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Charlottesville & Albemarle County History

In colonial times, whenever the growing population outdistanced an older courthouse, the government solved the problem by creating new counties. In 1744 the Virginia General Assembly created Albemarle County by cutting off the upper portion of Goochland County. The sprawling new county, which included all or parts of seven future counties, was named Albemarle in honor of William Anne Keppel, Second Earl of Albemarle and titular Governor of Virginia at the time. The county seat was established at Scott's landing on the James River, in the heart of the new Albemarle, when six magistrates met at and were sworn in on the last day of February 1745.

Hundreds more moved into Albemarle over the next two decades. By 1761, as the population settled even farther west and south, Scott's Landing had become too far to travel for court, business, and elections. The Assembly repeated its pattern, carving new counties from Albemarle. The James River, once the county's central artery for transportation and commerce, became the new southern boundary.

North of the James, cutting through the Rivanna River Gap in the Southwest Mountains on its way to the Blue Ridge, was the Three Notch'd Road. The Three Notch'd (or Three Chopped) Road was an early Monacan Indian Trail worn by explorers and traders, and it was on this route that Albemarle leaders established their new central county seat in 1762. Laid out on a hilltop, overlooking the Rivanna and the mountains, the planned community was named Charlottesville in honor of Princess Charlotte, who had become the Queen of England that year as the wife of George III. The little town lay within the middle belt of the Appalachian uplands in a region composed of low mountains and hills. Nearby was the Rivanna, a navigable branch of the James River. Charlottesville is approximately 123 miles southwest of Washington, D.C., and 71 miles west of Richmond.

Tobacco, wheat and corn were the basis of the economy for the new county's four or five thousand inhabitants. These first settlers were mostly planters and farmers but many owned or operated ferries, ordinaries, or mills. Some were surveyors, lawyers, or doctors and others merchants, craftsmen, indentured servants or slaves.

In 1790 Albemarle County's population was 12,585. Charlottesville received an additional twenty acres of land that same year. Ten years later the size of the town required some form of self-governance and the General Assembly provided for the creation of a board of trustees to be elected by free white male residents age twenty-one or older. Their jurisdiction extended to a half mile beyond the town's boundaries. Today Charlottesville occupies 10.8 square miles and has a population of 40,002 people. Albemarle County's population is 81,996 and consists of 739.2 square miles.

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