[citation needed] During the Peninsula Campaign of the American Civil War in 1862, a large federal force under General George B. McClellan began at Fort Monroe at the entrance to Hampton Roads and moved west to try to capture the Confederate capital city of Richmond.
Decades later, the Chesapeake and Ohio Railway (C&O) built through the area in 1881 to reach the coal piers and the new city of Newport News on the ice-free harbor of Hampton Roads.
During World War II, in 1942–43, the U.S. Navy took over a large area in the north western portion of York County to train Seabees and hold special German prisoners-of-war which became known as Camp Peary.
Many of the black residents of Magruder and the Baptist church relocated to the majority-black community of Grove in nearby James City County.
Grove had been sparsely populated until the years after 1918, when a large influx of displaced black families moved there after their land was taken to create a military reservation which became the Naval Weapons Station Yorktown.