The Essex County Museum first opened in May 1996 in a former meat market on Prince Street in Tappahannock, Virginia. Now located a block closer to the river in the Maddox‑Dillard Building, a brick Colonial Revival building on the corner of Prince Street and Water Lane, the larger space at 218 Water Lane offers opportunity for expanded exhibits.

Discussion among members of the Essex County Historical Society and the Essex County Woman's Club led to the creation of the Essex County Museum. Its aims are to preserve, to educate, to inform citizens of Essex and its visitors, and to inspire the coming generations through a better appreciation of the past.

Tappahannock (an Indian name meaning "on the rise and fall of water") began when Jacob Hobbs established a trading post, "Hobb's Hole", here in the early 1600s. This 17th century port of entry is older than Richmond, Fredericksburg and even Williamsburg. Both sides of the Rappahannock River, once the hunting ground of the Rappahannock and other native tribes, were embraced by English colonial settlement. In 1692 "Old Rappahannock" County was divided at the river to create Richmond and Essex Counties.

 

 Fixed and changing exhibits make a time capsule of local Virginia history and currently include:

· Fossil remains found in 1938 of a 60‑70 million year old ancestor of the whale

· Rappahannock‑Portabago tribal and colonial era artifacts

· A cavalryman's saber from War of 1812

· Recollections of early wars and the dramatic events of the 1860s

· A list of names found on the Confederate Monument near the Courthouse

· A copy of the print "Burial of Latané commemorating a poem written about Capt. Latané of Essex County

· Personal items of the Port Royal doctor who treated John Wilkes Booth, assassin of President Lincoln

· Memorabilia from Confederate veterans and their sons and daughters in WW I & II

· Home and personal items from the 19th and early 20th centuries

· Pictures and artifacts from the steamboat era and Saunders Wharf

ESSEX COUNTY MUSEUM

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HISTORICAL SOCIETY