Smithfield was established on the Pagan River in the colonial period and incorporated in 1752. As a port and the county seat of Isle of Wight, it linked surrounding farms to the James River and Atlantic trade. Wharves, warehouses, public offices, roads, and nearby plantations made the town a useful local center. Those same features exposed it during the Revolution, when control of Chesapeake waterways allowed British forces to strike communities that supported Virginia’s economy and militia.

By late 1780, Benedict Arnold had defected to Britain and received command of a British expedition against Virginia. His troops entered the James River early in January 1781, raided Richmond, destroyed military supplies, and then moved back toward the coast. The operation sought more than symbolic revenge. Virginia was supplying men and material to the southern war, and destroying stores, foundries, shipping, and public property could weaken the wider American campaign.

On January 15, Arnold’s force landed at or near Smithfield and occupied the town while moving toward a base at Portsmouth. Local militia resistance was scattered and unable to stop the regulars. For residents, occupation brought the threat of requisition, looting, and disruption even when no prolonged battle occurred. The town’s roads and river access made it a convenient point in the British movement through the lower James region.

Arnold’s raid was followed by additional British forces under William Phillips and ultimately by Lord Cornwallis’s entry into Virginia. The campaigns merged into the sequence that ended at Yorktown in October. Smithfield’s brief occupation was therefore one episode in an escalating struggle for the Chesapeake. It shows how British commanders used mobility from the water to force the Patriots to defend many possible targets and how local ports became stepping-stones between raids and permanent positions.

The marker also notes later chapters of Smithfield history, but the Revolutionary association centers on January 15, 1781. The town was not founded for the war, nor was it the scene of a major set-piece engagement. Its significance lies in the wartime use of an established commercial landscape. Surviving streets and historic buildings provide context for imagining a county seat suddenly occupied by Arnold’s troops as a regional conflict moved toward its final Virginia campaign.

Smithfield’s later prosperity and preserved historic district can obscure the vulnerability of the Revolutionary town. In 1781, established institutions offered little protection against a force arriving by water. The occupation reminds visitors that the Chesapeake campaign reached county seats and commercial communities as well as famous capitals and battlefields.