There was "no place so strong, so pleasant, and delightful in Virginia, for which we called it None-such." So wrote Captain John Smith about the site he chose in 1609 when he established the first English settlement near the falls of the James River. It stood a few miles south until 1610. William Byrd I founded the second settlement when he patented land here in 1676. He soon built a fortified community, trading post, and warehouses just across the river near the mouth of Goode Creek. In 1737 his son, William Byrd II, laid out Richmond—which he named for Richmond upon Thames, now a borough of London—here in the Shockoe valley.
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