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

So the phrase “Whittaker's News,” would have some significance when mentioned by one Londoner to another in reference to “Good Newes from Virginia,” written in 1613, by the Rev. Alexander Whittaker, Minister of Henrico, Virginia, and sent by him in that year to the Company in London, and afterwards published there.

I have not read from Newport's pen any account of his discoveries and acts in Virginia, but I have no doubt that on one of his early returns to England from Virginia,² he did publish a brief pamphlet respecting the affairs and prospects of the Colony, which probably was entitled or was popularly known as “Newport's News from Virginia,” and in some way and for some reason that have been lost and will now never be ascertained, the first two words of the title were applied to the promontory which now bears that name. In his pamphlet he may have made special and laudatory mention of that promontory as the most desirable site on the Continent for a great seat of commerce when the country back to the mountains should become thickly settled. Possibly he may have made a hobby of the idea in his personal intercourse with people in both countries, in season and out of season, until at last people, whether in sport or otherwise, came to apply the two first words of the title of his pamphlet to the place as its name. Many a place in this country and in Europe has had its name stuck on it, or thrown at it until it stuck, in some such way by incidents or causes that no one at first supposed would result in shaping and attaching the name to the place.

As coinciding with this view of the case, and to prove that Newport was regarded as a great schemer, full of projects, vain and bombastic, I make the following quotations. Stith, at page 76 of his History, says: “Captain Newport was in reality an empty, idle, interested man, very fearful and suspicious in times of danger, but a very great and important person in his own talk and conceit.”

Sir William Keith in his “History of the British Plantations in ”