Familial Places: Portsmouth, Virginia

Portsmouth, Virginia, USA

Portsmouth is an independent city, located in the state of Virginia.  This means that it is not attached to any county government.  It was founded as an independent city in 1858.(1)  Portsmouth is part of the Hampton Roads Harbor.(2)  John Wood, a shipbuilder, noticed that Portsmouth would be a good shipbuilding location in 1620.  He petitioned King James I of England for a land grant.  Soon the area became a plantation community.  Colonel William Crawford officially founded Portsmouth as a town in 1752.  It was named after the town of Portsmouth in England. (2)

Portsmouth was the county seat of Norfolk County until 1963 when the new city of Chesapeake was formed.

This is where Portsmouth is within Virginia:

"VAMap-doton-Portsmouth" by The original uploader was Seth Ilys at English Wikipedia - Transferred from en.wikipedia to Commons.. Licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0 via Commons - https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:VAMap-doton-Portsmouth.PNG#/media/File:VAMap-doton-Portsmouth.PNG

This is what the current city boundaries look like:

From Google Maps

It appears the boundaries haven't changed since it's independence in 1858. (3)

People of interest:

• CHANDLER, living male

Places of interest:

• Naval Medical Center Portsmouth.

(1) https://familysearch.org/learn/wiki/en/Portsmouth,_Virginia
(2) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portsmouth,_Virginia
(3) http://www.mapofus.org/virginia/

I will add more to this article as I find ancestors from here.  For right now this is all I felt was pertinent to my son's family history book.