Pittsylvania County, Virginia: History
Originally "Pittsylvania" was a name suggested for an unrealized British colony to be located primarily in what is now West Virginia. Pittsylvania County would not have been within this proposed colony, which subsequently was named Vandalia.
Pittsylvania County was formed in 1767 with territory annexed from Halifax County. It was named for William Pitt, 1st Earl of Chatham, who served as Prime Minister of Great Britain from 1766 to 1768, and who opposed some harsh colonial policies of the period.
In 1777 the western part of Pittsylvania County was partitioned off to become Patrick Henry County.
Maud Clement's History of Pittsylvania County notes the following:
"Despite the settlers' intentions, towns failed to develop for two reasons: the generally low level of economic activity in the area and the competition from plantation settlements already providing the kind of marketing and purchasing services typically offered by a town. Plantation settlements along the rivers, particularly at ferrying points, became commercial centers. The most important for early Pittsylvania was that of Sam Pannill, a Scots-Irishman, who at the end of the eighteenth century, while still a young man, set up a plantation town at Green Hill on the north side of the Staunton River in Campbell County. (Clement 15)
"Its economy was tobacco-dominated and reliant on a growing slave labor force. It was a county without towns or a commercial center. Plantation villages on the major river thoroughfares were the only centers of trade, until the emergence of Danville. (Clement 23)"
The city of Danville's history up through the antebellum period overall is an expression of the relationship between the town and the planters who influenced its development.