The history of Norfolk, Virginia as a modern settlement begins in 1636. The city formally was incorporated in 1736. The city was burned by orders of the outgoing Virginia governor Lord Dunmore in 1776 during the second year of the American Revolutionary War (1775–1783), although it was soon rebuilt.
The 19th century proved to be a time of numerous travails for both the city of Norfolk, and the region as whole. War, epidemics, fires, and economic depression reduced the development of the city. The city grew into the region's economic hub. By the late 19th century, the Norfolk and Western Railway with its line to the west established the community as a major coal ore exporting port and built a large trans-loading facility at Lambert's Point. It became the terminus for numerous other railroads, linking its ports to inland regions of Virginia and North Carolina, and at the turn of the 20th century, the coal mining regions of Appalachia were well connected to the port on the East Coast. Princess Anne and Norfolk counties would become leaders in truck farming, producing over half of all greens and potatoes consumed on the East Coast. Lynnhaven oysters also became a major export.
The region's African Americans achieved full emancipation following the Civil War (1861–1865), after the initial Emancipation Proclamation by 16th President Abraham Lincoln in 1862–1863, supplemented later by the three post-war constitutional amendments during the Reconstruction era (1865–1877), only to be faced with severe discrimination through white legislators' later imposition by the 1890s of Jim Crow Laws. After Virginia passed a new post-war state constitution, African Americans were essentially disfranchised for more than 60 years until their leadership and activism won passage of federal civil rights legislation in the mid-1960s. In 1907, it was host to the Jamestown Exposition commemorating the tercennary (300th anniversary) of the first English settlement at Jamestown on the James River, the only world's fair to ever be held in Virginia. As a result of its publicity and visits by high-ranking officials during the exposition (in which the Great White Fleet, of 26th President Theodore Roosevelt with the rebuilt United States Navy after the Spanish–American War of 1898 was launched from Hampton Roads harbor), it became the later location of the Norfolk Naval Station.
Today, the city of Norfolk is a major American naval and world shipping hub, as well as the center of the Hampton Roads region, both on the southside and the peninsula to the north of the extensive harbor between the James and York Rivers, with the railroad terminus and ship construction port of Newport News from the 19th century on the west shore and Hampton on the south and east sides, dating back to its founding in the colonial era as Virginia's original port.
Pre-colonial
The first evidence of humans inhabiting Virginia is from 9,500 BC.
In 1584, Sir Walter Raleigh led an expedition in search of a suitable place to establish a permanent English settlement in North America. By mid-July of that year, two of his ships had landed on Roanoke Island (now a part of Dare County). Arthur Barlowe, one of Raleigh's commanders, kept a journal which states the area was inhabited by a tribe of Native Americans called the Chesepian. According to Barlowe, the local Chesepians claimed that a nearby city called Skicoak was the Chesepians' greatest city. However, the exact location of Skicoak has remained undetermined.
When Jamestown settlers arrived at Cape Henry (in present-day Virginia Beach) almost 23 years later in April 1607, they found no traces of Skicoak. According to William Strachey's The Historie of Travaile into Virginia Britanica (1612), the Chesepians had been wiped out by Chief Wahunsunacock (better known as Chief Powhatan), the head of the Virginia Peninsula-based Powhatan Confederacy in the intervening years.
Colonial period (1607–1775)
In 1607, the Governor for the Virginia Colony, Sir George Yeardley established four incorporations, termed "citties" for the developed portion of the colony. These citties were to form the basis for the government of the colony in the newly created House of Burgesses, with the southeastern portion of the Hampton Roads region falling under the Elizabeth Cittie incorporation. In 1622, Adam Thoroughgood (1604–1640) of King's Lynn, Norfolk, England, became one of the earliest Englishmen to settle in the area that was to become South Hampton Roads, when at the age of 18 he became an indentured servant to pay for passage to the Virginia Colony. After his period of contracted servitude was finished, he earned his freedom and soon became a leading citizen of the fledgling colony.