The diagram that provides the earliest know reference to Hobbs Hole was drawn in 1680 to help resolve a boundary dispute.
Two things. If you thought a Jacob Hobbs had anything to do with the establishment of Hobbs Hole you would be wrong. That you read it in a history book doesn’t make it right. Let us begin by laying out what has been authored versus what the records show.
The earliest record we have of a reference to Hobbs Hole is in a diagram, drawn by George Morris, surveyor of New Kent County, dated July 6, 1680, as part of a boundary dispute. The diagram illustrated here shows “Hobb His Hole Harbor” [sic] across the mouth of where Tickner’s Creek meets the Rappahannock River. It shows Benjamin Goodrich’s plantation and the “Towne” on the south side of the creek, and the plantation of Mr. Reeves on the north side of the creek. The area shown is mostly between Tickner’s Creek (current) and Jilson’s [Gilson’s] Creek (now Mt. Landing Creek) that are about 1-6/10th of a mile apart along the south side of the Rappahannock River. The original Morris drawing is now missing from our courthouse but a copy can be found at the Library of Virginia on microfilm made in 1978. Interestingly, surveyor George Morris (with John Long) also patented 1,600 acres upon the branches of Major Andrew Gilson’s Creek in 1667, adjacent to the land Thomas Button and land formerly of John Pate. So he was well familiar with the landscape.
Publications
In 1965, author Thomas Hoskins Warner simply stated that in 1680 a public warehouse was built at the new “town of trade” Hobbs His Hole, now Tappahannock. The order came after the passing of an act of assembly for cohabitation and encouragement of trade and manufacture in the capital at Williamsburg rather than a local court order for which books before 1683 have not survived.
The next year, Warner’s nephew Charles Willard Hoskins Warner embellished in his address to the Essex County Historical Society about “The Origin and Establishment of Tappahannock,” in which he detailed the various early land owners, and stated, “There was a village here before there was a town. This village originated with Jacob Hobbes who was apparently an overseer for either [Bartholomew] Hoskins or [Clement] Thrush. This village was located where the present high school grounds are and this was the settlement known as Hobbes His Hole.” No source citations were given or can now be found.
In a 1970 magazine article by Charles Warner he restated the same sentences he used in 1966.
Again, without source citation. The next year, he condensed the same information in the first bulletin of the newly-established Essex County Historical Society, but did not name Jacob Hobbs.
In a 1979 newspaper article, author Patti Cox again attributed the establishment of Hobbs His Hole to a Jacob Hobbs, and noted that Charles Warner stated “not a great deal is really known about him.” Well, no surprise. In fact, the name Jacob Hobbs doesn’t appear in any court record at the Essex County Courthouse, which records begin in 1656, nor in any colonial court record along any eastern-Virginia waterway, state-level record, or any of the thousands of Virginia-related items extracted from British records starting in the 1950s. For that matter, Jacob Hobbs doesn’t exist, let alone that he had anything to do with our area.
By 1986, author James B. Slaughter was more on target by stating, “The origin of the humble Hobb’s His Hole name remains a mystery,” and Slaughter did not perpetuate the myth about Jacob Hobbs. Slaughter is the first to point out that a “hole” meant a deep area where a ship could drop anchor. This is similar to what we have at Naylor’s Hole in Richmond County, or Boyd’s Hole in Stafford/King George County.
Thus, surveyor Morris’ labeling of “his hole” on the diagram infers some connection to a ship. It follows that a place name of where a ship dropped anchor would tie to a ship or a ship captain. It may also tie to a present or former land owner. We can prove that all three issues point to a Captain Richard Hobbs.
Land
A parcel of land that was granted by the Virginia governor in 1668 links the land. A land patent of April 22, 1668 was granted to Capt. Christopher Wormly (d. 1698) on the south side of the main swamp of Mr. Andrew Gilson’s Creek at the Rappahannock River, and states the parcel was part of 1,000 acres previously patented by John Pate (d. 1672) on December 31, 1662, who “sold” [probably assigned] the 800 acres to Capt. Richard Hobbs who lost for want of seating. Wormly was the district escheator here up through 1692, and was the guy appointed to manage Crown lands in his district and keep an eye out whether or not grantees complied with provisions of the patent.
Note on the Patent Process. To start the process, an individual wishing to claim land appeared in the county court or the Secretary’s office and provided evidence of their importation whether paid for by themselves or another. The court granted a certificate of their eligibility for land. An example from an Essex order book is: “Mr. Henry Vernon for himself, his wife, & daughter proved their right to take up each of them fifty acres of land & Certificate is granted them.” The certificate was taken to a surveyor to have land surveyed after which the survey was forwarded to the Secretary’s office for approval, and then the patent was sent to the patentee. Researcher Ron Wilson found a case where the time between when two persons arrived in Virginia and the time their importation was claimed in a patent spanned 42 years.
Patentees were required to “seat” or “plant” within three years of the date of the patent, i.e. settle the land (trees were cleared and crops set out), and to pay the annual rent of one shilling for every fifty acres. The title to lapsed land, as land was called that had not been settled within three years, returned to the Crown and could be claimed by the first person to petition the General Court. Without such petition, lapsed land would not have come to the attention of the court. Previously patented land could also return to the crown either when the landholder died without heirs or when he was convicted of a felony. Escheat for criminal offense was rare.
It’s no surprise that a ship’s captain, who spent his life floating about the world, would not settle in a particular location. Keep in mind that 640 acres make up a square mile, so Capt. Richard Hobbs’ 800 acres pretty much filled up a large portion shown in the 1680 Morris diagram, including the mouth of the creek marked “Hobb His Hole Harbor” [sic]. By the 1668 patent record we know that Hobbs failed to comply by that time when the land was re-patented to Wormly, thus Hobbs would have acquired the rights to the land sometime between when Pate patented it in 1662 and 1665, three years previous.
The land records of Rappahannock County (later Essex) do not show a deed between Pate and Hobbs for the period between 1662 and 1666. This may be explained that the practice of assigning land, exactly like bounty land for Revolutionary War service, could be done by flipping over the paper on which the rights were given (often the survey) and signing it over to someone else. Like trading: I’ll give you this if you give me that. There was often a lag between the time the local escheator, in working with the local surveyor, made up two copies of the patented land’s record copy and had it recorded in Williamsburg. While all that is going on, the patentee would have rights to the land and could assign it over to someone else even before the record copy of the patent was filed or a deed was made and recorded. Being a mariner, Capt. Hobbs who was out and about would have little time to ensure all the paperwork was done. Unfortunately for us, the loose original patents before 1779, that could easily have had all sorts of assignments written on the back, were burned annually in the Secretary’s office in Williamsburg. Surviving are only the bound record book copies of patents from the Virginia Land Office.
About Capt. Richard
Hobbs
Richard and his brothers John and William were children of William Hobbs Sr. (d. 1641) by his wife Mabel (d. 1647). The family had land in Poulton, Hampshire, England. By 1652, Richard Hobbs was a planter in Nansemond, Virginia. Many land owners in our area started out southward along one of the rivers. About Richard, a witness in British court in 1656 stated that he knew he [Richard] went to a plantation in America but wasn’t sure where. In 1658, Capt. Richard Hobbs was commander of the ship Elizabeth and Mary out of London who was granted administration in Anne Arundel County, Maryland on the estate of George Baldwin who lately died aboard the said ship. In 1660, a group of British merchants claimed they were shippers of goods on the ship Elizabeth and Mary, Mr. Richard Hobs [sic], bound from London to Virginia.
In 1662, the murder of Robert Clarke aboard the ship Elizabeth and Mary on passage from England to Virginia resulted in Richard Hobbs, master of the said ship, to be bonded in Virginia and give evidence in London. Two years later, various merchants and owners in Virginia petitioned King Charles II and complained of their need of sailors as the ships to and from Virginia “have not sufficient men aboard to defend them against the Dutch.” They requested that letters to the Governor of Virginia be sent back to England by the ship Elizabeth and Mary, with Richard Hobbs as commander, asking him to cause all ships from Virginia to sail together. Two records in Lancaster County note Capt. Richard Hobbs was involved in court suits there. In 1669, a royal letter to Sir William Berkeley, Governor of Virginia, required him to take into custody a young man named Richard Mompesson, alias Richard Davis, who had been sent to Virginia by undue means onboard the ship Elizabeth, Capt. Richard Hobbs, and had been handed over near James Town to one William Drummond.
Just when Capt. Richard Hobbs died is unknown. He had a son, also named Richard, born about 1644. The son is seen in Rappahannock County records with wife Mary in various land transactions. In 1667, James Fullerton was granted a patent of 700 acres in Rappahannock County on the south side of the river, adjacent to Piscataway Creek, for transportation of 14 persons including Richard Hobbs. It’s not unusual for claims about the paying for transportation of individuals into the Colony to be submitted long after the fact. By 1673, the younger Richard, then of Farnham Parish, sold to John Chambers land on the north side of the Rappahannock River, and a year later Richard and wife Mary leased part of his land near James Williamson’s Creek. Richard Hobbs Jr. died in Essex County in 1683.
Thus, we can prove that mariner Richard Hobbs, captain of the ship Elizabeth and Mary, for a very short while (sometime between 1662-1665), owned 800 acres in the immediate vicinity of the 1680 diagram by surveyor George Morris showing “Hobb His Hole Harbor”, and since “hole” means a deep water point where a ship sets anchor, it is evident that ship captain Richard Hobbs is the man identified with Hobbs His Hole. Let future references to Jacob Hobbs disappear— he didn’t exist. References to him are by people who are not doing proper research with original records.
Please feel free to request a copy of this article with detailed source citations by message to the author’s email wespipp@gmail.com.
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