According to William Strachey, Chief Powhatan had slain the weroance at Kecoughtan in 1597, appointing his own young son Pochins as successor there, while resettling some of the tribe at the Piankatank River.
The tribe remained generally friendly to them until the summer of 1609, when president John Smith sent Captain Martin to forcibly take over the island inhabited by the Nansemonds, across the mouth of the James.
After the arrival of Lord De La Warr, the colonists seized the native village on July 9, 1610, by luring them out with a tambourine player, then attacking them.
Through Fort Algernon and the Kecoughtan settlement, Hampton can claim to be the oldest continually occupied English-speaking settlement in the United States, by virtue of Jamestown (which usually claims this distinction) having been abandoned for two days in June 1610,[3] and also because after 1698, when the capital of the Virginia colony and the parish seat moved from James town to Williamsburg, the buildings at Jamestown, including the church, were abandoned.
[4][5] In an area immediately to the southwest of the original settlement, the incorporated town of Kecoughtan was formed on January 1, 1916, within Elizabeth City County.
[8] The hard surface roadway connecting the area to the city of Hampton opened in 1910 and was named Kecoughtan Road for the town.