a sack apple podcast title the deep dive kempsville
va from colonial port to virginia beach sprawl
hidden history and revolutionary war secrets
apple podcast description think you know suburban
virginia beach Think again. We uncover the forgotten
history of Kempsville, Virginia, from a colonial
shipping hub and the site of the first American
Revolutionary War casualties in Virginia, to
a modern landscape of shopping centers and subdivisions.
Explore Lord Dunmore's loyalist stronghold, a
panicked 1812 road trip to save county records,
and how explosive 1960s suburban sprawl buried
18th century architecture. Keywords, Kempsville,
Virginia Beach, Kemps Landing, Revolutionary
War History, Princess Anne County, Dunmore, Virginia
history. Think you know suburban Virginia Beach.
Think again. Welcome to another Deep Dive. I'm
your host and today we are we're heading straight
into the heart of a place you might have driven
through a hundred times. Oh absolutely. Hundreds
of times without even realizing it. Right. Without
realizing the sheer volume of history buried
right under your tires. Yeah. We are talking
about Kempsville, Virginia. A truly fascinating
case study. It really is. From a bustling colonial
port. to what is basically the absolute epitome
of Virginia Beach suburban sprawl. We are going
to uncover the hidden history and, you know,
Revolutionary War secrets that are literally
paved over by modern life. And to do that, we're
drawing from a really comprehensive source today.
Yeah, exactly. Today's source material is a detailed
historical and demographic overview of Kempsville
from Wikipedia. And our mission for this deep
dive is to unearth how this tiny 17th century
river settlement transformed into the massive
borough you see today. We're going to find the
literal battlegrounds sitting underneath your
local shopping centers. Okay, let's unpack this.
Because the contrast between modern -day Kempsville
with its high schoolers, the subdivisions, the
Christian Broadcasting Network headquarters,
and its wild colonial origins as Kemps Landing
is just staggering. When you look closely at
Kempsville, you're really looking at a masterclass
in how American landscapes evolve. It shows us
how geography dictates destiny and how rapid
modern growth can erase physical history almost
overnight. It's like it was just wiped clean.
Precisely. Exploring the single geographic footprint
reminds us that the places we consider just,
you know, everyday, quiet suburbs. They're usually
built on layers and layers of complex, highly
volatile human experiences. So to really understand
this place, you have to sort of wipe away the
modern pavement in your mind. Right, take away
the strip malls. Yeah, take away the traffic
lights and go all the way back to the 1600s.
Picture this guy, George Kempe. He's a highly
industrious English immigrant. Exactly. He acquires
a chunk of land right along the eastern branch
of the Elizabeth River. and he decides he's going
to turn this muddy riverbank into a major commercial
port. Which was a bold move at the time. Really
bold. He starts shipping out tobacco and other
goods, and the place officially becomes known
as Kempe's Landing. But looking through the sources,
there's this one detail about the early real
estate of this town that completely blew my mind.
Oh, the auction rules. Yes. They laid Kempe's
Landing out into half -acre lots, advertised
them in the Virginia Gazette, and sold them at
public auction. But there was a massive catch.
The build it or lose it clause. Right. It was
strict. If you bought a lot, you had exactly
three years to build a dwelling house on it.
And the rules stated the house had to be at least
20 feet square. absolutely had to have a brick
chimney. Which is so interesting because this
wasn't just some arbitrary colonial homeowners
association rule. It sounds like an HOA from
hell. It kind of does, but it was actually a
highly sophisticated, deliberate anti -speculation
tool. Anti -speculation, like to stop investors.
Exactly. Early American colonies were incredibly
fragile economically. They could not afford to
have wealthy investors from overseas just buying
up prime riverfront land and letting it sit empty,
just hoping the value would go up over time.
Oh, that makes sense. Yeah. They needed a functioning,
populated port town to survive, forcing buyers
to build substantial structures like a 20 -foot
square home with a brick chimney guaranteed rapid
permanent development. And it definitely worked.
You had tugs and two -masted scooters regularly
sailing into Kempsville. There was even a large
drawbridge crossing the eastern branch of the
Elizabeth River. Right around where the much
smaller Princess Anne Road Bridge crosses today.
But I was looking at the notes on the local economy
and there's something that just didn't make sense
to me. Kempsville was supposedly this big tobacco
port, right? That was the reputation, yes. Up
until 1861, it had a massive tobacco warehouse.
They even paid an official tobacco inspector
a salary of 35 pounds a year. Which was a good
salary. Yeah. But the sources also clearly say
the sandy soil in Princess Anne County was terrible
for growing tobacco. So how does an entire port
operate on a crop it can't even successfully
grow? What's fascinating here is how early colonial
economies had to adapt to strict environmental
realities. Because the local sandy soil made
very little headway as a tobacco producer, the
town commodified the idea of the crop instead
of the crop itself. Wait, the idea of the crop?
Yeah, they used the tobacco warehouse receipts
as actual physical currency. You're kidding.
Not at all. You could walk into a tavern or a
shop and pay for things with a piece of paper
saying you had tobacco stored in the Kempsville
warehouse? That is wild. It was an ingenious
system. It facilitated robust local trade, which
then allowed them to pivot their actual physical
exports to what the land and geography actually
supported. So if tobacco wasn't growing, they
were leaning heavily into timber and food. Exactly.
Princess Anne County became a massive producer
of corn and wheat. And the timber industry along
the riverbanks was huge. And we should keep in
mind, the river was much wider and deeper back
then. Oh, entirely different waterways than today.
Right. They were shitting out all kinds of timber,
including great quantities of oak knees, straight
to the Norfolk Navy Yard. And for context, oak
knees are those naturally curved, L -shaped pieces
of wood. You take them from where the trunk of
an oak tree meets a large branch or down at the
roots. Because the grain is naturally curved.
Exactly. The continuous grain makes them incredibly
strong. They were absolutely critical for the
structural integrity of wood and shipbuilding.
By supplying these to the Navy Yard, Kempsville
completely pivoted from a struggling cash crop
town into a vital strategic supply chain hub
for shipping and agriculture. Which perfectly
brings us to a dramatic turn in our story. Because
of that strategic importance, Kempsville wasn't
destined to stay a quiet, pragmatic port town.
No, it certainly was not. When the political
winds began to shift in the 1770s, this place
became ground zero for the American Revolution
in Virginia. To set the stage for you, we have
to introduce a man named George Logan. George
Logan was a Scottish immigrant who wielded an
immense amount of power in Princess Anne County.
From 1762 to 1770, he was the high sheriff. So
he's basically running the local law enforcement.
And the courts. From 1772 to 1775, he served
as one of the county justices. But when the whispers
of revolution started turning into actual armed
rebellion, George Logan drew a very clear line
in the sand. He was fiercely loyal to the crown.
Fiercely. And that simmering tension finally
snapped in November of 1775, specifically November
14th or 15th. This is the Battle of Kemp's Landing.
A pivotal moment. Lord Dunmore, the royal governor
of the colony of Virginia. leads British forces
in a direct clash with the local colonial militia.
And it was an absolute disaster for the locals.
It was a rattle. Seven militiamen were killed
by Dunmore's forces. And the historical weight
of those seven deaths cannot be overstated. Those
men killed at Kemp's Landing were the very first.
american revolutionary war casualties in the
entire state of virginia the very first in virginia
yes and among them was a man named john akas
his death carried significant political weight
because he was the son of a former member of
the virginia house of burgesses which was the
first elected legislative dottie in colonial
america right so this wasn't just a random skirmish
it was a deeply political highly visible shedding
of blood i'm still trying to wrap my head around
the fact that the very first revolutionary casualties
in virginia happened in what is now essentially
a suburban neighborhood. It's hard to visualize
when you're driving past a grocery store. Exactly.
But here's where it gets really interesting.
Because of this swift, brutal victory, Kempsville
completely shifts overnight. It goes from being
a hotbed of revolutionary militia to a secure,
loyalist stronghold. The very next day, November
16th, Lord Dunmore entered Kempsville in absolute
triumph. He captured the colonial commander and
proceeded to set up his military headquarters
right inside the home of our loyalist high sheriff,
George Logan. He just moved right into the sheriff's
house. Logan actually entertained Lord Dunmore
at his house after the battle, but Dunmore didn't
stop at military occupation. He immediately engaged
in psychological warfare. The loyalty oaths.
Yes, he demanded loyalty oaths from the terrified
locals. If you swore a le - It is a staggering
level of psychological control. And yet its status
as a stronghold actually elevates the town. Just
a few years later, in 1778, the Princess Anne
County Courthouse was moved from Newtown to Kemp's
Landing. It officially became the county seat.
And it remained the county seat from 1778 all
the way until 1824. The town of Kempsville was
even officially incorporated in 1783. But being
a major hub during a maritime war isn't just
about politics. It brings a really dark, chaotic
reality to a town's daily life. The source material
provides a snapshot of a single day that we need
to talk about. I want to slow down for a second
here because this specific day is incredibly
sobering to read about. It perfectly illustrates
the intersectional, brutal nature of a colonial
war economy. On that single Tuesday in August,
a public auction was held in Thamesville. Nine
enslaved African people were sold. They had been
captured by the Continental frigates Boston and
Dean and transported to the port in a privateer
vessel called the Enterprise. And to clarify
for anyone who doesn't know, a privateer was
essentially a state sponsored pirate ship. Legally
authorized by a government to attack and capture
enemy vessels during wartime. Right. And on that
exact same day at the exact same public auction,
a captured British sloop of war named the Mermaid
was also sold off to the highest bidder. By order
of the Admiralty Court out of Hampton? Human
lives and captured warships auctioned off side
by side in the same ledger on a Tuesday afternoon.
It forces you to pause and look at what the commerce
of war actually looked like in colonial Virginia.
We often try to impartially report the facts
from the source material, but it's vital to acknowledge
that history isn't just battlefield glory. It
was privateers, human trafficking, and the bureaucratic
buying and selling of captured people and property.
Absolutely. The anxiety and chaos of that era
lingered for decades, well past the end of the
Revolution. Which brings us to a highly relatable,
almost comedic administrative panic during the
War of 1812. The Great Records Migration. Yes.
In September of 1814, the Princess Anne County
Court became absolutely terrified that the British
were going to sail back up the river and destroy
everything. A valid fear, given Washington, D
.C. had just been burned. Very true. But their
solution was to pack up all the critical county
records and move them across the border, hiding
them safely in North Carolina. They literally
put their entire bureaucratic history into witness
protection. And the threat eventually passes.
But the records just sit there in hiding. It
isn't until March of 1815 that the court finally
says, hey, maybe we should tell the clerk to
go get our laws and deeds back. And even then,
it takes them until July 28th, 1815, to actually
allocate the money to pay six men to go fetch
them. They left their county records in another
state for nearly a year. Unwinding a panicked
wartime decision always takes layers of bureaucracy
and funding. Eventually, though, the town settled
into a different kind of rhythm. In 1824, the
county seat was moved away to its current location
at Princess Anne. And when a colonial town loses
its county seat, it loses its political power.
The politicians leave, the lawyers leave, the
merchants follow the money. Over the next few
decades, the bustling port began to silt up,
the massive timber reserves were cleared out,
and Kempsville slowly faded from a prominent
maritime hub into a sleepy, forgotten farming
village. But even as a quiet farming village,
the history kept piling up. Nowhere is that more
visible than at the Emanuel Episcopal Church.
They completed construction on this church in
July of 1843. On land donated by a man named
David Walk. Right. Portions of the outer wall
standing today are original to that 1843 construction.
But the detail that stops you in your tracks
is out in the church cemetery. It's a very striking
detail. In the very same soil, resting just yards
apart, you have the graves of nine veterans from
the Civil War. The cemetery contains veterans
from both the Confederate States Army and the
United States Union Army, resting together in
one local churchyard. It is a remarkably quiet,
powerful symbol of a fractured country coming
to rest in the same earth. And just to show how
wildly diverse the history of this one plot of
land is, that same cemetery holds a completely
different era of American culture. This part
is so fun. It is the final resting place of Alan
Jones Gettle. Everyone around town called him
Al Two -Gun Gettle. Two -Gun Gettle. Yeah. He
was a local Kempsville boy who grew up pitching
on the local ball fields, fields that are actually
preserved right nearby as Kepi's Landing Park
today. And he didn't just play locally. No. Al
went on to pitch for 10 years in Major League
Baseball. Between 1945 and 55, he threw for the
New York Yankees, the Cleveland Indians, and
the Chicago White Sox. If we connect this to
the bigger picture, Kempsville serves as an incredible,
literal crossroads of the American experience.
It really does. Within a very small geographical
footprint, you have the bureaucratic records
of a panicked local government, the casualties
of the first revolutionary skirmish in Virginia,
the combined graves of a divided nation, and
a 20th century pop culture sports icon. All in
one spot. But moving further into the 20th century.
The source material describes a survey from 1922
that paints an idyllic, almost unrecognizable
picture of the town. A snapshot right before
everything changed. Right. In 1922, the former
courthouse and jail from the 1800s were still
in use. The town was described as a beautiful
little country village. It had two churches,
a few general stores, and one modern brick school
building. It was primarily a farming community
blessed with extremely fertile land, growing
potatoes, cotton, corn, and truck crops. It sounds
incredibly peaceful. Then we hit 1963. 1963 was
the turning point that erased almost all of the
physical history we've been talking about. The
massive merger. Yes. That was the year the small
oceanfront resort city of Virginia Beach officially
merged with the massive Princess Anne County
to create the new independent city of Virginia
Beach. Almost overnight, Kempsville went from
a beautiful little country village to being one
of seven boroughs in this newly formed massive
city. Along with Bayside, Blackwater. Lynn Haven,
Princess Anne, Pungo, and the Virginia Beach
oceanfront. And with that merger came the explosive
economic and suburban growth of the 1960s and
70s. The population boomed and the demand for
suburban housing and commercial space skyrocketed.
Kempsville rapidly transformed into a sprawling
suburban community. But the tragedy of this explosive
sprawl is the total erasure of the architectural
past. To make way for the widened roads, the
parking lots, and the shopping centers, almost
all of the important historical buildings in
Kempsville were either moved or simply bulldozed
into the earth. Out of everything we just talked
about, the bustling port, the colonial houses
with their strict brick chimneys, the old taverns
where loyalists and revolutionaries drank, only
two buildings remain from the Revolutionary War
period today. Just two. You have the Carraway
House, which was built in 1734, sitting quietly
on South Wichita Road. And you have Pleasant
Hall. built in 1779, everything else from that
era is completely gone. Replaced entirely by
the infrastructure of modern life. If you drive
through Kempsville today, you don't see a colonial
shipping port. You see major commercial hubs.
You have Providence Square and Fairfield Shopping
Center sitting directly across from each other
at the busy intersection of Kempsville and Providence
Roads. You have Kemps River Crossing. You have
Woods Corner in West Kempsville. And remember
that one single brick schoolhouse from the 1922
survey. Oh, right. Today, the Kempsville community
operates under the massive Virginia Beach City
public school system with three high schools.
Kempsville. Tallwood, and Salem, plus three middle
schools, 10 elementary schools, and a Catholic
high school. Not to mention Regent University,
the Christian Broadcasting Network headquarters,
the Founders Inn and Spa, and the Virginia Beach
Theological Seminary. It is an incredibly dense,
highly developed suburban hub, protected today
by the 4th Police Precinct and multiple fire
stations. But what is truly fascinating is how
the modern demographics reflect the broader geographic
changes of the Hampton Roads area. How so? The
massive military presence in the surrounding
region over the late 20th century drew incredibly
diverse populations to these new suburbs. You
really see that when you look at the micro demographic
details in the source. Yeah, take Bellamy Woods,
for example. It's a neighborhood with a child
poverty rate in the lowest 0 .0 % of all neighborhoods.
And over 86 % of the households speak English,
but it also has a notable 7 .5 % Tagalog speaking
population. Which reflects... the area's rich
Filipino -American community, deeply tied to
the history of the U .S. Navy and the region.
Then you have the Point of View neighborhood,
which is situated on the banks of Kemp's Lake.
Kemp's Lake is so interesting. It's a 19 -foot
-deep body of water where residents do water
sports today. But do you know how it got there?
It wasn't carved by nature. No. During the construction
of the Interstate 264 Virginia Beach Expressway,
engineers accidentally formed a 19 -foot -deep
lake. It is the ultimate symbol of modern infrastructure
permanently altering the physical landscape,
just as the early colonists altered the riverbanks
for their tobacco and timber ships. So what does
this all mean? Think about your own commute tomorrow
morning. We often just drive right on through.
We drive through modern suburbs. We sit at endless
stoplights next to strip malls. We cross highway
overpasses and we complain about the traffic.
But we do all of that without ever realizing
we might be driving directly over 17th century
colonial ports. Or the very first revolutionary
battlegrounds of a state. Exactly. Or centuries
of buried complex history. Kempsville is this
massive, sprawling reminder to look closer at
the seemingly ordinary subdivisions in your own
town. The past is always right there, hiding
just under the pavement. This raises an important
question, and it's one of the greatest what -ifs
from the source material to leave you with. I
love this one. Decades before the Civil War,
a canal company was actually incorporated and
heavily backed by the Commonwealth of Virginia
government. The grand plan was to dig a massive
canal connecting the headwaters of the eastern
branch of the Elizabeth River directly to the
headwaters of the Lynnhaven River. But then the
Civil War broke out. Right. The sheer physical
effort and funding required for the digging stopped.
The canal was abandoned and never finished. Think
about the maritime logistics of that. If ships
could have cut straight through Kempsville instead
of navigating the dangerous coastal routes around
Cape Henry, it would have completely altered
the geography and the entire economy of modern
-day Virginia Beach. Changed everything. Instead
of a landlocked suburban sprawl of residential
neighborhoods and shopping centers, Kempsville
might have remained a massive, continuous maritime
industrial seaport to this very day. It is a
profound reminder of how a single historical
event like the outbreak of a war can forever
alter the physical shape of the cities we live
in. It really makes you look at every strip mall
and man -made lake a little differently. Thank
you so much for joining us on this deep dive.
Stay curious, keep looking past the obvious,
and always keep questioning the history hidden
right beneath your feet. We will see you next
time.