Portsmouth, VA news and local guide

In 1767 the shipbuilder Andrew Sprowle founded the Gosport Shipyard next to the town. After the Revolution it belonged to Virginia, which sold it to the federal government. British forces sacked Portsmouth in 1779. In October 1824, during his celebrated tour of the United States at James Monroe's invitation, the Marquis de Lafayette stopped for tea at Hill House. Portsmouth was incorporated as a town in 1836. In 1855 yellow fever killed about one in three people in Portsmouth and Norfolk. On June 6 the ship Benjamin Franklin, arriving from the West Indies where the disease had broken out, was quarantined, and after a second inspection found nothing it was allowed to dock at the Gosport Shipyard. Wikipedia's Portsmouth article puts the quarantine at twelve days and its Norfolk article at eleven. Shipyard workers soon fell ill, and it was later learned that the captain had hidden sick sailors. Workers who lived in Norfolk carried the fever home on the ferry across the Elizabeth River, and the poor and immigrants were the first stricken. Sources Wikipedia: Portsmouth, Virginia Wikipedia: Norfolk, Virginia