History
The Elizabeth River was named by the Jamestown colonists in the early 17th century for Princess Elizabeth Stuart, She was the daughter of King James I of England and a sister of the later King Charles I, and his older brother, Henry Frederick, the ill-fated heir-apparent to the throne who died of typhoid fever as a teenager.
When the settlers aboard the three tiny ships of Captain Christopher Newport's 1607 voyage first discovered the great harbor of Hampton Roads a few days after reaching land at Cape Henry, they were seeking a pathway to the west to reach the "Great Indies" and soon sailed upriver along the largest and most likely westerly river, which they named the James (for their king), passing by the areas closest to the ocean as they sought a protected haven from other European forces such as the Spanish. Their settlement 35 miles (56 km) inland at Jamestown was flawed in many other ways, but did meet the requirement of providing protection. Settlement along the Elizabeth River came a few years later.
See also: History of VirginiaRead more about this topic: Elizabeth River (Virginia)
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“While the Republic has already acquired a history world-wide, America is still unsettled and unexplored. Like the English in New Holland, we live only on the shores of a continent even yet, and hardly know where the rivers come from which float our navy.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“Postmodernism is, almost by definition, a transitional cusp of social, cultural, economic and ideological history when modernism’s high-minded principles and preoccupations have ceased to function, but before they have been replaced with a totally new system of values. It represents a moment of suspension before the batteries are recharged for the new millennium, an acknowledgment that preceding the future is a strange and hybrid interregnum that might be called the last gasp of the past.”
—Gilbert Adair, British author, critic. Sunday Times: Books (London, April 21, 1991)
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—Henry Brooks Adams (1838–1918)