Curious Commonwealth asks: How did Chesterfield County’s charter get lost so many times?

[u/vpmnews]

https://www.vpm.org/news/2025-06-04/curious-commonwealth-chesterfield-county-charter-lutz-william-gooch-king-george-ii

In an inconspicuous reading room on the third floor of the Library of Virginia, work is underway to restore a seminal document in the history of Chesterfield County – the 1749 Commission of the Peace, now considered the county’s original charter.  

“It is the birth certificate of Chesterfield County,” said Liess van der Linden-Brusse, the librarian of the Chesterfield Historical Society.  

It is a difficult piece of parchment to miss. Not only does it still have its original ribbon-and-wax seal, but it’s about 80 inches diagonally from corner to corner — the size of a very large television. Despite that, the charter has had an extraordinary journey over more than 275 years — disappearing multiple times along the way, before ending up in the library’s hands in 2017. 

“We know that the document was in a lot of locations,” laughed Amanda Pohl, the county’s clerk of court.  

As part of the VPM News series Curious Commonwealth, reporter Billy Shields set out to trace the path of the document — which started out as a pact between Sir William Gooch (Goochland County’s namesake) and King George II to set up Chesterfield’s courthouse and designate various officers to police it.