Historic Yorktown - Yorktown Battlefield Part of Colonial National Historical Park (U.S. National Park Service)

Yorktown was established by the Act for Ports of 1691, passed by the General Assembly at Jamestown (Virginia's government seat for almost a century). The legislation was but another in a succession of disputed and unsuccessful efforts by the colonial government to encourage growth of towns in rural Tidewater Virginia. Yorktown, however, succeeded despite initial delays and frustrations.Fifty acres of land along the York River for the site of Yorktown were purchased from Benjamin Read of Gloucester County (across the York River from Yorktown) for 10,000 pounds of "merchantable sweet scented tobacco and cask." This land had first been patented 60 years earlier by Nicolas Martiau, Benjamin's grandfather. Martiau had carved his home and plantation from forested frontier wilderness.York County surveyor Lawrence Smith subdivided the town site into 85 lots which county court-appointed town trustees ("feoffees") offered for sale. Smith left the area between the bluff line and the York River (t...