MAP I
Bounds Set by First Two Charters of the Virginia Company
Drafted by W. B. Allison and B. Sims
Although the Plymouth Company sent out ships in the spring of 1607, the settlement attempted by them on the coast of Maine was abandoned the following year. The first settlement which was to prove permanent was made by the London Company whose ships, sailing from London in December 1606, reached the mouth of the James River in Virginia in April 1607. The founding of "James Cittie" provided a point of reference for the second charter of the London Company (which came to be known as the Virginia Company). This charter,[5] ] granted in 1609, gave it jurisdiction over
"all those lands, countries, and territories, situate, lying, and being, in that part of America called Virginia, from the point of land, called Cape or Point Comfort, all along the sea coast, to the northward 200 miles, and from the said Point or Cape Comfort, all along the sea coast to the southward 200 miles, and all that space and circuit of land, lying from the sea coast of the precinct aforesaid, up into the land, throughout from sea to sea, west and northwest; and also all the islands lying within one hundred miles, along the coast of both seas of the precinct aforesaid;…"
This grant reflects the view of the best geographers of the day that the Pacific Ocean lapped the western side of the as yet unexplored and unnamed Appalachian Mountains.
The third charter of the Virginia Company,[6] ] granted in 1612, extended the eastern boundaries of the colony to cover "… all and singular those Islands whatsoever, situate and being in any part of the ocean seas bordering upon the coast of our said first colony in Virginia, and being within three hundred leagues of any the parts heretofore granted …" This was done to include Bermuda which had been discovered in the meantime. The charter of the Virginia Company was annulled in 1624 by King James I, and its lands became a Crown Colony. By this time, however, the Virginia settlements were firmly established on and nearby the James River, and the Potomac River to the falls was well known to traders with the Indians.
The first limitation upon the extent of the "Kingdom of Virginia," as it was referred to by King Charles I, who succeeded his father in 1625, came with the grant to Lord Baltimore of a proprietorship over what became Maryland. This patent was granted in 1632; the first settlers reached what became St. Mary's on the Potomac in 1634. That part of the grant which is pertinent to the boundaries of Arlington reads:
"Going from the said estuary called Delaware Bay in a right line in the degree aforesaid to the true meridian of the first fountain of the river Potomac, then tending downward towards the south to the farther bank of the said river and following it to where it faces the western and southern coasts as far as to a certain place called Cinquack situate near the mouth of the same river where it discharges itself in the aforenamed bay of Chesapeake and thence by the shortest line as far as the aforesaid promontory or place called Watkins Point."[7] ]
The most significant words of this grant, from the point of view of Arlington, are "the farther banks of the said river." They explain why the boundary between Arlington and the District of Columbia runs along the Virginia shore of the river and not in midstream, and why Roosevelt Island, which lies nearer Arlington than to the District, is not a part of Arlington. The Constitution of Virginia adopted in 1776 acknowledges this grant:
"The territory contained within the charters erecting the colonies of Maryland … are hereby ceded, released, and forever confirmed to the people of those colonies …"[8] ]