[2] Dinwiddie County is part of the Richmond, VA Metropolitan Statistical Area.

At the time of European contact, Native Americans made their homes in the region.

The county is named for Robert Dinwiddie, Lieutenant Governor of Virginia, 1751–58.

Dinwiddie County was the birthplace of Elizabeth (Burwell) Hobbs Keckly, a free black dressmaker who worked for two presidents' wives: Mrs. Jefferson Davis and later Mary Todd Lincoln.

Thomas Day was also a native; he was well known later at Milton, North Carolina, as a free black cabinetmaker.

Another native son was Dr. Thomas Stewart, perhaps America's first free black 18th-century rural physician.

[3] During the Civil War the Battle of Lewis's Farm was fought along Quaker Road [Rt.

This was the first in several attempts by Union General Ulysses S. Grant to cut Robert E. Lee's final supply line—the Southside Railroad—in the spring of 1865.

The Bureau of Economic Analysis combines the independent cities of Petersburg and Colonial Heights with Dinwiddie County for statistical purposes.