Suffolk was founded by English colonists in 1742 as a port town on the Nansemond River in the Virginia Colony. Originally known as Constant's Warehouse, for settler John Constant, Suffolk was renamed after Royal Governor William Gooch's home of Suffolk, a county in East Anglia, England. Before European contact, successive cultures of indigenous American tribes had lived in the region for thousands of years. At the time of English settlement, the Nansemond Indians lived along the river. Through purchase and warfare, the English pushed them off their lands. In the early colonial years, the English cultivated tobacco as a commodity crop, but later turned to mixed farming. Suffolk was designated as the county seat of Nansemond County in 1750.