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

“ [502] America,” speaks, at p. 81, Part I [London Edit., 1738], of Newport as one “whose head was full of projects;” and at p. 82 he says, “the vanity of Captain Newport's conduct at this time was so ridiculous that,” &c. Smith, when President of the Colony, made a Report to the Company in London, which can be found in his Generall history [Edit. 1629]. In this Report he says, among other things, “I have not concealed from you anything I doe know, but I fear some [persons] cause you to believe more than is true. * * * * Captaine Newport we much suspect to be the author of these inventions. * * * * The souldiers say many of your officers maintain their families out of what you sent us, and that Newport hath a hundred pounds a yeare for carrying newes.”

By whom and why was given to the promontory the name which it has borne for more than two centuries and a half, I think we shall never know with certainty, but I think my conjecture as to how the name came to be applied (as indicated in the foregoing passages), is not far from the truth.

Although in Smith's General History the name appears repeatedly as “Nuport's News” and “Nupor's News,” and once as “Nuport's Nuse,” it is yet absolutely certain that all these instances are typographical errors; for, to say nothing of Smith's opportunities to have acquired the correct orthography of Newport's name from having crossed the ocean with him in the same ship, and from having been associated with him some time at Jamestown, I have only to refer you to two instances in a passage of this paper, a few lines back, where Smith spells Newport's name correctly, and these are by no means the only instances of the kind in Smith's General History.

To some persons, not exercising due reflection, the name “Newport's Nuse,” quoted a few lines back, might appear, at first blush, as sustaining Mr. Grigsby's theory, but the fact of the first word in the name being in the possessive case is crushingly fatal to that theory, and is conclusive proof that the type-setter carelessly printed the word Nuse for News; pronouncing, in his mind, the word Nuse as if rhyming with Fuse, and therefore sounding, as to its last three letters, precisely like the sound of the last three letters of the word “News.”

Mr. Grigsby, in his letter to Mr. Deane, cites the compound name Newport-Pagnall, in England, and the following compound names in this country, viz: Hampden-Sidney, Randolph-Macon, Wilkes-Barre, and Say-Brook,¹ in support of his theory; as if he should assert, by