The first Fort Henry in the

Virginia colony The Colony of Virginia was a British colonial settlement in North America from 1606 to 1776. The first effort to create an English settlement in the area was chartered in 1584 and established in 1585; the resulting Roanoke Colony lasted for t ...

was a small facility, with a garrison of 15, that was erected in 1611 by Thomas West, 3rd Baron De La Warr as part of a series of fortifications now located in Hampton. Due to continually humid conditions and Atlantic storms, this timber fort was defunct by the time the fort on the Appomattox was built. The later Fort Henry was an English frontier fort near the falls of the

Appomattox River The Appomattox River is a tributary of the James River, approximately long,U.S. Geological Survey. National Hydrography Dataset high-resolution flowline dataThe National Map, accessed April 1, 2011 in central and eastern Virginia, named for the ...

. Its exact location has been debated, but the most popular one (marked by Virginia Historical Marker QA-6) is on a bluff about four blocks north of the corner of W. Washington and N. South Streets in Petersburg. Fort Henry was built in 1645 by order of Virginia's

House of Burgesses The House of Burgesses () was the lower house of the Virginia General Assembly from 1619 to 1776. It existed during the colonial history of the United States in the Colony of Virginia in what was then British America. From 1642 to 1776, the Hou ...

. It marked the 1646 treaty frontier between the white settlers and the Indians following the

Second Anglo-Powhatan War The AngloPowhatan Wars were three wars fought between settlers of the Colony of Virginia and the Powhatan People of Tsenacommacah in the early 17th century. The first war started in 1609 and ended in a peace settlement in 1614. The second war l ...

. It was situated at the fall line of the Piedmont, near the

Appomattoc The Appomattoc (also spelled Appamatuck, Apamatic, and numerous other variants) were a historic tribe of Virginia Indians speaking an Algonquian language, and residing along the lower Appomattox River, in the area of what is now Petersburg, Co ...

Indian tribe. From 1646 until around 1691, it was the only point in Virginia where Indians could be authorized to cross eastward into white territory, or whites westward into Indian territory. In later years it also came to be known as Fort Wood, after its first commander,

Abraham Wood Abraham Wood (1610–1682), sometimes referred to as "General" or "Colonel" Wood, was an English fur trader, militia officer, politician and explorer of 17th century colonial Virginia. Wood helped build and maintained Fort Henry at the falls o ...

(1614–82). He used the fort as a base for several exploratory expeditions of the region. In 1675, command of the fort and adjacent Indian trading post passed to Wood's son-in-law, Peter Jones. The post became known as "Peter's Point". With trade and related settlement, eventually the city of Petersburg developed here. At some unknown point the original fort fell into ruins.

References

Henry Henry may refer to: People and fictional characters * Henry (given name), including lists of people and fictional characters * Henry (surname) * Henry, a stage name of François-Louis Henry (1786–1855), French baritone Arts and entertainmen ...

1645 establishments in the Colony of Virginia Petersburg, Virginia {{Virginia-struct-stub