[3] The county was founded in 1651 in the Virginia Colony and is named for Henry Stuart, Duke of Gloucester (third son of King Charles I of England).

Werowocomoco, capital of the large and powerful Powhatan Confederacy (a union of 30 indigenous tribes under a paramount chief), was located on this part of the peninsula.

The county was developed by colonists primarily for tobacco plantations, based on the labor of enslaved Africans imported in the slave trade.

Thomas Jefferson wrote early works for Virginia and colonial independence while staying at Rosewell Plantation, home of John Page (his close friend and fellow student at the College of William and Mary).

This area was inhabited for thousands of years by successive cultures of hunter-gatherer Indian peoples; artifacts have been dated to at least the late Woodland Period (c. AD 1000).

An important village site known as Werowocomoco was occupied by c. AD 1200 by the Algonquian-speaking peoples of the numerous emerging tribes in the area.

It was made up of an estimated 30 tribes in the coastal region, who spoke distinct but related languages, and was led by a paramount chief, known as the Powhatan.

This complex, stratified society had developed in part due to the cultivation and processing by women of varieties of maize, beans and squash.

With these crops, the women produced a surplus that, together with the game and fish collected by the men, supported a dense population in a number of settlements.

Around 1570, Spanish Jesuits attempted to establish what was known as the Ajacan Mission on the south shore of the York River across from Gloucester.

The current site of West Point seemed to offer a clue to its location; from there, Smith had noted the distance downstream to Werowocomoco.

Based upon his description, at one time scholars thought the former capital was located near Wicomico (site of Powhatan's Chimney), about 25 miles (40 km) southeast of present-day West Point.

In 1977, archeologist Daniel Mouer of Virginia Commonwealth University identified a site on Purtan Bay as the possible location of Werowocomoco; it was also about 12 miles from Jamestown.

Mouer found fragments of Indian ceramics dating to the Late Woodland Period and determined that the area was the possible site of Werowocomoco.

[5] Combined with the historical descriptions by English colonists of Werowocomoco, researchers believe these discoveries have established the site of the ancient capital.

"We believe we have sufficient evidence to confirm that the property is indeed the village of Werowocomoco," said Randolph Turner, director of the Virginia Department of Historic Resources' Portsmouth Regional Office in 2003.

They recovered artifacts (including native pottery and stone tools), as well as floral and faunal food remains from the large residential community.

The research group has also recovered English trade goods produced from glass, copper, and other metals originating in Jamestown.

The colonists' accounts of interaction at Werowocomoco during the early days of Jamestown emphasized Powhatan's interests in acquiring English objects (particularly copper, which the Indians used to create their own objets d'art.

The project is noted for the researchers' consultation and collaboration with members of the local Indian tribes – the Mattaponi and Pamunkey, descendants of the Powhatan Confederacy.

Both the newly identified site on Purtan Bay and Powhatan's Chimney at Wicomico are within the territory which Indians have considered as part of Werowocomoco.

The custom of the Powhatan tribes was to relocate their villages within a general area to allow lands to recover from cultivation or move to better sources of water and game.

The colonial government granted early land patents in the area in 1639, but it was not until after 1644 that Gloucester was considered safe for settlement.

One area of Gloucester County is known as Guinea; it includes the unincorporated communities of Achilles, Maryus, Perrin, Severn, and Big Island.

(The Atwell,Shackelford, Rowe, West, Jenkins, Green, Kellum, King and Belvin families are chief among those who have worked in the fishing industry here).

The Hessians were thought to have occupied lower Gloucester during the closing days of the Revolutionary War, or to have settled here after deserting the British.

[15] Gloucester is a growing and increasingly changing county that is an integral part of the Hampton Roads metropolitan area.

Gloucester's Main Street and U.S. Route 17 have served as vital corridors of commercial and community growth in the county.

[15] Many visitors visit Gloucester for its notorious local Ice Cream shoppe and Antique Mall The Virginia Institute of Marine Science (VIMS) is the graduate school in marine science for the College of William and Mary (the country's second-oldest university), which is headquartered in nearby Williamsburg.

[26] VIMS is located at Gloucester Point along the county's shorefront, where samples and measurements for Chesapeake Bay are taken and specimens put on display.