from the early 18th century. In 1733, Col. William Byrd II (who founded Richmond at the same time) conceived plans for a city at Peter's Point, to be renamed Petersburgh. The Virginia General Assembly formally incorporated both Petersburg and adjacent Blandford on December 17, 1748. Wittontown, north of the river, was settled in 1749, and became incorporated as Pocahontas in 1752. Petersburg was enlarged slightly in 1762, adding to "Old Town". During the American Revolutionary War, the British drive to regain control erupted in the Battle of Blanford in 1781, which started just east of Petersburg. As the Americans retreated north across the Appomattox River, they took up the planks of the Pocahontas bridge to delay the enemy. Although the British drove the Americans from Blanford and Petersburg, they did not regain a strategic advantage in the war. Cornwallis' forces surrendered at Yorktown soon after this battle. Antebellum period After the Revolutionary War, in 1784 Petersburg annexed the adjacent towns of Blandford (also called Blanford) and Pocahontas and the suburb of Ravenscroft, which became neighborhoods of the city. In 1790 its population totaled 2,828, making it one of the largest settlements in the country. An area known as Gillfield was annexed in 1798. In the first two decades after the war, inspired by the Revolution's principles of equality, numerous Virginia slaveholders manumitted their slaves. Some of those freed were the mixed-race "natural children" of white planters, born to enslaved mothers outside of legal marriage. The number of free blacks in Virginia rose markedly between 1782 and 1810. Because of the availability of jobs in Petersburg, many free people of color in Virginia migrated to the growing urban community. They established First Baptist (1774) and Gillfield Baptist Church (1797), the first and second oldest black congregations in the city and two of the oldest in the nation. The black churches were the first Baptist churches established in Petersburg. For years the center of the free black residential area was Pocahontas Island, a peninsula on the north shore of the Appomattox River. With access to waterways and a sympathetic population, this neighborhood was an important site on the Underground Railroad. One surviving house in the Pocahontas Island Historic District is associated with it. The Pocahontas Island Historic District was listed on the National Register of Historic Places on November 3, 2006. The Pocahontas Island Black History Museum, established in 2003 by Richard