Southern Historical Society Papers, Volume 10.
Reverend J. William Jones, Ed.

[490] be so spelled; but he contended that the name was bestowed on the place by Captain Newport, to commemorate his own surname and the surname of the Knight-Marshal of Virginia, Sir William Newce. Before going very far into Mr. Grigsby's letter, I found he had not sufficiently posted himself on the subject, and that in consequence his theory was, for the most part, a draft on his own imagination. En passant--I here remark that this question was one of quite earnest public discussion by numbers of the literati of Eastern Virginia (including the late Honorable John Tyler of that State) in the twenties and thirties of this century; and it seems that merely from not having delved as deeply as they could have done, even at that day, down among the records of the past, they failed to arrive at a decision of the question, and so left the controversy, to give employment to the pens of their successors, of half a century later.

As the overthrow of Mr. Grigsby's theory will be the defeat of the theories of all others who held, or now hold, that the name was originally spelled Newport-Newce, whether bestowed as to the last half of the name in honor of Captain Thomas Newce, or of the Knight-Marshall, Sir William Newce, I now proceed, without further preliminaries, to open my batteries on Mr. Grigsby's position.

Mr. Grigsby says: “Newport was the old Admiral of the Colony, and Sir William Newce, in the character of Marshal, commanded [1621] the fort at or near Newport's News;” and in much more verbiage than that I now here use, he pictures Newport and the Marshal going off together, in the latter's pinnace, to board incoming ships, which, as Mr. Grigsby says, “backed their topsails and vailed their flags in honor of the Royal Standard of St. George.” Mr. Grigsby also depicts Newport, (being then “at last settled in his quiet home,” ) as “strolling by the shore” of Newport's News; and in this connection he says of the old salt, “he pauses in his path and gazes on the watery waste around him,” &c. A vision of a city “looms before him,” and under the fervors of his imagination, Mr. Grigsby represents Newport as then bestowing his own and his friend, the Marshal's, surname upon the promontory in question.

Be it observed that Mr. Grigsby commits himself to the position that the promontory did not receive its name (whether it was Newport-Newce or Newport's News) until the autumn of 1621; for, when referring to the abandonment of the Colony in 1610 by all the settlers then in it, and of their meeting, while on their way down the river, Lord De La Warr's long boat coming up the river, Mr. Grigsby says: “Now, ”