The Norfolk Company was a sub corporation of Blake, Boissevain and Company, itself a merger of Dutch, New York, and London interests. While the primary activities of Blake, Boissevain and Company concerned the financing of railroads in America, it formed three subsidiary land companies to develop land and industrial sub corporations. A major objective of these subsidiaries, the Virginia Land Company, the Virginia Investment Association, and the Consolidated Coal, Iron and Land Company, was to develop lands from Norfolk, Virginia, to Columbus, Ohio. In Norfolk, the local subsidiaries were the Norfolk Company, the Ghent-Norfolk Company, and the Portsmouth company. Local members of the founding board of directors of the Norfolk Company were Richard B. Tunstall, Alfred P. Thorn, Fergus Reid, C. G. Ramsay, Walter H. Taylor, and N. M. Osborne, most of whom built houses for themselves and their families in the new Ghent suburb .