Essex and Middlesex counties are adjacent to one another, and in many respects, are quite similar.
Upcoming “Tale of Two Counties” events in the two Middle Peninsula counties will explore that connection, and in the ways the two communities took part in the American Revolution, at 4 p.m. on Sunday, Nov. 16, in the historic Middlesex County Courthouse and the following Saturday, Nov. 22, in Tappahannock.
The two counties share the same geographical setting—the south bank of the Rappahannock River—and families have moved over time from one county to the other. Both counties were supportive of the American cause in the American Revolution, but they reacted to the Revolution in some distinctly different ways.
One county, for example, sent church representatives to seek support for the Patriot cause, while the other sent a sheriff to demand a 10 percent share of livestock and crops for support of American troops. One county was the first in Virginia to send aid to Massachusetts after the Br...