About

Nelson County was formed in 1807 from Amherst County, and named in honor of Thomas Nelson Jr., the third Governor of Virginia and one of the signers of the Declaration of Independence. Originally the home of the Monacan tribe of Native Americans, a settlement along the James River was established by Dr. William Cabell, an English colonist in the early 1700s. Another stream of settlers, of Scotch-Irish and German descent, came into the western sections of the county from the Shenandoah Valley. The first white settler to make his home in the Rockfish Valley was James Wood.

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