Cornwallis Headquarters

Historical marker location:

1000 Colonial Parkway, Yorktown, Virginia

( Marker can be reached from Water Street, 0.1 miles east of Compte de Grasse Street, on the right when traveling east.)

1781 Siege of Yorktown.

The first slave ship to arrive in the American colonies landed in Virginia in 1619. Virginia became a center of the transatlantic slave trade, and by 1860, Virginia had the largest population of enslaved people in the United States.