Editing Brunswick County, Virginia (section)

== History ==
The first English settlers, in what was to become Brunswick County, swarmed into the relatively protected lands near [[Fort Christanna]] during its 4 years of operation (1714–1718). Among them were [[indentured servants]], including men deported from [[Scotland]] in 1716 after being convicted by the Crown in the [[Jacobite rising of 1715]]. They were required to work under indenture to pay the Crown back for their ship passage. Gradually the colonists pushed many of the Native Americans out of the area.

An example of such a Scots rebel who started in the colony as a convict was [[James Pittillo]]. He survived his indenture and in 1726 was granted {{convert|242|acre|km2|1}} on Wagua Creek. He gradually became a major landowner in the area. He was appointed as a tobacco inspector in Bristol Parish in 1728 and that year served with [[William Byrd II]] on his spring and fall expeditions to survey the border between Virginia and North Carolina. Taking advantage of land grants due to [[headrights]], for people whose passage he paid to the colony, and outright purchases, Pittillo ultimately owned more than {{convert|4000|acre|km2}} in the area of [[Prince George County, Virginia|Prince George County]], Brunswick, and Dinwiddie counties in [[Southside Virginia]].{{citation needed|date=March 2017}}

Brunswick County was established in 1720 from [[Prince George County, Virginia|Prince George County]]. The county is named for the former [[Brunswick-Lüneburg|Duchy of Brunswick-Lunenburg]] in Germany. One of the titles carried by Britain's [[House of Hanover|Hanoverian]] kings was Duke of Brunswick-Lunenburg. In 1732 the county received more land from parts of [[Surry County, Virginia|Surry]] and [[Isle of Wight County, Virginia|Isle of Wight]] counties. Brunswick County reached the Blue Ridge Mountains until 1745, when increasing population in the region resulted in the formation of a series of new counties, and Brunswick's current western border was established.

In 1780, during the [[American Revolutionary War]], [[Greensville County, Virginia|Greensville County]] was formed from part of Brunswick's eastern side. In 1787 the county's eastern border was finalized with a minor adjustment.<ref>{{cite web |url=http://historical-county.newberry.org/website/Virginia/viewer.htm |title=" + theTitle + " |website=historical-county.newberry.org |access-date=January 13, 2022 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20040804003824/http://historical-county.newberry.org/website/Virginia/viewer.htm |archive-date=August 4, 2004 |url-status=dead}}</ref>

Today Brunswick County is bisected by [[Interstate 85 in Virginia|Interstate 85]] and [[U.S. Route 1 in Virginia|U.S. routes 1]] and [[U.S. Route 58 in Virginia|58]]. Planters originally cultivated the land for tobacco by slave labor in colonial times. As tobacco exhausted the soil and the markets changed, planters and smaller farmers diversified the mostly rural economy by raising mixed crops and harvesting lumber before the [[American Civil War|Civil War]]. As a result of these changes, slaveholders in the Upper South had surplus slaves; many sold them in the [[Slave trade in the United States|domestic slave trade]]. It fed the development of cotton plantations in the [[Deep South]]. Altogether, more than one million enslaved African Americans were sold South in the antebellum years in this forced migration, which broke up many families.

[[Saint Paul's College, Virginia|Saint Paul's College]] was established in this county in association with the [[Episcopal Church (United States)|Episcopal]] Church. In 1914 the school boasted that "The location of the school in the heart of the Black Belt of Virginia, with a Negro population of 100,000 almost at its very doors, is most favorable for the prosecution of uplift work."<ref>Margaret Jefferys Hobart, ''Then and now'' (1914) p 51.</ref> St. Paul's closed its doors in 2013.

In the early 21st century, the county has a campus of [[Southside Virginia Community College]]. The [[Fort Barfoot]] Army National Guard base is partly in the county.