Fort Monroe

The area known today as Old Point Comfort has an extensive and complicated history that spans long before and after the occupancy of the U.S. Army. To celebrate both the civilian and military communities which have coexisted on this stretch of land, we refer to events regarding the military history as occurring at Fort Monroe and those regarding the local community as part of the larger history of Old Point Comfort. What follows is a timeline of significant events which have occurred in this geographic space in written memory. We, as a staff, acknowledge that written memory severely limits the telling of a diverse historical narrative and are actively working to collect additional material culture and oral histories, which shed better light on lived experience. This timeline will be updated as we continue to learn, but truly begins over 10,000 years before the arrival of the English with the occupation of Indigenous peoples. After years of resisting the Powhatan Confederacy, the weroance of the Kecoughtan Indigenous People dies. Powhatan installs his own son, Pochins, as the new weroance. To disrupt the unified identify of the Kecoughtan people, Powhatan orders his people throughout the land of Tsenacomaco to settle in the area. English colonists, under the jurisdiction of the Virginia Company of London, first arrive at the land known today as Old Point Comfort and Fort Monroe. Wanting to expand the Virginia Company’s dominion over resources and commercial enterprises in the area and avenge those who had died in the skirmishes of the First Anglo-Powhatan War, the colonists lure the Kecoughtan into the open, attacking them and destroying their homes. After the attack, the colonists have few interactions with the Kecoughtan, although they remain in the area at least until 1618. The first enslaved Africans, taken against their will from the Kingdom of Ndongo (present-day Angola), arrive at Point Comfort, beginning over 400 years of bondage, segregation, and prejudice in what would become the United States. Lord Charles Cornwallis is ordered to set up a defensive post at Old Point Comfort. Upon visiting, his engineer reports that the ruins of Fort George are not suitable for the post, and they continue on to Yorktown where the British are defeated marking the end of the American Revolution. Construction is completed on the Old Point Comfort lighthouse. Prior to this time ships are guided into Hampton Roads by the caretaker of the Fort George ruins. British forces capture the lighthouse during the War of 1812, gaining control of the Chesapeake Bay. Using the lighthouse as a staging area, they burn the City of Hampton and then Washington, D.C. a week later. To prevent any enemy force from controlling the Chesapeake Bay area again, construction begins on Forts Monroe and Calhoun (now Fort Wool) as part of the Third System of Coastal Forts. The Hygeia Hotel opens its doors in 1822, originally providing housing for laborers on the fort, but quickly becoming a sought-after getaway. A resort community flourishes in later years, and countless forms of transportation connect the public to the three major hotels on Old Point Comfort. Brig. Gen. Abraham Eustis establishes the Artillery School of Practice at Fort Monroe. Later becoming the Coast Artillery School, the training of artillery officers was centralized here for over a century. Edgar Allan Poe, serving in the Army under the name Edgar Perry, is assigned to Fort Monroe. Poe returns to Fort Monroe in 1849, to recite his poetry at the Hygeia Hotel. Ma-ka-tai-me-she-kia-kiak, chief of the Sauk Indians, known also as Chief Black Hawk, led a faction of Indigenous people in fighting to regain tribal lands in Illinois. He was held for several weeks at Fort Monroe on his way to Washington D.C.. His imprisonment draws crowds of curious people, including artists, pressuring the government to release him. The Chapel of the Centurion is consecrated. Three years prior, an explosion a