Totuskey Creek is a tributary of the Rappahannock River located in Richmond County, Virginia. The creek meets the river near Wellford, Virginia.
A tributary or affluent is a stream or river that flows into a larger stream or main stem river or a lake. A tributary does not flow directly into a sea or ocean. Tributaries and the main stem river drain the surrounding drainage basin of its surface water and groundwater, leading the water out into an ocean.
The Rappahannock River is a river in eastern Virginia, in the United States, approximately 195 miles (314 km) in length. It traverses the entire northern part of the state, from the Blue Ridge Mountains in the west where it rises, across the Piedmont to the Fall Line, and onward through the coastal plain to flow into the Chesapeake Bay, south of the Potomac River.
Richmond County is a county located on the Northern Neck in the Commonwealth of Virginia. As of the 2010 census, the population was 9,254. Its county seat is Warsaw. The rural county should not be confused with the large city and state capital Richmond, Virginia. It was formed in 1692 when the first Rappahannock County was divided to form Richmond County and Essex County.
The creek served as the eastern border of Rappahannock Tribe lands. In the 1650s, when colonists began settling along the river, the Rappahannock withdrew from the southern bank; [1] their weroance Accopatough deeded the land east of Totuskey Creek [2] to settlers just before he died in April 1651. His successor Taweeren confirmed the deed in May.
In 1730, a tobacco inspection site was located here. According to the Tobacco Inspection Act the inspection was "At Naylor's Hole, upon William Fantleroy's land, where his prise houses now are; and the mouth of Totaskey, at Newman Brokenborough's landing, in Richmond County; both under one inspection."
The Tobacco Inspection Act of 1730 was a 1730 English law designed to improve the quality of tobacco exported from Colonial Virginia. Proposed by Virginia Lieutenant Governor Sir William Gooch, the law was far-reaching in impact in part because it gave warehouses the power to destroy substandard crops and issue bills of exchange that served as currency. The law centralized the inspection of tobacco at 40 locations described in the law.
On September 6, 1778, Baptist minister Lewis Lunsford [3] baptised Robert Carter III in the waters of this creek. [4]
Robert "Councillor" Carter III was a plantation owner from Virginia, United States, who for two decades sat on the Virginia Governor's Council. With the assistance of Baptist, Quaker and Swedenborgian faith, Carter began what became the largest release of slaves in North America prior to the American Civil War. By a deed of gift filed with Northumberland County on September 5, 1791, and related documents filed in Westmoreland County in subsequent years, Carter began the process of manumitting 500 slaves in his lifetime.
