History
The Town of Eastville is located in Northampton County, on the Virginia Eastern Shore. The new corporate limits of Eastville encompass approximately 409 acres.
The town is divided by U. S. Route 13, which splits the town into two sections. The eastern section of Town is known as Eastville Station and formerly had its own post office. The western section contains Northampton County administrative offices, the Eastville Post Office, the historic Eastville Inn and Courthouse Green, and various other offices and commercial enterprises.
Local government began on the Eastern Shore in 1632 when "commissioners" meeting as a court in homes of individual members or other places such as taverns or ordinaries. The early court records dating from 1632 were actually kept by the clerks in their homes. In 1667 a new colonial courthouse site was selected in the community known as "the Hornes," (referring to its location between two branches of a bayside creek) was the site for colonial court. A deed in 1780 mentioned "the Hornes" as Peachburg Town, by which it was known until about 1800 when it became Eastville. While the significance of the name Eastville is not known, it is thought to have been in coordination with the naming of Westville in Mathews County on the Western Shore across the Bay.
Eastville was incorporated in 1896 and remains today the Northampton County seat. An 1835 article about Accomack and Northampton Counties included the following description of Eastville:
Eastville P. V. (Postal Village) and seat of justice is in about the middle of the county and two miles from the Chesapeake Bay and the Atlantic Ocean. Eastville has two principal streets running at right angles to each other. Besides the usual county buildings it contains 21 dwelling houses, 4 mercantile stores, 2 taverns, 1 new and handsome Episcopal Church, 1 common school and 1 Bible society. The mechanical pursuits are: 1 coach factory, which completes about $6,000 worth of work annually; 1 harness maker, 1 cabinet maker, 2 blacksmiths, 2 boot and shoe manufacturers, 3 tailors, 1 house and sign painter and 1 hatter ... The population is 217 persons, of whom 2 are attorneys and 3 are regular physicians. The inhabitants are not to be surpassed for their morality and hospitality to strangers. (Truman, The Eastern Shore of Virginia 1603-1964, p. 168.
In 1922, most of the eastern downtown section was lost to fire.
From the Eastville Comprehensive Plan 2018