The information below is from a reference work published by the state library. "Virginia's forty-one independent cities are politically and administratively independent of the county or counties in which they are geographically situated. This separation of cities and counties in Virginia local government has no statewide parallel elsewhere in the United States. Virginia towns, on the other hand, exercise only some functions of self-government and are in most respects subordinate to the counties in which they are located. Until 1892 towns became cities only by act of the General Assembly; after 1892 a town could also incorporate as a city by petition to the circuit court. In recent years, five Virginia cities- Chesapeake, Hampton, Newport News, Suffolk, and Virginia Beach- have expanded their boundaries to subsume the now-extinct counties in which they were geographically situated. (A useful history of the commonwealth's unusual practice of city-county government separation is Chester W. Bain, "A Body Incorporate": The Evolution of City-County Separation in Virginia [Charlottesville, 1967].)" Salmon, Emily J. and Campbell, Edward D.C., Jr., eds. The Hornbook of Virginia History, 4th ed. The Library of Virginia, Richmond, 1994 (p. 189) Those 5 cities have subsumed, respectively, Norfolk Co. {& city of South Norfolk}, Elizabeth City Co., Warwick Co. {later city of Warwick}, Nansemond Co., and Princess Anne Co., as well as several towns. On the list of VA localities I find the following discrepancies with the data in the Hornbook (pp. 159-77): Fincastle (extinct)- formed from Botetourt in 1772; divided 1776 into Montgomery, Washington, and Kentucky Cos. (see below) "Defunct Virginia Counties": Ohio- now in Ohio No, in WV Kentucky (extinct) formed 1776 from Fincastle; divided 1780 into Fayette, Jefferson & Lincoln Cos.- all 3 in KY after 1792 Illinois- entire states of Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Michigan, & Wisconsin, & part of Minnesota formed 1778; ceded to Congress, 1784