BULLETIN NO. 226

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BOUNDARY BETWEEN VIRGINIA AND WEST VIRGINIA.

States by Virginia. The following is an extract from said act of retrocession:

That with assent of the people of the county and town of Alexandria, to be ascertained as hereinafter prescribed, all of that portion of the District of Columbia ceded to the United States by the State of Virginia, and all the rights and jurisdiction therewith ceded over the same, be, and the same are, hereby ceded and forever relinquished to the State of Virginia in full and absolute right and jurisdiction, as well of soil as of persons residing or to reside thereon.

VIRGINIA.

In the year 1606 King James I of England granted the "First Charter of Virginia." The boundaries therein described are as follows, viz:

* * * Situate, lying, or being all along the sea coasts, between four and thirty degrees of northerly latitude from the equinoctial line and five and forty degrees of the same latitude, and in the main land between the same four and thirty and five and forty degrees and the islands thereunto adjacent, or within one hundred miles of the coast thereof. * * *

Soon after, in 1609, a new charter was granted, called the "Second Charter of Virginia," which defines the boundaries in the following

terms:

* * * 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 two hundred miles, and from the said point of Cape Comfort all along the sea coast to the southward two hundred 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.

* * *

In 1611-'12 the "Third Charter of Virginia" was granted, which was an enlargement of the second, of which the following is an extract: 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 of the portes heretofore granted to the said treasurer and company in our former letters-patents as aforesaid, and being within or between the one-and-fortieth and thirtieth degrees of northerly latitude.

These boundaries, as will be seen, included territory composing wholly, or in part, the present States of Pennsylvania, Delaware, Maryland, North and South Carolina, in addition to others formed since the Revolution.

This large extent of territory was reduced in the first instance by the charter of Maryland in 1632, next by the charters of Carolina in 1663 and 1665, then by the charter of Pennsylvania in 1681, and, again, subsequent to the Revolution, by the cession to the United States of the territory northwest of the Ohio River in 1784, by the admission of Kentucky as an independent State in 1792, and lastly by the division of the territory of Virginia in 1862, by which the new State of West Virginia was created and admitted into the Union.