Editing Hopewell, Virginia (section)

=== City Point ===
{{main|City Point, Virginia}}
The city was founded to take advantage of its site overlooking the [[James River (Virginia)|James]] and [[Appomattox River]]s. [[City Point, Virginia|City Point]], the oldest part of Hopewell, was established in 1613 by Sir [[Thomas Dale]]. It was first known as "Bermuda City". (At this time, [[Bermuda]], the Atlantic archipelago, was considered part of the Colony of Virginia and appeared on its maps.)  The name soon changed to [[Charles City (Virginia Company)|Charles City]].   In 1619 Samuel Sharpe and Samuel Jordan from  were burgesses from Charles City at the first meeting of the [[House of Burgesses]]. "Charles City Point" was in [[Charles City Shire]] when the first eight [[shire]]s were established in the Colony of Virginia in 1634. Charles City Shire soon became known as [[Charles City County, Virginia|Charles City County]] in 1643. 
The burgesses separated an area of the county south of the river, including City Point, establishing it separately as Prince George County in 1703. 

During the [[American Civil War]], Union [[Ulysses S. Grant|General Ulysses S. Grant]] used City Point as his headquarters during the [[Siege of Petersburg]] in 1864 and 1865. Grant's headquarters, which President Lincoln visited, were located at [[Appomattox Manor]], one of the three plantations of [[Richard Eppes]], who cultivated wheat and other grains and held 130 slaves at the beginning of the war.<ref>[https://www.jstor.org/stable/4248988 Bowman, Shearer Davis. "Conditional Unionism and Slavery in Virginia, 1860-1861: The Case of Dr. Richard Eppes] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160207223502/http://www.jstor.org/stable/4248988 |date=February 7, 2016 }}, ''Virginia Magazine of History and Biography'' 96 (January 1988): 31-54, accessed June 13, 2012</ref>

His property included most of the present-day city of Hopewell and Eppes Island, a plantation across the James River from City Point. Richard Slaughter, a former slave of Eppes, escaped to a Union ship during the Civil War,<ref name="Slaughter"/> as did all but 12 of Eppes' 130 slaves, choosing freedom.<ref name="NPS">[https://web.archive.org/web/20070102190447/http://www.nps.gov/archive/pete/mahan/edbiosre.html Dr. Richard Eppes]</ref> Slaughter recounted his life story for a [[Works Progress Administration]] interviewer in 1936.<ref name="Slaughter">[http://memory.loc.gov/cgi-bin/ampage?collId=mesn&fileName=170/mesn170.db&recNum=49&itemLink=D?mesnbib:4:./temp/~ammem_h6L0:: "Autobiography of Richard Slaughter"], pp. 46-49, ''Born in Slavery: Slave Narratives from the Federal Writers' Project, 1936-1938,'' ''American Memory'', Library of Congress, accessed June 13, 2012</ref>

The [[City Point Railroad]], built in 1838 between City Point and [[Petersburg, Virginia|Petersburg]], was used as a critical part of the siege strategy. It is considered the oldest portion of the [[Norfolk and Western Railway]], now a part of [[Norfolk Southern]].

City Point was an unincorporated town in Prince George County until the City of Hopewell annexed the Town of City Point in 1923.  Despite the evolving name, Hopewell/City Point is the second oldest continuously inhabited English settlement in the United States after [[Hampton, Virginia|Hampton]]. [[Jamestown, Virginia|Jamestown]] no longer is inhabited.