportation hub. Area highways include Interstate Highways 85, 95, and U.S. Route highways with 1, 301, and 460. Both CSX and Norfolk Southern rail systems maintain transportation centers at Petersburg. Amtrak serves the city with daily Northeast Regional passenger trains to Norfolk, Virginia, and long-distance routes from states to the South.
In the early 21st century, Petersburg civic leaders promote the city's historical attractions for heritage tourism, as well as industrial sites reachable by the transportation infrastructure. The federal government is also a major employer, with nearby Fort Lee, as home of the United States Army's Sustainment Center of Excellence, and the Army's Logistics Branch, Ordnance, Quartermaster, and Transportation Corps.
History
Indigenous peoples Archaeological excavations at Pocahontas Island found evidence of a prehistoric Native American settlement dated to 6,500 BCE, the early third of the Archaic Period (8,000 to 1,000 BCE). Succeeding cultures of indigenous peoples lived in the area for thousands of years before European exploration and colonization.
When the English arrived in Virginia in 1607, the region was occupied by the Appamatuck, a significant tribe of the Powhatan Confederacy. They were governed by a weroance, King Coquonosum, and by his sister, Queen Oppussoquionuske. This Algonquian-speaking people later had a town at Rohoic Creek (formerly known as Rohowick or Indian Towne Run). Present-day Petersburg developed to the east.
Founding Petersburg was founded at a strategic point at the fall line of the Appomattox River and settled by English colonists. By 1635 they had patented land along the south bank of the Appomattox River as far west as present-day Sycamore Street, and about inland. In 1646, the Virginia Colony established Fort Henry a short distance from the Appamatuck town, near the falls. It provided waterpower for mills and later industrialization. Col. Abraham Wood sent several famous expeditions out from here in the following years to explore points to the west, as far as the Appalachian Mountains.
Around 1675, Wood's son-in-law, Peter Jones, who then commanded the fort and traded with the Indians, opened a trading post nearby, known as Peter's Point. The Kennon and Bolling families, prominent tobacco planters and traders, also lived in the area and engaged in local politics. In 1733, Col. William Byrd II (who founded Richmond at the same time) conceived plans for a city at Peter's Point, to be renamed Petersburgh. The Virginia General Assembly formally incorporated both Petersburg and adjacent Blandford on December 17, 1748. Wittontown, north of the river, was settled in 1749, and became incorporated as Pocahontas in 1752. Petersburg was enlarged slightly in 1762, adding to "Old Town".James H. Bailey, Old Petersburg, p. 16.
Revolutionary War Period During the American Revolutionary War (1775–1783), the final British drive to regain control of the colony led to the Battle of Blanford in April 1781, which started just east of Petersburg. As Virginia militia retreated north across the Appomattox River, they took up the planks of the wooden Pocahontas bridge to delay the enemy. Although the British captured Blanford and Petersburg, they did not regain the strategic advantage. Lord Cornwallis' forces coming up from the Carolinas into Virginia occupied Yorktown on the York River, waiting to meet a Royal Navy fleet. But a larger combined American-French army soon surrounded and besieged them. Cornwallis and his troops found themselves trapped and isolated when the French Navy's West Indies fleet under Admiral de Grasse sailed north and won the offshore naval Battle of the Capes at the mouth of the Chesapeake Bay, forcing the British resupply and evacuation fleet to withdraw. In October 1781, Lord Cornwallis surrendered to the superior allied Continental Army's General George Washington and French General comte de Rochambeau. After two further years of infrequent conflict and many treaty parleys, the Revolutionary War ended with Britain formally recognizing the new United States.
After the war, in 1784 Petersburg annexed the adjacent towns of Blandford (also called Blanford), Pocahontas and the outlying town of Ravenscroft, which became neighborhoods of the larger city. An area known as Gillfield was annexed in 1798.James H. Bailey, Old Petersburg, p. 17. Residents' devotion to the cause of America two decades later during the War of 1812 (1812–1815) led to the formation of the militia unit of the Petersburg Volunteers—who distinguished themselves in action at the Siege of Fort Meigs on the Great Lakes frontier on May 5, 1813. Fourth President James Madison called Petersburg "Cockade of the Union" (which later was applied to the town as a nickname "Cockade City"), in honor of the cockades which Volunteers wore on their caps.James H. Bailey, Old Petersburg, pp. 18–19.
Petersburg's Free Black Community
Petersburg Blacks established the First Baptist (1774) and Gillfield Baptist Church (1797), the first and second oldest black congregations in the city and two of the oldest in the nation. These black churches were the first Baptist churches established in Petersburg. The Gillfield Baptist Church obtained title to its land in 1818 and in 1859 completed a $7000 brick structure; the Petersburg African Baptist Church also owned its own sanctuary and the community also organized burial and other benevolent societies.Greene p. 9
Many free blacks in Virginia migrated to the growing urban community, despite increasing legislative restrictions. Until 1860 Petersburg was a majority black American city, although the enslaved population had few legal rights. Between 1850 and 1860, Petersburg's free black community increased 24%, although industrial growth fueled an even greater increase in the white population. Of the 18,366 people counted in Petersburg by federal census takers in 1860, 9,342 were white, 5,680 were slaves, and 3,244 free blacks. Thus in 1860, nearly 26% of all free persons were black, the highest proportion in any Southern city.Greene p. 8 Free Black men worked as tobacco twisters, in iron foundries, and as draymen, boatmen and cabdrivers, or in the skilled trades of mason, wheelwright, coopers and blacksmiths. Free Black women worked in tobacco factories as stemmers, or as washerwomen or seamstresses or laborers. Plantation owners also brought slaves for hire into the city. As in many other upper South cities, many white households had slaves, but more than 40% were enslaving just one servant.Greene pp. 8-9
Pocahontas Island (actually usually a peninsula on the north shore of the Appomattox River) became the area's free black residential area. With access to waterways and a population sympathetic to refugee slaves, this neighborhood was an important site on the Underground Railroad.
Antebellum Period During the Antebellum period Petersburg became the slave states' eleventh largest city, and 49th among all American cities in industrial development.Greene pp. 4, 6 Commission merchants (39 firms by 1860) bought agricultural products from nearby Dinwiddie County as well as points to the north, south and west and sold supplies. Petersburg's industrialists processed cotton, tobacco and metal, then shipped the resulting products out of the region. Richmond and Petersburg became the two largest tobacco towns in the world, with Richmond selling 61% of the state's tobacco in 1861, and Petersburg 23%. Petersburg's cotton industry relied on waterpower since its inception in the 1830s, and by 1860 towns had developed around the Lynch and Callender mills at Ettick and Matoaca and Battersea across the Appomattox river, and the Merchant's Manufacturing Company had another mill at Campbell Bridge near Ettrick. Together those cotton mills constituted approximately a third of that industry in the state. The town also had three water-powered flour mills by 1860, and five iron foundries.Greene pp. 6-7