The American Cyclopædia (1879)/Hampton (Virginia)

HAMPTON, a town and the county seat of Elizabeth City co., Virginia, on the W. bank of Hampton river, a small inlet of Hampton roads, about 2½ m. from Fortress Monroe, and 75 m. S. E. of Richmond; pop. in 1870, 2,300, of whom 1,840 were colored. Before the civil war it was a fashionable watering place. It was burned by the confederates under Gen. Magruder in August, 1861, but is now steadily recovering. It is the seat of the Hampton normal and agricultural institute, designed especially to train colored youth as teachers of their own race, by giving an English and an industrial education, while affording students an opportunity to defray a portion of their expenses by labor. The grounds, comprising a farm of 125 acres bordering on the river ½ m. below the village, were purchased by the American missionary association in 1867, at the instance of Gen. S. C. Armstrong, then superintendent of a department of the freedmen's bureau at Hampton, and since principal of the institute. It was incorporated in 1870, and in 1872 the state awarded to it one third ($95,000) of the proceeds of the congressional land grant for the support of an agricultural and mechanical college, with a portion of which 72 acres more of land have been purchased. The hall containing the school rooms, printing office, and boys' dormitories, erected in 1870, chiefly by the aid of the freedmen's bureau, is in the form of a Greek cross, three stories high and 110 ft. long by 85 ft. wide, and was constructed, partly by the labor of the students, of brick made on the farm. The corner stone of another hall, for the girls' dormitories, chapel, &c., to be 190 ft. in front and 40 ft. wide, with a wing running 100 ft. to the rear, was laid in 1873. About 150 acres of the farm are under cultivation by the boys. Tuition and room rent are free. The printing office was opened in November, 1871, and has been successfully operated by the students. The first number of the “Southern Workman,” a monthly illustrated periodical devoted to the industrial interests of the freedmen, was issued on Jan. 1, 1872. The girls find employment in the laundry and kitchen, and in various kinds of needlework. The number of instructors in 1873-'4 was 18; of students, 226, of whom 149 were males and 77 females. The course is three years. The Butler school house, belonging to the institute, in which was organized one of the earliest of the freedmen's schools, is used by the county as a free school, and contains about 200 pupils. Adjacent to the grounds is the national cemetery, containing a chapel, a handsome granite monument, and the graves of 5,123 Union soldiers; and near by is the national home for disabled soldiers, once a flourishing female seminary, which in 1872 provided for 538 veterans at an expense of $62,923 17.