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Norfolk Highlights 1584 - 1881
By George Holbert Tucker
Chapter 22
The Burning of Norfolk
When Miss Ann Archdeacon and her fiance, James Nimmo, applied for a
marriage license on August 24, 1797, John Ingram, her guardian, wrote
the following to the clerk of the Norfolk Corporation Court: "Miss
Nancy Archdeacon was born on the first day of January 1776, a remarkable
day for this town."
He was referring to the destruction of Norfolk by the British and colonial
troops that began on New Year's Day of 1776. When it was completed,
Norfolk had the dubious distinction of being the most devastated community
of its size in the American colonies during the Revolution.
The Norfolk area, where the Tory element was strong, had been the base
of operation for Lord Dunmore, the last royal governor of Virginia,
since he had fled to the safety of the British warships in Virginia
waters in June of 1775. And until his forces were defeated at the Battle
of Great Bridge on December 9, 1775, he more or less had things under
his control. Dunmore's defeat at Great Bridge, however, turned the tide
and from then on Norfolk's fate hung in the balance.
Five days after the battle, the Virginia troops under Colonel William
Woodford occupied the borough, from which most of the inhabitants, including
the leading Tory families, had fled, the latter seeking refuge aboard
Dunmore's already crowded ships in the harbor. Five days later, Colonel
Robert Howe and his North Carolina provincial troops arrived, after
which Howe assumed control of all the colonial forces in Norfolk.
From then on, Howe's sharpshooters, stationed in high and secluded
places along the waterfront, began picking off anyone who dared to show
his head above deck on the British ships.
Intense cold, the crowded conditions aboard the ships, and near starvation
finally forced Dunmore to act, but when he demanded food from Howe he
flatly refused. This sparked the cannonading by the British that began
the destruction of pre-Revolutionary Norfolk.
The firing began about 3:15 p.m. on New Year's Day of 1776, and continued
until 2 a.m. on January 2. Under the cover of a constant bombardment
of double-headed bar, chain, and grapeshot, British landing parties
attempted to rifle the waterfront warehouses, but in most instances
they were repulsed by Howe's men.
But Dunmore and his followers, popular tradition to the contrary, were
not the only villains in the destruction of Norfolk. For according to
H.J. Eckenrode's "The Revolution in Virginia" (1916), an authoritative
source book on the subject compiled from original documents in the Virginia
State Archives:
"The fires began by balls and landing-parties, spread with great
rapidity, because the provincial soldiers, instead of attempting to
extinguish them, seized the opportunity to plunder and destroy on their
own behalf, determined, as they said, 'to make hay while the sun shines.'
Breaking into rum-shops and warehouses, many of them soon became drunk
and went in gangs from house to house, smashing in doors, dragging out
spoils, and then applying the torch. Household goods of every kind were
sold in the street for a song to anybody willing to buy. The destruction
caused by the ships was confined to the waterfront, but the Virginia
soldiers involved the whole place in the catastrophe. On January 2,
1776, when the firing had ceased, the riflemen continued their work
of rapine without interference on the part of their officers -- apparently
even with their connivance. Only on the third day did Woodford put an
end to the sack by forbidding the burning of houses under severe penalty,
but by that time more than two-thirds of Norfolk was in ashes. In February,
1776, the remainder was destroyed by order of the convention in order
to deprive Dunmore of shelter."
 Chapter
23
The Coming of the French
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