Aug 28-29th, Urbanna, VA

August 28 - 29

When the first English colonists sailed into Chesapeake Bay in the early 1600s, they were looking for deep water, protected bays and inlets, and fertile land.  Urbanna had all that.  Its location on the western shore of the Rappahannock River spurred its growth into a busy agricultural and commercial center by the 1700s.  Urbanna was one of the twenty port towns established by the Acts of Assembly at Jamestown in 1680.  It was from these ports that tobacco was exported to England for European goods, without going through an official port of entry.  We found the town delightful and enjoyed seeing many of the historic buildings.

The town of Urbanna was named in honor of England's Queen Anne.

                                            

                                       



 

This is one of many notable Victorian era buildings that attest  to the prosperity Urbanna enjoys as an oyster processing center in the late 19th and 20th centuries.  Lord Byron Van Wagenen, schooner captain whose family owned an oyster house, built The Marble House at the turn of the century.  It gets its name from the use of the marble that steamboats carried here from Baltimore to adorn its porches, steps and basements.

 

Lansdowne is one of Virginia's finest early Georgian-style mansions and believed to have been built  as early as 1750 and was home of Aurthur Lee, a prominent member of Virginia's Lee family.

Along with  Benjamin Franklin and Silas Deane, Lee represented the Continental Congress at France's Court of Versailles.

 

 

The Tavern was built in 1740s when a night's lodging was five pounds of tobacco or six pence.  Local legend has it Patrick Henry delivered a speech from the steps of The Tavern.  The Tavern 

was the site of a Civil War ball given for Confederate officers camped just outside Urbanna.

Charles Palmer built the Baptist Church in Urbanna in 1892 with his own hands and
hand tools for 10 cents an hour.

 


 

More than 200 years ago, Virginia Street was called "Prettyman's Rolling Road." Laborers rolled "hogsheads" barrels of tobacco - downhill to the merchant ships or uphill from the ships to the inspection office and store.