Claremont, VA

Claremont is an incorporated town in Surry County, Virginia, United States. The 2020 census counted 305 residents. A granite marker is a memorial to British settlers' arrival in the area. Claremont received its name during the colonial era from the royal residence in Surry Shire in England. John Jefferson Smallwood established the Temperance, Industrial, and Collegiate Institute in Claremont on October 12, 1892, with fewer than ten students. Smallwood was born enslaved in Rich Square, North Carolina in 1863. The short version is that Claremont carries an earlier story into the places people know and use now.

That is the local read on Claremont: its past remains attached to the places people use now. The town was incorporated in 1886, had a port on the James River, and gained railroad service as a terminus for a while before being abandoned. A granite marker in a circle in the center of town commemorates the landing here on May 5, 1607, of English settlers, before the landing at Jamestown across the navigable portion of the James River. However, Allen resigned his military commission in 1862.