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Location of seat: King and Queen Court House
County Established: 1691
Present Courthouse Built: 1866
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King and Queen County was established in 1691, at that time breaking off from New Kent County. Though one might think that this county was named for the King Ngwane III and Queen LaYaka Ndwandwe of Swaziland, it was actually named for King William III and Queen Mary II of England. |
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 King and Queen County's Clerk's Office, today's home of the King and Queen County Historical Society. Click here to see an informational sign on the front of the building. |
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Information about precisely when King and Queen County built its first courthouse has been lost, but in 1702 a carpenter by the name of Larkin Chew offered to construct a courthouse for Essex County, saying that it would be the same as the 45' x 22' frame building he had erected for King and Queen County. The county of our current interest likely built its first brick courthouse and clerk's office sometime in the first few decades of the 18th century. The reason the date King and Queen County's first brick civic buildings were built is unknown is because...everything burned down in 1828! Courthouse, clerk's office, and all of the county's court records were no more. A new courthouse and clerk's office were rebuilt atop the ashes of the old, but, remarkably, another fire followed in 1833. For these and future Federal government-related incendiary events, King and Queen County has crackled its way to a place on the list of Virginia's Burned Record Counties, under the Catastrophic Loss category. |
When rebuilt after the 1828 fire, King and Queen County's courthouse was less grand than had been the original T-shaped edifice, but wings were added in 1859... just in time for the Civil War to bring the Union Army to the county in March of 1864! As was their wont, the boys in blue burned the courthouse, clerk's office and jail, thereby making it difficult for King and Queen County to proceed in its everyday affairs, much less support the Confederacy in any meaningful way. The county's court relocated a couple of miles northwest to Stevensville, which assumedly had at least one suitable building that wasn't presently a smoldering pile of ash, and after the war many in the upper end of King and Queen County felt that the county seat should be permanently moved thereto. Nope! In 1866, it was rebuildin' time all over the American south, but few destroyed localities got their civic buildings up and running as quickly as did King and Queen County (the first meeting in the new courthouse took place on December 2, 1866)...and it happened atop the ruins of their burned courthouse.
 A couple of millstones dating to the late 17th century adorn the sign for the Tavern Museum. Click here to see a closeup of those millstones if you are interested in such things, and Click here to see the sign describing the stones. |
The only thing the Union Army spared of King and Queen County's courthouse complex was the Fary Tavern, located directly to the southwest of the courthouse. Techically a tavern was privately owned and thus not really part of the county government, but it filled an important role in the function of that government...the Union troops surely felt that needlessly burning up perfectly good alcohol was vastly more inexcusable than burning up a county's records and administrative buildings. Today, the Tavern houses the King and Queen Court House Tavern Museum. |
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 The King and Queen County Jail, built in 1866, is today the County Registrar's office.   The Fary Tavern, which was the only thing the Federal Government spared when it was burning King and Queen County's important administrative stuff in 1864. |
King and Queen County's courthouse complex has everything for which one might look of the traditional Virginia courthouse complex tableau: Courthouse, clerk's office, jail, Confederate Monument, tavern and even the low surrounding wall...although the latter was added in the 1930's, as a Works Progress Administration project.
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 The Eastern View Schoolhouse, originally built around 1870, was King and Queen County's last log schoolhouse. It operated until 1903, and was moved to its present location behind the Tavern in 2004. |
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King and Queen County's Confederate Monument was erected in 1912, and is unusual in that it specifically mentions the soldiers and sailors of the county who served in the war: An anchor is represented on one of the monument's sides, which is the only anchor I've ever seen on such a courthouse monument! There is also a plaque on the courthouse memorializing those county men who died in the First and Second World Wars: Click here to see it. The courthouse was expanded over the years, and in 1895 it gained a vestibule, which brought it to the state in which we more or less see it today. The clerk's office soldiered on until 1957, when an office for the clerk was added to the rear of the courthouse...today the old clerk's office building is home to the King and Queen County Historical Society. King and Queen County's Circuit Court still operates in the old courthouse. Lastly, at least part of the reason that Union troops burned King and Queen Courthouse when they did was because Union Colonel Ulric Dahlgren was killed at Walkerton, a few miles northwest of King and Queen Court House on the Mattaponi River, on March 2, 1864. |
Ulric Dahlgren was the son of Rear Admiral John A. Dahlgren, who founded the US Army's Ordnance Department and designed the Dahlgren Gun, one of the most effective developments in artillery during the Civil War. Ulric had been leading part of a cavalry raid of Richmond, in which he intended to approach Richmond from the rear and free Union prisoners held on Belle Island in the James River. Plans went awry, and Ulric was forced to retreat...straight into an ambush sprung by the 9th Virginia Cavalry at Walkerton. Though King and Queen Court House had played no role in this affair, it received the brunt of the Union's retaliatory anger...but then Union troops didn't need much of an excuse to burn Virginia's county courthouses by that point of the war.
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