Hampton Courthouse
“Roofless and Thoroughly Gutted”
“The courthouse, roofless and thoroughly gutted. … [Its] chimney served oar cooks well in getting supper. The Telegraph tent was soon up and the operator at work on the newly strung wire to Fort Monroe.” – Pvt. Robert Knox Sneden, March 24, 1862
Hampton’s courthouse was one of more than five hundred buildings that Capt. Jefferson C. Phillips’s Confederate troops burned on August 7, 1861, during the Civil War. The courthouse area was chosen as headquarters for Union Gen. Samuel Heintzelman’s III Corps during the Peninsula Campaign. Heintzelman and his staff pitched their tents nearby.
The American Missionary Association soon erected a school and church here amid the ruins of the old courthouse to demonstrate that freedmen could live independently. This school was the most important one that the A.M.A. established. Attended by 250 students, it contained a primary school on the first floor, while more advanced pupils on the second level were taught multiplication, division, penmanship, and elementary reading. The missionary teachers were ecstatic at the progress of their pupils, and they conducted their religious work in concert with their efforts in education. C.P. Day, an A.M.A. teacher, defined the organization’s motto as teaching “In order to do justice to the children.” Schools such as this one helped escaped slaves define their lives as they adapted to freedom.
The courthouse that stands today dates from 1876. Remodeled in 1910 by C. Taylor Holtzsclaw, it has undergone several subsequent additions.
Marker is on Kings Way 0.1 miles south of Lincoln Street, on the right when traveling south.
Courtesy hmdb.org
