Appomatox

The Appomattox River crosses the Virginia Piedmont and coastal plain to join the James. It takes its name from the Appomattoc people, who lived along the lower river in the seventeenth century. English colonists tried to call it the Bristol River, but the Indigenous name endured in many spellings. From 1745 onward, stretches of the upper river were cleared for the passage of bateaux, carrying goods downstream toward Petersburg and the deeper waters below the falls.