Transcribed by Kathy Merrill for the USGenWeb Archives Special Collections Project
ISLE OF WIGHT COUNTY RECORDS 209
January, 1632-’33, they were John Upton and Robert Savin. All freemen had the right of suffrage till 1671.
In 1634, the plantations in Virginia were divided into eight counties, and “Warrascoyack” was one of these. In 1635 the census showed five hundred and twenty-two persons in the county. In 1658 the tithables amounted to six hundred and seventy-three, which indicated a population of two thousand and nineteen. In 1637 the name of the county was changed to Isle of Wight. The same year the county of New Norfolk was formed
out of Elizabeth City county, which extended on both sides of the river. New Norfolk being divided soon into Lower and Upper Norfolk (Nansemond) counties, acts were passed in 1639-’40 and 1642-’43 to determine their respective boundaries. Isle of Wight county was declared to begin at Lawne’s Creek, from thence down the river to the plantation of Richard Hayes, formerly belonging to John Howard, including the said plantation, from thence to extend into the woods southerly to the plantation of William Norvell and Robert Pitt, including the said plantations and families. In 1656, the inhabitants of Terrascoe Neck and the “Ragged Islands,” formerly in Nansemond, were added to Isle of Wight. Finally, in 1674, “to settle the long disputes
which had arisen between the inhabitants of Isle of Wight and of Nansemond,” because of the uncertainty attending the true courses of the dividing creeks and branches, the General Assembly enacted that “a southwest by south line be run from the river side at Hayes’ plantation (including that plantation in Isle
of Wight) to the creek at or near the plantation called Norvell’s Oyster Bank, thence up the creek to Col. Pitt’s Creek, thence southwest half a point westerly indefinitely extended, provided, nevertheless, that the house and cleared grounds of Capt. Thomas Godwin, who hath been an ancient inhabitant of Nansemond
county, be deemed in the county of Nansemond, anything in this act to the contrary notwithstanding.” Till March, 1642-’43, the county had but one parish. Rev. Thomas Faulkner was the minister. In that year, it was divided into two, known as the Upper and Lower Parishes, the former extending from Lawne’s Creek to the creek on the eastern side of the bay (Pagan’s), dividing the plantations of Samuel Davis and Joseph Cobbs, and the latter from Pagan’s Point, upon the bay, including all the southerly side of the main river.
In 1680, Mr. Robert Parke was minister in the Upper parish,