Emporia: Two Rival Towns That Became One

Emporia exists because two old Meherrin River towns could not get along. Hicksford had been settled since seventeen ten where the Fort Road crossed the river, and Belfield had stood on the opposite bank since seventeen ninety-eight. The rivalry between them was so persistent that when the Atlantic and Danville Railroad arrived in eighteen eighty-seven and forced a merger, the delegates could not agree on what to call the combined town.

The solution came from Benjamin Tillar, a local politician who named it after Emporia, Kansas, the hometown of his friend, United States Senator Preston Plumb. The new Emporia became the county seat of Greensville County and eventually incorporated as an independent city in nineteen sixty-seven, one of the smallest independent cities in Virginia.