At the southwestern edge of the confluence of the Appomattox and James Rivers opposite City Point, annexed to Hopewell, Virginia in 1923, Bermuda Hundred was a port town for many years.

[4] Sir Thomas Dale, who served as Governor of Virginia for about three months in 1611, and from 1614 to 1616, hoped to replace the settlement of Jamestown in a more suitable location a few miles from the town of Bermuda Hundred at Henricus.

This period between the fall of 1609 and the spring of 1610, became known as "starving time", and indelibly shaped the community into the remainder of the 17th century as it strove to become more self-sufficient, chose a mixed use of crop, and caused the survivors and subsequent colonists to seek interlocking strategic points along the coasts to control Chesapeake Bay.

He is believed to have been living at a plantation at or near Bermuda Hundred at the time of the great Indian massacre of 1622 which along the murdering of much of the colony's population, destroyed Henricus and the Falling Creek Ironworks upstream on the James River.

However, starting in the second half of the 17th century and gaining momentum, a huge growth in demand first in sugar and then in tobacco occurred causing the countryside to slowly change crops despite earlier colonial policy.

Consequently, most of the smaller surrounding Yeoman farms were absorbed into the plantations, their inhabitants falling into dependency to the planter class, turning to the town, or moving westward for cheaper land.

Additionally, its shippers served in transporting and off-loading the continually growing numbers of settlers migrating from Europe (primarily as indentured servants) into the American colonies.

By the 1760s, the threat of Indian violence and economic deprivation in the tidewater region including the Bermuda Hundreds had dissipated as a result of victory and integration between Virginia and other British colonies.

Many of the Tidewater's plantocracy's junior members and cadet branches had moved westward and played leading roles in establishing new settlements and networks thereby keeping the unity of colonial society.

The genocide of large numbers of the frontier families, the desperate battles in the forests, and sieges of the settler forts, recalled the days of the older Tidewater Indian wars which had almost destroyed the colony entirely.

The proclamation was the result of secret negotiation between the Royal government and Indian tribes by which the frontier settlers were deprived of their land and property and any further expansion westward of British colonies was permanently halted.

More importantly, such perfidy by their own government caused a political upheaval in the Hundreds as middle-class locals and those frontier families being agitating against the presumed treason of the crown.

Nonetheless, British fleet operations succeeded in making landing raids throughout the Bermuda Hundreds lighting afire numerous houses presumed owned by patriots.

With the southern campaign checked, Cornwallis received dispatches in Wilmington, North Carolina informing him that another British army under Generals William Phillips and Benedict Arnold had been sent to Virginia.

It was during this period that Cornwallis received orders from Clinton to choose a position on the Virginia Peninsula—referred to in contemporary letters as the "Williamsburg Neck"—and construct a fortified naval post to shelter ships of the line.

Whilst the French and Indian Wars and subsequent Proclamation of 1763 temporarily checked the irresistible move westwards, and thus slowed the decline of colonists leaving the Hundreds this changed with the gaining of independence.

The subsequent decisive defeat of the Indians on the frontier, and the opening of the western roads, allowed more and more of the Hundreds' American inhabitants in moving westward to pursue opportunity in the West.

Indeed, at the time of the Civil War, planter classes such as in Bermuda and their cadet branches elsewhere throughout the south, provided upwards of sixty-five percent of the country's leading strategists, military commanders, and political leaders.

A number of independent farmers, fresh with prosperity derived from supporting local consumption gained additional income with smaller production of cash crops.

These merchant families, nonetheless earned a prosperous income from trading the highly valued cotton, tobacco and other commercial crops both in the state, in the nation, and internationally thereby keeping an influence and intelligence of world affairs well above what their economic station would presume.

Believing that the coming northern Republican Party dominance were threats to the supremacy of the hearth and home, the right of independent yeoman farmer to be supreme in his property, and most importantly, that abolition was being discussed were greeted with consternation.

As the chaos of war spread its way south, and the Union navy put its blockade upon the port, much of the small shipping fleet was captured, destroyed, or lay in disrepair.

Eventually, what remained of the white population was formed into a home guard militia supplemented by veterans from the campaigns in the North as a large Union invading army arrived at the area.

[9] Although decisively helpful in keeping the agricultural community from total loss, especially in regards to bringing in valued specie into the local economy, it nonetheless failed in fulfilling its wider aims of putting the planter class back into financial prosperity.

However, the setbacks in economic markets and demand, domestic and foreign competition, all combined to keep the narrow gauge railroad from generating sufficient traffic and rebuilding the antebellum prosperity.

By the time some of the planter class had restored their infrastructure, trading networks, and crop production back to their antebellum periods, the country and world had changed dramatically.

As a result, despite every effort, the returns of the railroad and the merchant firms barely made a profit over a sixty-year period, while simultaneously depriving the town's waterway shipping business.

Eventually, like another railway about 15 miles downstream at Claremont, the railroad and port facilities were largely abandoned by the Great Depression, turning the town into a pale shell of its former times.

As a result, by the end of the first decade of the 21st century most of the remaining farms, and former plantations in the Bermuda Hundred such as Presquile, Mount Blanco, Meadowville, and Rochedale had been sold for commercial or residential development.

[clarification needed] Established circa 1850, the Baptist church was built in the Greek Revival style with a symmetrical three-bay, gable-front facade on land that served as the market square of the town.