New Kent County Courthouse

New Kent County, established in 1654, built a brick courthouse here by 1695. Fires in 1753 and 1775 destroyed the building and its successor. A later courthouse, damaged during the Civil War, was replaced in 1909. In 1736 county court justice George Webb published The Office and Authority of a Justice of Peace, an influential law manual. During the Revolutionary War, Lt. Gen. Charles Cornwallis's British forces passed through here in June 1781, followed by American troops under the Marquis de Lafayette, and an american military hospital was established here. Confederate and Union troops passed through during the Peninsula Campaign of 1862.