Henry County, Virginia
Formed from Pittsylvania County in 1777.
This is a county where William Cox lived during the late 1700's.
Smith River and Philpott Lake
The Smith River is shown on the Map of Virginia published in 1770, but not named as such. It appears as the Irvine River on this map, and was named thus after Alexander Irwin an early surveyor of the area. (The Mayo River a little further west was named after William Mayo, another early surveyor of the area.)[1][2] It can be found below 37 and at about 30-3. The path of the Smith River is currently broken by Philpott Lake, which is a reservoir created with the construction of the Philpott Dam between 1948 and 1952. Review of various maps shows what appears to be significant inconsistencies in the path of the Smith River. Some investigation should be pursued to identify whether the path of the river has changed significantly over the course of the last 200 years.
See:
- Smith River (Virginia) - Wikipedia
- Philpott Lake - Wikipedia
- Philpott Dam - Wikipedia
- Philpott Lake - U.S. Army Corp of Engineers: Wilmington District
Land Grants
-
Virginia Land Office Patents and Grants, Northern Neck Grants and Surveys, Patents No.31 1751-1756 (VOL.1 & VOL.2), pages 634, 635
,_pages_634,_635.png)
Resources
-
Map of Virginia published in 1770. Henry County was formed in the area of the south-eastern half of what is here labeled the Irvin River, but which came to be called the Smith River.
-
R. P. Stephen Davis, Jr., Jane Eastman, Thomas O. Maher, and Richard P. Gravely, Jr., "ARCHAEOLOGICAL INVESTIGATIONS AT THE PHILPOTT SITE, HENRY COUNTY, VIRGINIA", Research Laboratories of Archaeology: The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, 1998
-
Architectural Survey of Henry County, Virginia, 2009
- GIS Maps - Henry County, Virginia
- Map - Google Maps
- Henry County, Virginia - Wikipedia
- Ancestry.com. A history of Henry County, Virginia : with biographical sketches of its most prominent citizens and genealogical histories of half a hundred of its oldest families. [database on-line]. Provo, UT: Ancestry.com Operations Inc, 2005.
Original data: Hill, Judith Parks America.. A history of Henry County, Virginia : with biographical sketches of its most prominent citizens and genealogical histories of half a hundred of its oldest families. unknown: unknown, 1925.]
References
- ↑ "Smith River" - USGS: Geographic Names Information System
- ↑ Clement, Maude Carter (2004) [1929]. "Chapter II: Natural Conditions". The History of Pittsylvania County Virginia. Santa Maria, California: Janaway Publishing, Inc. p. 26. ISBN 9780974195797. "The next two rivers were named Irwin and Mayo in honor of the two surveyors, Alexander Irwin and William Mayo."