Qualla: Hampton, Virginia

Hampton, Virginia: Introduction

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Benson Lossing, Public domain. Hampton claims a record that sounds impossible until you do the math: it has been continuously occupied by English-speaking settlers longer than any other place in the United States. Jamestown, founded thirteen years earlier in 1607, was abandoned in 1699. Hampton, founded as a small settlement in 1610 on the seized Kecoughtan village, never emptied out. The town burned twice - once during the War of 1812 and once again at the hands of retreating Confederates in 1861 - and rebuilt both times. Population today: about 137,000. What survived through four centuries of fire and flood is a city whose history reads like a syllabus for the American story.

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Image: Benson Lossing | Public domain

Hampton, Virginia: Point Comfort, August 1619

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit C Watts, CC BY 2.0. In late August 1619, a privateer named the White Lion limped into Point Comfort under a Dutch letter of marque. Her captain, John Colyn Jope, had stolen about twenty enslaved Africans from a Portuguese slave ship called the Sao Joao Bautista. They were Bantu people, taken from wh...

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Image: C Watts | CC BY 2.0

Hampton, Virginia: Contraband of War

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Douglas W. Reynolds, CC BY-SA 4.0. Two and a half centuries later, the same fortress became a hinge in the war that ended slavery. In May 1861, General Benjamin Butler refused to return three enslaved men - Frank Baker, Shepard Mallory, and James Townsend - who had escaped to the Union-held fort. His legal argumen...

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Image: Douglas W. Reynolds | CC BY-SA 4.0

Hampton, Virginia: The Mercury Seven Trained Here

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit US Air Force from USA, Public domain. In 1917, with America's entry into World War I imminent, the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics chose a flat patch of Elizabeth City County for a new joint Army-Navy-NACA airfield. They named it Langley Field after aerodynamic pioneer Samuel Pierpont Langley. It is the o...

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Image: US Air Force from USA | Public domain

Hampton, Virginia: Waiting for Word

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit c w, CC BY 2.0. Some of Hampton's harder history is recent. During the Vietnam War, Langley Air Force Base served as a designated waiting base. Air Force families and Navy families with husbands and fathers flying combat missions over Southeast Asia were transferred to Hampton from posts all ove...

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Image: c w | CC BY 2.0

Hampton, Virginia: Tidewater Voice

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Fuzheado (talk), CC BY-SA 3.0. People who grew up in Hampton sound like nowhere else in the South. The Tidewater accent stretches vowels long, slides certain consonants soft, and predates the more familiar Deep South sound by a couple of centuries. The 1952 merger of the City of Hampton, the town of Phoebus, a...

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Image: Fuzheado (talk) | CC BY-SA 3.0