http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/img/EV_Logo_sm.gif This is the url http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org The first and ultimate online reference work about the Commonwealth /Virginia_Central_Railroad_During_the_Civil_War_The Mon, 06 Feb 2012 16:21:31 EST http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Virginia_Central_Railroad_During_the_Civil_War_The The Virginia General Assembly chartered the Louisa Railroad, the predecessor of the Virginia Central Railroad, in 1836. The line's eastern terminus was at Hanover Junction (present-day Doswell), about twenty miles north of Richmond, where it joined the Richmond, Fredericksburg and Potomac Railroad (RF&P), and Charlottesville was the western terminus. Construction proceeded slowly, and in 1850, after the line had been extended westward of Louisa County, the name was changed to the Virginia Central Railroad. At first, the railroad had shared track to Richmond with the RF&P, but in 1851 it began constructing its own line to the city. Eventually the western terminus was extended to Covington in the Allegheny Mountains, linking the line with the Covington and Ohio Railroad. By the time of the American Civil War (1861–1865), the Virginia Central Railroad was about two hundred miles long, from Richmond to Covington, and traversed the heart of the state.
Mon, 06 Feb 2012 16:21:31 EST]]> /Richmond_and_Petersburg_Railroad_During_the_Civil_War_The Mon, 06 Feb 2012 16:18:40 EST http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Richmond_and_Petersburg_Railroad_During_the_Civil_War_The The Richmond and Petersburg Railroad extended for twenty-two miles and linked the two central Virginia cities. The Virginia General Assembly chartered the company in 1836 and the line was completed two years later. Despite its name, however, the southern terminus of the railroad actually was in the suburb of Pocahontas, which lay on the north bank of the Appomattox River across from Petersburg. Goods and passengers had to be off-loaded and disembarked at the Pocahontas station and then transported by wagon and carriage across a bridge into Petersburg. Once in the city, there were several rail-transportation options. The Petersburg Railroad, also known as the Weldon Railroad, led south to North Carolina, while the South Side Railroad ran west to Lynchburg and the Norfolk and Petersburg Railroad linked those two cities.
Mon, 06 Feb 2012 16:18:40 EST]]> /Family_Life_During_the_Civil_War Mon, 06 Feb 2012 16:03:08 EST http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Family_Life_During_the_Civil_War Family life in Virginia and across the South suffered devastating effects during the American Civil War (1861–1865). Few households, whether slave or free, or located in the Tidewater, Piedmont, or mountainous Southwest, could remain insulated from a war fought on their lands and in their towns. Many families were uprooted as they witnessed the destruction of their homes and landholdings. Most profoundly, all families dealt with the ordeal of separation. The war pulled white families apart in unprecedented ways, as a large proportion of men enlisted and fully one in five white men who fought for the Confederacy died. And while the chaos of war similarly dispersed the state's large population of African Americans, it also offered a chance for those families to overcome the longstanding separations wrought by slavery.
Mon, 06 Feb 2012 16:03:08 EST]]> /Staunton_During_the_Civil_War Mon, 06 Feb 2012 15:57:04 EST http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Staunton_During_the_Civil_War Staunton, Virginia, the seat of Augusta County, was a key target in two major campaigns during the American Civil War (1861–1865), and remained strategically important throughout the entire war. With a population of about 4,000 in 1860, Staunton was situated at a vital transportation crossroads in the Shenandoah Valley, and the Confederacy sought to utilize and protect its infrastructure and wealth from the recurrent threat of destruction by Union forces. Various Confederate leaders, including the generals Thomas J. "Stonewall" Jackson and Richard S. Ewell, used the town as their headquarters, and it served almost continuously as an army depot, quartermaster and commissary post, and training camp. Union troops targeted Staunton for more than two years before they were able to break the Confederates' protective hold and lay waste to much of the town and miles of nearby railroad track.
Mon, 06 Feb 2012 15:57:04 EST]]> /Port_Republic_Battle_of Mon, 06 Feb 2012 15:52:39 EST http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Port_Republic_Battle_of >The Battle of Port Republic, fought on June 9, 1862, was the last in a series of six small engagements that comprised Confederate general Thomas J. "Stonewall" Jackson's Shenandoah Valley Campaign of 1862 during the American Civil War (1861–1865). At Port Republic, a day after a Confederate victory at the Battle of Cross Keys, Jackson's Army of the Valley took advantage of Union general James Shields's dispersed forces and executed a surprise attack that resulted in a Union retreat. Having marched up and down the Shenandoah Valley since February in an attempt to draw Union reinforcements away from the Army of the Potomac, which was closing in on the Confederate capital at Richmond, Jackson was now in control of the upper (southern) and middle portions of the Valley. Driving Union forces from the Valley gave Jackson's army the chance to join Robert E. Lee's Army of Northern Virginia, which was holding off Union general George B. McClellan.
Mon, 06 Feb 2012 15:52:39 EST]]> /James_River_During_the_Civil_War Mon, 06 Feb 2012 15:49:56 EST http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/James_River_During_the_Civil_War The James River begins where the Cowpasture and Jackson rivers join in the western part of Virginia. It flows approximately 340 miles, passing over the falls at Richmond, and on to Hampton Roads. The James ranks near the Mississippi River in its significance during the American Civil War (1861–1865) and in importance to the Confederacy. Using the James River and Kanawha Canal system, boats moved materials such as pig iron and coal from Virginia's Shenandoah Valley and Piedmont regions to the capital. After the loss of Norfolk, Richmond became the state's major port, naval base, and shipbuilding facility. South and east of Richmond the James saw significant combat, including actions between the Confederate and Union navies. In addition, the river aided large-scale movement of Union troops and military supplies.
Mon, 06 Feb 2012 15:49:56 EST]]> /The_Battle_of_Trevilian_Station_June_11-12_1864 Mon, 06 Feb 2012 15:47:44 EST http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/The_Battle_of_Trevilian_Station_June_11-12_1864 The Battle of Trevilian Station, fought June 11–12, 1864, during the American Civil War (1861–1865), was a victory for Confederate cavalry under Wade Hampton when they turned back Union raiders under the command of General Philip H. Sheridan. Fought solely by cavalry, this was the largest such battle during the war (the larger Battle of Brandy Station, fought a year earlier during the Gettysburg Campaign, involved some infantry). Union general-in-chief Ulysses S. Grant had hoped that Sheridan's troopers might destroy the Virginia Central Railroad west to Charlottesville while distracting Robert E. Lee's Army of Northern Virginia enough that Grant might sneak across the James River and around to Petersburg. Instead, Hampton's cavalry blocked the way, and although Sheridan claimed to have decommissioned the railroad, he was unable to fulfill the last part of Grant's plan: to reinforce Union general David Hunter in the Shenandoah Valley.
Mon, 06 Feb 2012 15:47:44 EST]]> /Bristoe_Station_Battle_of Mon, 06 Feb 2012 15:44:55 EST http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Bristoe_Station_Battle_of The Battle of Bristoe Station on October 14, 1863, marked the first major encounter between the Army of Northern Virginia and the Army of the Potomac since the stinging Confederate defeat at Gettysburg (July 1–3, 1863) during the American Civil War (1861–1865). After Union commanders dispatched two corps to fight in the West, Confederate general Robert E. Lee attacked, but a blunder by A. P. Hill led to two Confederate brigades being destroyed by Union forces concealed behind a railroad embankment; as a result, Confederate general Carnot Posey was killed. Although a nominal Union victory, Bristoe Station led to troubling conclusions for both sides. Hill's poor performance added to concerns in the Confederate high command that he and Richard S. Ewell had been promoted beyond their abilities. (The two were given corps commands following the death, in May 1863, of Thomas J. "Stonewall" Jackson.) Union general George G. Meade, meanwhile, failed to take full advantage of Confederate missteps, strengthening perceptions in Washington, D.C., that the Army of the Potomac needed a new and more aggressive leader.
Mon, 06 Feb 2012 15:44:55 EST]]> /Domesticated_Plants_in_Early_Virginia_Indian_Society_Uses_of Mon, 06 Feb 2012 15:42:50 EST http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Domesticated_Plants_in_Early_Virginia_Indian_Society_Uses_of Virginia Indians began domesticating plants to be used as a food source following the Ice Age. As the climate warmed, their lives became less nomadic and the conditions improved for husbanding certain plants—sunflower, knotweed, and little barley at first, and then the so-called three sisters of maize, beans, and squash. Eastern North America is one of ten sites in the world where independent plant domestication occurred, but because of other abundant food sources in the Chesapeake Bay area, maize, or corn, was not widespread until as late as AD 1100. Plant domestication coincided with increasing populations, improved weapons technology, and more complex social and political systems. Already a high-status food among the Indians, maize was held in particularly high regard by the Jamestown colonists, who had never seen it before. Scholars disagree how much of the Indian diet it comprised, but it seems clear that only the highest-ranking of the Powhatan Indians of Tsenacomoco ate domesticated plants year-round.
Mon, 06 Feb 2012 15:42:50 EST]]> /Sailor_s_Creek_Battles_of Mon, 06 Feb 2012 15:40:58 EST http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Sailor_s_Creek_Battles_of The Battles of Sailor's Creek—there were three of them—were fought on April 6, 1865, part of the Appomattox Campaign on the fourth day of Confederate general Robert E. Lee's retreat from Petersburg during the American Civil War (1861–1865). Union general-in-chief Ulysses S. Grant had besieged the railroad hub south of Richmond for ten months before finally breaking through at the Battle of Five Forks on April 1. Both Richmond and Petersburg fell the next day, and Lee set his Army of Northern Virginia in retreat to the west, harassed the whole way by Union cavalry and quickly marching infantry. On April 6, a gap opened up between Confederate troops under James Longstreet and those under Richard H. Anderson, Richard S. Ewell, and John B. Gordon. Union cavalry and infantry attacked Anderson at Marshall's Crossroads. At the same time, the Union Sixth Corps attacked and overwhelmed Ewell after crossing the rain-swollen Sailor's Creek. A later attack against Gordon was stopped by darkness, but by day's end, the Confederates had suffered more than 8,000 casualties, including the capture of Ewell and eight other generals. Lee, watching from a hilltop, wondered if his whole army hadn't dissolved. He would surrender to Grant three days later.
Mon, 06 Feb 2012 15:40:58 EST]]> /York_County_Conspiracy_1661 Mon, 06 Feb 2012 15:35:33 EST http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/York_County_Conspiracy_1661 Mon, 06 Feb 2012 15:35:33 EST]]> /Cedar_Mountain_Battle_of Mon, 06 Feb 2012 15:30:34 EST http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Cedar_Mountain_Battle_of The Battle of Cedar Mountain was fought on August 9, 1862, just prior to the Second Manassas Campaign during the American Civil War (1861–1865). Confederate general Robert E. Lee ordered Thomas J. "Stonewall" Jackson to defend Gordonsville from Union general John Pope and his newly formed Army of Virginia. When Jackson saw that a single Union corps, under Nathaniel P. Banks, was isolated at Cedar Run south of Culpeper, he attacked. The commander of the Stonewall Brigade was killed in the initial fighting, and Confederate victory looked far from certain when Jackson personally rallied his troops. A countercharge by Confederate general A. P. Hill won the day, although on August 11, Jackson withdrew in the direction of Orange.
Mon, 06 Feb 2012 15:30:34 EST]]> /Appomattox_Campaign Mon, 06 Feb 2012 15:28:35 EST http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Appomattox_Campaign The Appomattox Campaign, March 29–April 9, 1865, consisted of a series of engagements south and west of the Confederate capital at Richmond that ended in the surrender by Robert E. Lee of the Army of Northern Virginia during the American Civil War (1861–1865). During his Overland Campaign the previous spring, Union general-in-chief Ulysses S. Grant had relentlessly pursued Lee before settling into a ten-month siege of the Confederate transportation hub at Petersburg, south of Richmond. Grant was finally able to dislodge Lee's army at the Battle of Five Forks (1865), allowing him to take Petersburg and then Richmond. The Confederates fled to Southside Virginia in an attempt to unite with Joseph E. Johnston's Army of Tennessee, but Grant maneuvered Lee into a trap near the village of Appomattox Court House. There, on April 9, the Confederate general received terms of surrender from Grant. In short order, the remaining Confederate armies also laid down their arms and the war ended.
Mon, 06 Feb 2012 15:28:35 EST]]> /Savage_s_Station_Battle_of Mon, 06 Feb 2012 14:36:53 EST http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Savage_s_Station_Battle_of The Battle of Savage's Station, fought on June 29, 1862, was the fourth major engagement of the Seven Days' Battles during the American Civil War (1861–1865). After Union general George B. McClellan's Peninsula Campaign—an attack on the Confederate capital at Richmond from the southeast—stalled at the Battle of Seven Pines–Fair Oaks on May 31–June 1, 1862, Confederate general Robert E. Lee took command of the Army of Northern Virginia. Joined by Thomas J. "Stonewall" Jackson's forces from the Shenandoah Valley, he attacked McClellan first unsuccessfully at Mechanicsville (June 26), then successfully at Gaines's Mill (June 27). McClellan withdrew his troops south over the Chickahominy River to consolidate them near a new supply base at Harrison's Landing on the James River. Lee pursued and his troops engaged the Union rear guard at Savage's Station. Confederates won a victory, but the bulk of the Army of the Potomac managed to escape. The next day, June 30, the armies would meet again at White Oak Swamp.
Mon, 06 Feb 2012 14:36:53 EST]]> /Reams_Station_Battle_of Mon, 06 Feb 2012 14:32:13 EST http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Reams_Station_Battle_of The Battle of Reams Station, fought on August 25, 1864, marked the culmination of Union general-in-chief Ulysses S. Grant's fourth offensive during the Petersburg Campaign of the American Civil War (1861–1865). The combat swirled around a small depot on the Petersburg (Weldon) Railroad, some eight miles south of the central Virginia town of Petersburg, a key to the nearby Confederate capital of Richmond. This rail line linked Wilmington, North Carolina, with Petersburg, Richmond, and Confederate general Robert E. Lee's Army of Northern Virginia, and provided the goal of Grant's offensive. Although the Confederates won the engagement, the Union Army of the Potomac retained control of the railroad, seized a week earlier during the Battle of the Weldon Railroad, August 18–21.
Mon, 06 Feb 2012 14:32:13 EST]]> /Dos_Passos_John_1896-1970 Thu, 02 Feb 2012 14:14:32 EST http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Dos_Passos_John_1896-1970 John Dos Passos was a novelist, poet, critic, and painter whose mother was born in Virginia. He came of age traveling through Europe and, after graduating from Harvard University in 1916, served as an ambulance driver during World War I (1914–1918). Amid the destruction of Victorian Europe, Dos Passos developed left-leaning politics that set him against war and in support of workers' rights. As a modernist writer, he became connected with the so-called Lost Generation of F. Scott Fitzgerald, his Harvard classmate E. E. Cummings, and his longtime friend Ernest Hemingway. Dos Passos is most recognized for his three novels known as the U.S.A. trilogy (1930–1936), which critique American culture from the left. In the 1940s, however, when Dos Passos moved to a farm on the Northern Neck in Westmoreland County, Virginia, his politics turned sharply to the right, ending his relationship with Hemingway and deeply affecting his legacy among critics. Dos Passos, who died in 1970, is buried in Westmoreland County and his papers are at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville. The John Dos Passos Prize for Literature has been awarded since 1980 by Longwood University in Farmville.
Thu, 02 Feb 2012 14:14:32 EST]]> /Hollins_Critic_The Thu, 02 Feb 2012 14:10:47 EST http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Hollins_Critic_The The Hollins Critic is a journal of literary criticism published five times a year through Hollins University in Roanoke. Founded in 1964 by Louis Rubin Jr., the journal was intended to promote new writers of fiction and poetry through an experimental form the editors described as "literary journalism." When the journal debuted, they announced their plan to deliver in each issue a critical essay on "a new book by an important younger writer [that] will be considered at some length, not only in its own right but in its relationship to the writer's other publications." The Critic later chose to publish issues featuring established writers who had added new noteworthy volumes to their works. Not all of the journal's subjects have been American writers.
Thu, 02 Feb 2012 14:10:47 EST]]> /Jefferson_Davis_s_Imprisonment Thu, 02 Feb 2012 13:49:53 EST http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Jefferson_Davis_s_Imprisonment Union cavalrymen arrested former Confederate president Jefferson Davis near Irwinville, Georgia, on May 10, 1865. Davis was taken into custody as a suspect in the assassination of United States president Abraham Lincoln, but his arrest and two-year imprisonment at Fort Monroe in Virginia raised significant questions about the political course of Reconstruction (1865–1877). Debate over Davis's fate tended to divide between those who favored a severe punishment of the former Confederate political leaders and those who favored a more conciliatory approach. When investigators failed to establish a link between Davis and the Lincoln assassins, the U.S. government charged him instead with treason. U.S. president Andrew Johnson's impeachment hearings delayed the trial, however, and in the end the government granted Davis amnesty.
Thu, 02 Feb 2012 13:49:53 EST]]> /United_Daughters_of_the_Confederacy Thu, 02 Feb 2012 09:59:22 EST http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/United_Daughters_of_the_Confederacy The United Daughters of the Confederacy (UDC) was formed in 1894 to protect and perpetuate Confederate memory following the American Civil War (1861–1865). According to the group's founding documents, it sought "to fulfill the duties of sacred charity to the survivors of the war and those dependent upon them … to perpetuate the memory of our Confederate heroes and the glorious cause for which they fought." Through chapters in Virginia and other southern states (and even a handful in the North), members directed most of their efforts toward raising funds for Confederate monuments, sponsoring Memorial Day parades, caring for indigent Confederate widows, sponsoring essay contests and fellowships for southern students, and maintaining Confederate museums and relic collections. The context of these efforts was the Lost Cause interpretation of the Civil War, which emphasized states' rights and secession over slavery as causes of the war and was often used to further the goals of white supremacists in the twentieth century. The organization continues to perform memorial work, its national headquarters located in the former Confederate capital of Richmond, Virginia.
Thu, 02 Feb 2012 09:59:22 EST]]> /Winchester_During_the_Civil_War Tue, 31 Jan 2012 16:52:29 EST http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Winchester_During_the_Civil_War Located in the Shenandoah Valley, Winchester was the most contested town in the Confederacy during the American Civil War (1861–1865), changing hands more than seventy times and earning its reputation (in the words of a British observer) as the shuttlecock of the Confederacy. Three major battles were fought within town limits and four others nearby. In 1862, Confederate general Thomas J. "Stonewall" Jackson won a victory there during the Shenandoah Valley Campaign that solidified his reputation as the Confederacy's first hero. Following Jackson's death in May 1863, Richard S. Ewell took over his corps and, on the way to Gettysburg, scooped up the Union garrison at Winchester, suggesting to many that he might have the stuff to replace the fallen Stonewall. The Third Battle of Winchester (1864) was a Union victory, part of Union general Philip H. Sheridan's successful Valley Campaign against Jubal A. Early. The war, meanwhile, brought huge changes for the town's residents, including rampant inflation, often harsh measures imposed by occupiers, and the destruction of slavery. By 1865, the town was largely destroyed.
Tue, 31 Jan 2012 16:52:29 EST]]> /Vobe_Jane_by_1733-1787 Tue, 31 Jan 2012 16:47:07 EST http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Vobe_Jane_by_1733-1787 Jane Vobe operated taverns in Williamsburg (1751–1785) and in Manchester, in Chesterfield County (1786–1787). Little is known of Vobe's life beyond what historians have gleaned from extant records, but her business was one of Williamsburg's most successful. In 1765 a French traveler recorded in his diary that Vobe's establishment was "where all the best people" stay; six years later, Vobe closed her tavern and opened another in 1772 in a different location in the Virginia capital. Politicians and military men often gathered at her tavern to discuss events related to the American Revolution (1775–1783). George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Thomas Nelson, and the Baron von Steuben were among her customers. After the Virginia capital moved to Richmond and the Revolution ended, Vobe relocated to Manchester, where she managed a tavern until her death in 1787.
Tue, 31 Jan 2012 16:47:07 EST]]> /Backcountry_Frontier_of_Colonial_Virginia Tue, 31 Jan 2012 16:34:45 EST http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Backcountry_Frontier_of_Colonial_Virginia The backcountry frontier of colonial Virginia reached westward from the Blue Ridge Mountains to the farthest extent of Virginia settlement in the eighteenth century. By royal charter, the extreme western boundaries of Virginia at this time extended to the Pacific Ocean, but the terms "backcountry" or "back settlements" specifically refer to new settlements in the eastern Appalachian Mountains—most notably in the Shenandoah Valley—that began taking shape in the 1720s. This term was commonly used in the colonial era, when "frontier" referred more specifically to national boundaries. In the 1720s and 1730s, British and colonial authorities encouraged settlement of the backcountry, particularly by non-English Protestant immigrants whose small-farm, non-slave communities might create a buffer against Indian attacks and French expansion while deterring runaway slaves seeking to establish independent colonies in the Appalachians. Due to its social, economic, political, and cultural distinctiveness, the backcountry frontier as a region played a significant role in the eighteenth-century history of Virginia and in the writings of historians about the influence of Virginia's colonial period on the later history of the state and the nation. By the end of the eighteenth century, the backcountry had become a successful model for the development of mixed-farm, market-town settlements on new frontiers as Americans overspread the trans-Appalachian west.
Tue, 31 Jan 2012 16:34:45 EST]]> /Seal_of_the_Commonwealth_of_Virginia Tue, 31 Jan 2012 16:26:33 EST http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Seal_of_the_Commonwealth_of_Virginia The Seal of the Commonwealth of Virginia—called for at the Convention of 1776 and designed by George Wythe—pictures on the front the Roman goddess of virtue, the word "Virginia," and the Commonwealth's motto, Sic Semper Tyrannis, or "thus always to tyrants." On the reverse side are three more goddesses and the word Perseverando ("by persevering"). The seal has remained largely unchanged since 1779, although at the start of the American Civil War (1861–1865), Unionists in western Virginia established the Restored government of Virginia, adding the words "Liberty and Union" to both sides of the seal. In 1873, the General Assembly removed the words, and in 1903, another ordinance described the seal in essentially the same language as in 1776. The Virginia Convention of 1861, which adopted the Ordinance of Secession, also adopted a state flag that featured the front, or obverse, side of the seal against a background of deep blue.
Tue, 31 Jan 2012 16:26:33 EST]]> /Rolfe_John_d_1622 Tue, 31 Jan 2012 16:24:20 EST http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Rolfe_John_d_1622 John Rolfe served as secretary and recorder general of Virginia (1614–1619) and as a member of the governor's Council (1614–1622). He is best known for having married Pocahontas in 1614 and for being the first to cultivate marketable tobacco in Virginia. Joined by his first wife, whose name is unknown, Rolfe sailed on the Sea Venture , a Virginia-bound ship that wrecked off the islands of Bermuda in 1609. There his wife gave birth to a daughter, but mother and child soon died. In Virginia, Rolfe turned to experimenting with tobacco, a plant first brought to England from Florida. The Virginia Indians planted a variety that was harsh to English smokers, so Rolfe developed a Spanish West Indies seed, Nicotiana tabacum, that became profitable and, indeed, transformed the colony's economy. In 1614, Rolfe married Pocahontas, daughter of Powhatan, the paramount chief of Tsenacomoco. The marriage helped bring an end to the First Anglo-Powhatan War (1609–1614), but Pocahontas died in 1617 while visiting England with Rolfe and their son, Thomas. While in England, Rolfe penned A True Relation of the state of Virginia Lefte by Sir Thomas Dale Knight in May Last 1616 (1617), promoting the interests of the Virginia Company of London. Back in Virginia, he married Joane Peirce about 1619 and had a daughter, Elizabeth. He died in 1622.
Tue, 31 Jan 2012 16:24:20 EST]]> /Raleigh_Sir_Walter_ca_1552-1618 Tue, 31 Jan 2012 16:18:29 EST http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Raleigh_Sir_Walter_ca_1552-1618 Sir Walter Raleigh was an English soldier, explorer, poet, and courtier who funded three voyages to Roanoke Island (1584–1587) and whose ostentatious manner of dress and love for Queen Elizabeth became legendary. Born a commoner in Devon, England, Raleigh (also spelled Ralegh) nevertheless had connections to Elizabeth through his mother and may have exploited those relationships to win a place at court. He wrote poems to the queen and advised her on policy in Ireland, where in 1580 he had helped to slaughter papal troops. Soon he became one of Elizabeth's favorites, using his wealth and power to pursue dreams of colonizing the Americas, first at Roanoke and then at Guiana. Raleigh's mission, as he wrote in his long poem "The Ocean to Cynthia" (likely penned in the 1590s), was "To seek new worlds for gold, for praise, for glory." In so doing, he relied on the genius of English mathematician and astronomer Thomas Hariot, the master propagandist Richard Hakluyt (the younger), and the iconic artist John White. Raleigh also relied on the faithful protection of Elizabeth, protection that conspicuously disappeared when he secretly married one of her maids of honor. After the queen's death in 1603, Raleigh was accused of plotting against her successor and spent much of the rest of his life in the Tower of London. A second failed expedition to Guiana, during which he disobeyed the king's instructions, resulted in his beheading in 1618.
Tue, 31 Jan 2012 16:18:29 EST]]> /Parish_in_Colonial_Virginia_The Tue, 31 Jan 2012 16:09:08 EST http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Parish_in_Colonial_Virginia_The A parish in colonial Virginia was a unit of both civil and religious authority that covered a set geographical territory. Each Church of England parish in the colony was served by a single minister and governed by a vestry usually composed of local elites. As a religious institution, a parish contained a mother, or central, church, and frequently two or more so-called chapels of ease in outlying areas that the minister served on successive Sundays. As a civil institution, the parish vestry was charged with overseeing a wide range of responsibilities that included social welfare and presenting moral offenders to the courts. The contemporary understanding of parishes and vestries as institutions that deal primarily, if not exclusively, with internal parochial affairs is at odds with the extent of duties associated with the colonial parish. Indeed, according to the historian John Nelson, local government in early Virginia should be understood as "parish-county" government, these two "linked institutions sharing, dividing up, and intermingling their interests and responsibilities."
Tue, 31 Jan 2012 16:09:08 EST]]> /Francis_Nicholson_1655-1728 Tue, 31 Jan 2012 16:04:12 EST http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Francis_Nicholson_1655-1728 Francis Nicholson served as lieutenant governor of the Dominion of New England (1688–1689), lieutenant governor of Virginia (1690–1692), governor of Maryland (1694–1698), governor of Virginia (1698–1705), governor of Nova Scotia (1712–1715), and governor of South Carolina (1721–1725). Born in Yorkshire, England, Nicholson began his military service around 1680, when he was stationed in Tangier, on the North African coast. A brief term of office in New England prepared him for appointment as lieutenant governor of Virginia in 1690, during which time he cultivated amicable relations with the local elites, including the Reverend James Blair. After serving for four years as governor of Maryland, Nicholson returned to Virginia as governor, although by this time his relations with Blair and others had soured. The Virginians recoiled at Nicholson's military gruffness and his uncouth public courtship of Lucy Burwell, daughter of Major Lewis Burwell of Gloucester County. In the meantime, the governor's attempts at reform threatened the power of such men as William Byrd I, so that several members of the governor's Council—including Nicholson's former ally, Blair—convinced the Crown to remove him. Still, Nicholson made important contributions to Virginia's military and economic stability, and played a leading role in the creation of the capital at Williamsburg. After serving as governor of Nova Scotia and then South Carolina, he died in London in 1728.
Tue, 31 Jan 2012 16:04:12 EST]]> /Mason_George_1725-1792 Tue, 31 Jan 2012 15:42:10 EST http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Mason_George_1725-1792 George Mason was a wealthy planter and an influential lawmaker who served as a member of the Fairfax County Court (1747–1752; 1764–1789), the Truro Parish vestry (1749–1785), the House of Burgesses (1758–1761), and the House of Delegates (1776–1780). In 1769, he helped organize a nonimportation movement to protest British imperial policies, and he later wrote the Fairfax Resolves (1774), challenging Parliament's authority over the American colonies. In 1775, Mason was elected to the Fairfax County committees of public safety and correspondence. He represented Fairfax County in Virginia's third revolutionary convention (1775) and in the fifth convention (1776), where he drafted Virginia's first state constitution and its Declaration of Rights, which is widely considered his greatest accomplishment. As a member of the House of Delegates, he advocated sound money policies and the separation of church and state. Mason represented Virginia at the Mount Vernon Conference (1785) on Potomac River navigation and at the federal Constitutional Convention (1787). Although Mason initially supported constitutional reform, he ultimately refused to sign the Constitution, and he led the Anti-Federalist bloc in the Virginia convention (1788) called to consider ratification of the Constitution. After Virginia approved it, Mason retired to his elegant home, Gunston Hall, on the Northern Neck, where he died in 1792.
Tue, 31 Jan 2012 15:42:10 EST]]> /Marriage_in_Early_Virginia_Indian_Society Tue, 31 Jan 2012 15:05:10 EST http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Marriage_in_Early_Virginia_Indian_Society What is known of marriage in early Virginia Indian society is limited to the observations of Jamestown colonists, visiting English observers, and later American historians, and is mostly applicable to the Algonquian-speaking Powhatans of Tsenacomoco, a paramount chiefdom of twenty-eight to thirty-two groups living in Tidewater Virginia. Marriage was crucial for survival in Indian society, because men and women needed to work as partners in order to accomplish their many daily and seasonal tasks. The man initiated courtship and looked for a woman who would perform her assigned tasks well. The woman could decline a marriage offer, but if she did choose to accept it, her parents also needed to approve the offer. The groom's parents, meanwhile, paid a bridewealth, or marriage payment, to the bride's parents to compensate them for her lost labor. Men were allowed to have additional wives, so long as the husband could afford to provide for them; for chiefs especially, these wives served as symbols of wealth. It is estimated that the paramount chief Powhatan (Wahunsonacock) had as many as one hundred wives during his lifetime. While a man's first marriage was expected to last for life, additional marriages were likely negotiated for shorter terms. Unless a woman was married to a chief, she was allowed to conduct extramarital affairs, provided she had her husband's permission (which was usually given). Punishment for dishonesty on this score could be severe, however. Virginia Indians held onto their marriage traditions long after contact with the English, and marriage between Indians and the English was rare.
Tue, 31 Jan 2012 15:05:10 EST]]> /Gunston_Hall Tue, 31 Jan 2012 14:53:59 EST http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Gunston_Hall Gunston Hall is the stately Georgian home of Virginia lawmaker George Mason in Fairfax County on the Potomac River. Mason inherited the land on which Gunston Hall is located from his father in 1735; construction on the house began in 1754. Completed in 1759, Gunston Hall was one of the finest homes in colonial America. While the house's exterior is typical of most Chesapeake plantation homes, the elegant interior reflects the full range of English rococo style, showing French, neoclassical, and chinoiserie influences, and stood out at a time when the prevailing building style was most often described as "neat and plain." The house's innovative architectural flourishes and intricate woodwork can be attributed to its English architect, William Buckland, and master carver, William Bernard Sears. Mason farmed part of the Gunston Hall grounds, growing tobacco and wheat, among other crops, and raising livestock. A slave community called Log Town stood at some distance from the house. Today, Gunston Hall is owned by the Commonwealth of Virginia and operated by the National Society of the Colonial Dames of America.
Tue, 31 Jan 2012 14:53:59 EST]]> /Diet_in_Early_Virginia_Indian_Society Tue, 31 Jan 2012 14:32:54 EST http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Diet_in_Early_Virginia_Indian_Society Diet in early Virginia Indian society changed significantly from the Ice Age to the English colonists' landing at Jamestown in 1607, from initially relying more on meat to over time increasingly combining wild game, fish, nuts, and berries. The Indians' eating patterns were shaped by the seasons, and for the Powhatans there were five, not four. In the early and mid-spring (cattapeuk), they ate migrating fish and planted crops. From late in the spring until mid-summer (cohattayough), they split their time between the towns, where they weeded the fields, and the forests, where they foraged. Late summer (nepinough) was harvest time, and the autumn and early winter (taquitock) the occasion for feasts and religious rituals. This marked a second time in the year when the Indians abandoned their towns, this time for communal hunts. Meats were prepared and stored for the late winter and early spring (popanow), when shortages made life difficult and even dangerous. "They be all of them huge eaters," the colonist William Strachey observed of the Powhatans, but the Indians also lived intensely physical lives, requiring a large number of calories. Their metabolisms, meanwhile, were slow enough to store nutrients and then, during shortages, use them slowly while the people remained active. The colonist John Smith described the Powhatans as living "hand to mouth," but they were often better fed than the colonists with a diet that was low in fat, sugar, and salt, and high in protein and fiber.
Tue, 31 Jan 2012 14:32:54 EST]]> /Dance_During_the_Colonial_Period Tue, 31 Jan 2012 14:25:25 EST http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Dance_During_the_Colonial_Period Dancing was the dominant pastime of colonial Virginians of all classes, though it was a special occupation of the planter elite. As the Virginia colony stabilized late in the seventeenth century, its inhabitants attempted to model their emerging culture after that of England, where dancing was hugely popular. Soon dancing began to take place in plantation homes, taverns, and halls built for the express purpose of hosting formal parties. A market developed for professional instructors, or dance masters, who were expected to know the latest dances from Europe. Dancing served a recreational, social, and political purpose; being a skilled dancer was an indication of good breeding, while balls gave men and women the opportunity to express themselves through their dress, partner, and choice of dance. Most dances fell into two main categories: "fancy" dances, such as minuets, allemandes, and hornpipes; and "country" dances. Country dances were simpler to learn and more egalitarian, as each dancing couple interacted with every other couple on the floor. Enslaved persons and lower-class whites held their own informal dance parties where they often performed jigs and reels—more loosely structured dances derived from the traditions of Africans and Scots, respectively—which were adapted by the upper class. By the 1790s, dancing schools had grown in number and in popularity, and lessons became available to Virginians of various classes. At about this time, the gentry class began to feel more ambivalent toward the more democratic country dances, which threatened social discord and even blurred racial boundaries in a culture that was becoming increasingly defensive of its slave system.
Tue, 31 Jan 2012 14:25:25 EST]]> /Civil_Rights_Act_of_1964 Tue, 31 Jan 2012 14:15:46 EST http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Civil_Rights_Act_of_1964 The Civil Rights Act of 1964 was a landmark piece of national legislation, not only for the civil rights movement but for the emerging women's movement of the 1960s. It officially outlawed discrimination in public accommodations and employment and established the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights and the Equal Employment Opportunities Commission to enforce those provisions. In contrast to earlier civil rights measures, it included a ban on employment discrimination on the basis of gender, as well as race, color, and religion, making it the most comprehensive civil rights bill in American history and giving the revived women's movement new legal—and moral—weight. Yet, in an ironic twist, the legislation banned gender discrimination only because of the efforts of Howard W. Smith, U.S. representative from Virginia, a leader of the Conservative Coalition in Congress, and an opponent of civil rights. His tireless attempts to defeat the bill—including adding "sex" as grounds for illegal discrimination, which he believed would guarantee the bill's failure—resulted in a more expansive bill passing.
Tue, 31 Jan 2012 14:15:46 EST]]> /Banks_Nathaniel_Prentiss_1816-1894 Tue, 31 Jan 2012 14:10:08 EST http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Banks_Nathaniel_Prentiss_1816-1894 Nathaniel Prentiss Banks was a Massachusetts state legislator (1849–1853), a ten-term United States Congressman (1853–1857, 1865–1873, 1875–1879, 1889–1891), Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives (1856–1857), governor of Massachusetts (1858–1861), and a Union general during the American Civil War (1861–1865). One of the most prominent political generals of the conflict, Banks lacked military talent and experience but rose to high command on the strength of his public stature and his staunch support of the administration of U.S. president Abraham Lincoln, despite having been one of Lincoln's political rivals in 1860. Banks's tendency to subordinate military affairs to political ambition, his penchant for grandiose planning without devoting sufficient attention to tactical details, and his inability to admit or correct mistakes ensured that a once-promising career in arms would fall short of expectations. As commander of the Department of the Shenandoah, he was outmaneuvered by Confederate general Thomas J. "Stonewall" Jackson in 1862, especially on May 25 at the Battle of Winchester. Jackson defeated him again at the Battle of Cedar Mountain on August 9, after which Banks was transferred to New Orleans, Louisiana. In the spring of 1864, he participated in the botched Red River Campaign in Texas, ending his field command. Banks returned to Congress after the war and died in Massachusetts in 1894.
Tue, 31 Jan 2012 14:10:08 EST]]> /Antilynching_Law_of_1928 Tue, 31 Jan 2012 13:43:13 EST http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Antilynching_Law_of_1928 The Virginia Anti-Lynching Law of 1928, signed by Virginia governor Harry Flood Byrd Sr. on March 14, 1928, was the first measure in the nation that defined lynching specifically as a state crime. The bill's enactment marked the culmination of a campaign waged by Louis Isaac Jaffé, the editor of the Norfolk Virginian-Pilot , who responded more forcefully than any other white Virginian to an increase in mob violence in the mid-1920s. Jaffé's efforts, however, which earned him a Pulitzer Prize for editorial writing in 1929, came to fruition only after the state's political and business leadership recognized that mob violence was a threat to their efforts to attract business and industry. Ironically, no white person was ever convicted of lynching an African American under the law.
Tue, 31 Jan 2012 13:43:13 EST]]> /Smith_John_bap_1580-1631 Tue, 31 Jan 2012 11:37:37 EST http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Smith_John_bap_1580-1631 Captain John Smith was a soldier and writer who is best known for his role in establishing the Virginia colony at Jamestown, England's first permanent colony in North America. A farmer's son, Smith was a soldier of fortune in Europe before he joined the Virginia Company of London expedition of 1606–1607. At Jamestown, Smith served on the local council; explored and mapped the Chesapeake Bay; established a sometimes-contentious relationship with Powhatan, the paramount chief of Tsenacomoco; and was president of the colony from September 1609 to September 1610. He was unpopular among his fellow colonists, however, who forced his return to England in October 1610. Smith never returned to Virginia, but he did travel to and map a portion of the northeast coast of North America, which he named New England. Much of what is known about Smith's life comes from his own detailed and informative accounts of his experiences. Although many of his contemporaries considered him a braggart and he almost certainly embellished his own accomplishments, his narratives provide invaluable insights into English and native life during the Virginia colony's formative years.
Tue, 31 Jan 2012 11:37:37 EST]]> /Henry_Patrick_1736-1799 Mon, 30 Jan 2012 11:38:17 EST http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Henry_Patrick_1736-1799 Patrick Henry was a lawyer, orator, and statesman whose career spanned the founding of the United States. An early critic of British authority and leader in the movement toward independence, Henry dedicated most of his life to Virginia politics. He served as a member of the House of Burgesses (1765–1774), as the first governor of the Commonwealth of Virginia (1776–1779), as a member of the House of Delegates (1779–1784; 1788–1791), and again as governor (1784–1786). He was a founding member of the Virginia Committee of Correspondence (1773) and a delegate to the First and Second Continental Congresses (1774–1776). He also attended the Virginia Conventions of 1774, March 1775, July–August 1775, May 1776, and 1788. He is best remembered, however, for the speech he delivered during the Virginia Convention of 1775 that famously ended with the words, "Give me liberty, or give me death!" Henry's Virginia contemporaries recognized him as "the man who gave the first impulse to the ball of revolution." Henry retired from public life in 1791 and declined invitations to serve on the Supreme Court, as secretary of state, and as a vice presidential candidate. Only a request from George Washington, made during the divisive conflict over the Alien and Sedition Acts and the Virginia and Kentucky Resolutions, brought him back into the public arena. Henry won election to the General Assembly in the spring of 1799, but died before the House of Delegates convened that autumn.
Mon, 30 Jan 2012 11:38:17 EST]]> /_An_act_concerning_runaways_1669-1670 Mon, 30 Jan 2012 09:29:27 EST http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/_An_act_concerning_runaways_1669-1670 In "An act concerning runaways," passed by the General Assembly in the session of October 1669–1670, Virginia's colonial government responds to the problem of runaway indentured servants and slaves.
Mon, 30 Jan 2012 09:29:27 EST]]> /Beale_R_L_T_1819-1893 Sat, 28 Jan 2012 14:43:17 EST http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Beale_R_L_T_1819-1893 R. L. T. Beale was twice a member of the U.S. House of Representatives (1847–1849; 1879–1881), member of the Convention of 1850–1851, member of the Senate of Virginia (1857–1860), and a Confederate army officer during the American Civil War (1861–1865). After earning a law degree at the University of Virginia, Beale practiced law in his native Westmoreland County. He was first elected to Congress as a proslavery Democrat but did not seek reelection. Instead, he served as a delegate to the state constitutional convention in 1850, generally opposing proposals to make state government more democratic. After serving a term in the state senate, he joined the Confederate cavalry and fought with the Army of Northern Virginia throughout the war. In June 1862, a newspaper reporter accompanied Beale during J. E. B. Stuart's famous ride around the Union army, and in March 1864, Beale's cavalry detachment killed Union colonel Ulric Dahlgren, ending the Kilpatrick-Dahlgren Raid. After the war, Beale wrote a history of the 9th Virginia, published posthumously, and served a second term in Congress.
Sat, 28 Jan 2012 14:43:17 EST]]> /Civil_War_Battlefield_Preservation Wed, 25 Jan 2012 11:14:39 EST http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Civil_War_Battlefield_Preservation Though Virginia has always been considered a focal point of the American Civil War (1861–1865), battlefield preservation in the state initially lagged far behind other areas. Virginia witnessed the greatest number of battles, engagements, and skirmishes, not only because of its geographic location but also because it was home to the Confederate capital in Richmond. Moreover, most of the postwar historiographical disputes, at least in the decades just after the war, focused on Virginia battles and Virginia generals, especially Robert E. Lee and Thomas J. "Stonewall" Jackson. That Virginia battlefields fell decades behind others in Civil War battlefield preservation is ironic, then, even startling. Major battleground states, such as Tennessee, Mississippi, Georgia, and even other Eastern Theater states, such as Maryland and Pennsylvania, saw their battlefields preserved comparatively soon after the war. Despite success in other areas to memorialize the war, such as establishing the Museum of the Confederacy and erecting memorial statues along Monument Avenue, both in Richmond, it took sixty years to establish the first park in Virginia.
Wed, 25 Jan 2012 11:14:39 EST]]> /Causes_of_Confederate_Defeat_in_the_Civil_War Wed, 25 Jan 2012 09:34:01 EST http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Causes_of_Confederate_Defeat_in_the_Civil_War The surrender of Confederate general Robert E. Lee's Army of Northern Virginia at Appomattox Court House on April 9, 1865, effectively ended the American Civil War (1861–1865). But why did Lee surrender? And why in the spring of 1865? Historians have argued over the answers to these questions since that day at Appomattox. Explanations for Confederate defeat in the Civil War can be broken into two categories: some historians argue that the Confederacy collapsed largely because of social divisions within Southern society, while others emphasize the Union's military defeat of Confederate armies. These arguments are not mutually exclusive—no historian would deny that Southern society was riven by racial, class, gender, and regional antagonisms and, similarly, all historians recognize the enormous force brought to bear by Northern armies and the high casualties suffered by Confederate soldiers. Nonetheless, the disagreement has produced sharply different explanations for why the Civil War ended as it did.
Wed, 25 Jan 2012 09:34:01 EST]]> /Seven_Days_Battles Wed, 25 Jan 2012 09:30:15 EST http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Seven_Days_Battles The Seven Days' Battles, fought June 25–July 1, 1862, were the decisive engagements of the Peninsula Campaign during the American Civil War (1861–1865). Union general George B. McClellan had attempted to march his Army of the Potomac up the Peninsula between the York and James rivers but was stalled first at Yorktown, then at Williamsburg, and finally at the fierce battle at Seven Pines–Fair Oaks (May 31–June 1), during which Confederate general Joseph E. Johnston was severely wounded. General Robert E. Lee took command of the Army of Northern Virginia and, to prevent a siege of the Confederate capital at Richmond, went on the offensive. The first of Lee's attacks occurred on June 26, and after two days of fighting he forced McClellan to abandon his supply line and begin a retreat back to the James River. Lee pursued and came close to destroying the Union army on June 30 at Glendale. He suffered a major tactical defeat the next day at Malvern Hill, but McClellan ensured a Confederate strategic victory by continuing his retreat to Harrison's Landing. The battles ended McClellan's campaign to take Richmond, as well as the last chance to end the war under circumstances that might resemble the status quo of 1860.
Wed, 25 Jan 2012 09:30:15 EST]]> /Army_of_the_Potomac Wed, 25 Jan 2012 09:19:01 EST http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Army_of_the_Potomac The Army of the Potomac was the primary Union fighting force in the Eastern Theater of the American Civil War (1861–1865). Known as "Mr. Lincoln's Army" for its close association with the sitting United States president, its dual mission was to defeat the Confederate Army of Northern Virginia and to safeguard Washington, D.C. Formed in the aftermath of the debacle at First Manassas (1861), the army survived a succession of flawed commanders and battlefield reverses to attain final victory. In the spring of 1862, during the mismanaged Peninsula Campaign, the Army of the Potomac failed to capture the Confederate capital at Richmond. That summer some of its components met defeat in the Second Manassas Campaign. Although it blunted Robert E. Lee's September 1862 invasion of Maryland, it gained only a tactical draw against the smaller but superbly led Confederate army. Three months later the army suffered horrific losses at Fredericksburg, and the following May it was routed by Lee at Chancellorsville. In July 1863, however, it gained a critical victory at Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, ending Lee's second invasion of the North. Beginning early in May 1864, the army methodically advanced against Richmond and equally strategic Petersburg, Virginia, suffering heavy losses at every turn. Compelled to besiege both cities, the Army of the Potomac eventually forced both cities' evacuation and Lee's retreat. As a result, on April 9, 1865, realizing that he had been overtaken, Lee surrendered to Ulysses S. Grant at Appomattox, effectively ending the war.
Wed, 25 Jan 2012 09:19:01 EST]]> /Second_Manassas_Campaign Wed, 25 Jan 2012 09:14:06 EST http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Second_Manassas_Campaign The Second Manassas Campaign, fought August 13–September 3, 1862, during the American Civil War (1861–1865), was one in a long line of Confederate victories that year. Following George B. McClellan's attack on the Confederate capital at Richmond during the Peninsula Campaign and the Seven Days' Battles, Confederate general Robert E. Lee regained the strategic initiative through a bold campaign of maneuver. He split his Army of Northern Virginia into two—one half led by Thomas J. "Stonewall" Jackson, the other by James Longstreet. In a risky move, Lee sent Jackson around Union general John Pope's flank and cut his supply lines with Washington, D.C. Longstreet's wing of the army later followed. Jackson succeeded splendidly, bringing Pope to battle near Manassas Junction, the site of the First Battle of Manassas, which had been fought the summer before. With the defeat of Pope's Army of Virginia at the Second Battle of Manassas on August 28–30, a route north lay open for the Army of Northern Virginia. Lee decided to take it, bringing the war into Maryland and eventually defeating Union troops at the Battle of Antietam on September 17.
Wed, 25 Jan 2012 09:14:06 EST]]> /Indentured_Servants_in_Colonial_Virginia Wed, 25 Jan 2012 09:07:44 EST http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Indentured_Servants_in_Colonial_Virginia Indentured servants were men and women who signed a contract (also known as an indenture or a covenant) by which they agreed to work for a certain number of years in exchange for transportation to Virginia and, once they arrived, food, clothing, and shelter. Adults usually served for four to seven years and children sometimes for much longer, with most working in the colony's tobacco fields. With a long history in England, indentured servitude became, during most of the seventeenth century, the primary means by which Virginia planters filled their nearly inexhaustible need for labor. At first, the Virginia Company of London paid to transport servants across the Atlantic, but with the institution of the headright system in 1618, the company enticed planters and merchants to incur the cost with the promise of land. As a result, servants flooded into the colony, where they were greeted by deadly diseases and often-harsh conditions that killed a majority of newcomers and left the rest to the mercy of sometimes-cruel masters. The General Assembly passed laws regulating contract terms, as well as the behavior and treatment of servants. Besides benefiting masters with long indentures, these laws limited servant rights while still allowing servants to present any complaints in court. By the end of the seventeenth century, the number of new servants in Virginia had dwindled, and the colony's labor needs were largely met by enslaved Africans.
Wed, 25 Jan 2012 09:07:44 EST]]> /Anthony_Burns_1834-1862 Wed, 25 Jan 2012 08:54:29 EST http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Anthony_Burns_1834-1862 Anthony Burns was a fugitive slave from Virginia who, while living in Boston in 1854, became the principal in a famous court case brought in an effort to extradite him back to the South. Born in Stafford County, Burns was the property of the merchant Charles F. Suttle, who later hired him out to William Brent, of Falmouth. In 1854, Burns escaped slavery and traveled to Boston, where he wrote a letter back to one of his brothers. Intercepted by Suttle, the letter revealed Burns's whereabouts, and Suttle and Brent themselves traveled to Boston and claimed Burns under the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850. The subsequent rendition trial sparked the interest of antislavery activists, and an attempt at freeing Burns by force killed a federal marshal. Burns eventually lost his case and was sold to a man in North Carolina. Boston activists later purchased his freedom, however, and he attended school in Ohio and lectured on his experiences. He ended up in Canada, where he died in 1862 from health problems related to his post-trial confinement.
Wed, 25 Jan 2012 08:54:29 EST]]> /Don_LuA Tue, 24 Jan 2012 16:19:03 EST http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Don_LuA Paquiquineo, later Don Luís de Velasco, likely was a Paspahegh Indian who encountered Spanish explorers on the Chesapeake Bay in 1561 and volunteered to return to Spain with them. There, he appeared before King Philip II and was granted permission to lead a Catholic mission back to the Chesapeake. A brief stop in Mexico City, Mexico, turned into a years-long stay after Paquiquineo became ill, and during that time he converted to Christianity, taking the name of the Spanish viceroy, Don Luís de Velasco. After two failed attempts to return home with Dominican missionaries, Don Luís sailed again to Spain, joined with a group of Jesuit priests, and finally landed on the James River in September 1570, or more than nine years after he had left. He initially aided the Jesuits, but quickly reunited with his Paspahegh family and led an ambush that killed the missionaries save for a boy, Alonso de los Olmos. In 1572, the Spanish dispatched soldiers to the Chesapeake; they hanged a handful of Paspaheghs and took two prisoners but could not find Don Luís, who subsequently disappeared from history. Virginia Indian oral tradition does not mention him, although slightly garbled rumors have led some to claim that Paquiquineo and Opechancanough, who led an assault on the Jamestown colonists in 1622 that began the Second Anglo-Powhatan War (1622–1632), were the same person. Evidence suggests that this is not true.
Tue, 24 Jan 2012 16:19:03 EST]]> /Strachey_William_1572-1621 Tue, 24 Jan 2012 16:06:30 EST http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Strachey_William_1572-1621 William Strachey was a member of the Virginia Council, served as secretary and recorder for the colony from 1610 until 1611, and was one of the first historians of the Jamestown settlement. Educated at Cambridge and Gray's Inn, he wrote verse and befriended poets Ben Jonson and John Donne before serving a brief stint as secretary to the English ambassador at Constantinople (1606–1607). Strachey then returned to England, purchased two shares in the Virginia Company of London, and in 1609 sailed on the Sea Venture , the flagship of a resupply fleet bound for the colony. When a storm ran the ship aground on the Bermudas, he and his shipmates were stranded for nearly a year, but eventually managed to construct two small vessels, Patience and Deliverance, and arrived at Jamestown in May 1610. Strachey's account of the adventure, published in 1625 as A true reportory of the wracke, and redemption of Sir Thomas Gates Knight , probably had served, years earlier, as source material for William Shakespeare's play The Tempest. In Virginia, Strachey was appointed to the Council and made its secretary and recorder, in which capacity the company requested that he produce an extensive account of the colony and its future prospects. When he completed The Historie of Travaile into Virginia Britannia in 1612, the company declined to publish it. In the years since, however, it has become one of the most important sources of information on early Virginia Indian society, politics, and religion. Strachey died in poverty in London in 1621.
Tue, 24 Jan 2012 16:06:30 EST]]> /Mosby_John_Singleton_1833-1916 Mon, 23 Jan 2012 09:27:14 EST http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Mosby_John_Singleton_1833-1916 John Singleton Mosby was a Confederate colonel during the American Civil War (1861–1865). As a private in the 1st Virginia Cavalry, Mosby chose his commander, General J. E. B. Stuart, as his role model and mentor. Stuart and General Robert E. Lee came to value Mosby's skills as a scout and raider. In June 1863 Confederate secretary of war James A. Seddon permitted Mosby to form and recruit soldiers for Company A, 43rd Battalion Virginia Cavalry (Partisan Rangers). The battalion expanded steadily to the size of a regiment (approximately 1,900 men served in the command during its existence) and Mosby was accordingly promoted to colonel. The raids of "Mosby's Men" helped to demoralize Union cavalry and rally Southern support for the war. Wounded seven times, the combative Mosby disbanded his troops, rather than surrender, on April 21, 1865. After the war he resumed his career as a lawyer and turned Republican. Mosby served as U.S. consul to Hong Kong, and from 1904 until 1910 worked as assistant attorney general in the U.S. Justice Department. An excellent writer, Mosby devoted his latter years to letters, articles, and books defending the actions and reputation of his own command, the reputations of J. E. B. Stuart and Ulysses S. Grant, and arguing that slavery was the main cause of the war. Mosby died in Washington, D.C., in 1916.
Mon, 23 Jan 2012 09:27:14 EST]]> /Dawson_Thomas_1715-1760 Fri, 20 Jan 2012 15:59:14 EST http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Dawson_Thomas_1715-1760 Fri, 20 Jan 2012 15:59:14 EST]]> /Languages_and_Interpreters_in_Early_Virginia_Indian_Society Fri, 20 Jan 2012 15:57:27 EST http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Languages_and_Interpreters_in_Early_Virginia_Indian_Society Early Virginia Indians spoke dialects of Algic, Iroquoian, or Siouan, three large linguistic families that include many of the more than eight hundred indigenous languages in North America. Among Virginia's Algic-speakers were the Powhatan Indians, who lived in the Tidewater and encountered the Jamestown settlers in 1607. Little is known of their language—a form of Algic known as Virginia Algonquian—although Captain John Smith and William Strachey both composed influential vocabulary lists. The Nottoways and the Meherrins lived south of the James near the fall line and spoke Iroquoian. Although the Meherrin language was never recorded, it has been identified as Iroquoian based on geography. In 1820, John Wood interviewed the elderly Nottoway "queen" Edie Turner and created a word list that eventually was recognized as Iroquoian. Virginia's Siouan-speakers, meanwhile, largely lived west of the fall line and included the Monacans, the Mannahoacs, and the Saponis. Many Virginia Indians, encouraged by the requirements of trade, diplomacy, and warfare, spoke multiple languages, and when the English arrived, they and the Powhatans eagerly exchanged boys to learn each other's language and serve as interpreters. By the twentieth century, most if not all Virginia Indian languages had become extinct, meaning that no native speakers survived. In 2005, the Terrence Malick film The New World presented a form of Algonquian based on the Smith and Strachey lists and the work of the linguist Blair Rudes.
Fri, 20 Jan 2012 15:57:27 EST]]> /Carter_Landon_1710-1778 Fri, 20 Jan 2012 15:53:21 EST http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Carter_Landon_1710-1778 Landon Carter was a prominent member of the House of Burgesses (1752–1768) and perhaps the most prolific published Virginia writer of his generation—the author of four major political pamphlets, nearly fifty newspaper essays, and a revealing personal diary. Carter was the son of the powerful landowner Robert "King" Carter and for a time managed some of his father's land. Upon King Carter's death, Landon Carter inherited a substantial Richmond County estate and built his home, Sabine Hall, there. After three failed attempts, Carter was elected to the House of Burgesses in 1752 and was rewarded with powerful committee appointments. He publicly defended the House in published pamphlets and newspaper essays until he was defeated in his bid for reelection in 1768. The first to raise the alarm in Virginia over the Stamp Act, Carter was chair of the Richmond County Committee (1774–1776) and a wholehearted supporter of independence during the American Revolution (1775–1783). He died at Sabine Hall in 1778.
Fri, 20 Jan 2012 15:53:21 EST]]> /Education_Early_Virginia_Indian Fri, 20 Jan 2012 15:51:05 EST http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Education_Early_Virginia_Indian Early Virginia Indians educated their children for the purpose of preparing them to be adults. Boys and girls were expected to absorb the community's values, including stoicism in the face of hardship, and master the skills necessary to survive and thrive. For men that included hunting and warfare and for women collecting plants, building houses, and making household furnishings. English colonists had little to say about how Indian girls were reared, either out of lack of interest or because such knowledge was considered to be none of their business. Powhatan boys were trained in hunting and warfare by their fathers and older male relatives in order to win personal names, learn marksmanship, and earn the right to join the hunt. Between the ages of ten and fifteen, they engaged in the several-months-long huskanaw ritual, in which they were ritually—but not actually—killed and then given a drug which turned them briefly violent and ritually erased their memories of boyhood. The English colonists saw this sort of training for boys as frivolous; they believed that boys, instead of girls, should plant and farm. Although education practices among the Virginia Indians changed in the years after contact with the English, what remained was an ingrained reluctance to send their children outside the family for instruction.
Fri, 20 Jan 2012 15:51:05 EST]]> /Somers_Sir_George_1554-1610 Fri, 20 Jan 2012 15:48:30 EST http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Somers_Sir_George_1554-1610 Sir George Somers was an English privateer and sea captain who served as admiral of a large resupply voyage to Jamestown in 1609; his ship the Sea Venture was wrecked and its passengers stranded for almost ten months on the islands of Bermuda. A native of Dorset, in the southwest of England, Somers preyed on Spanish shipping in the West Indies during his early years, earning enough money to buy land and build a nice home near his native town of Lyme Regis. Described as being "a lion at sea," he was knighted by King James I in 1603, and in 1606 was named in the Virginia Company of London's royal charter to settle Virginia. In 1609, Somers sailed on the Sea Venture, the resupply fleet's flagship that was shipwrecked in the Bermudas. There, despite disagreements with the governor, Sir Thomas Gates, Somers helped lead the castaways in their return to Virginia in May 1610. A few weeks later, a new governor, Thomas West, baron De La Warr, ordered Somers back to Bermuda to gather supplies. He died there early in November. His nephew Matthew Somers buried his heart and entrails in Bermuda—soon after named the Somers Islands—before returning the rest of his body to England for burial.
Fri, 20 Jan 2012 15:48:30 EST]]> /Pocahontas_d_1617 Fri, 20 Jan 2012 15:46:33 EST http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Pocahontas_d_1617 Pocahontas was the daughter of Powhatan, paramount chief of an alliance of Virginia Indians in Tidewater Virginia. An iconic figure in American history, Pocahontas is largely known for saving the life of the Jamestown colonist John Smith and then romancing him—although both events are unlikely to be true. She did meet Smith several times, sometimes serving as Powhatan's silent figurehead and a symbolic liaison between the chief and the English colonists; she was not, however, a "princess" or a diplomat in any modern sense. Sometime around 1610, she married an Indian named Kocoum, and in 1613 she was captured by the English and confined at Jamestown, where she converted to Christianity and married the colonist John Rolfe. The marriage, approved by Powhatan, brought an end to the First Anglo-Powhatan War (1609–1614) and set the stage for Pocahontas's visit to London in 1616. At the request of the Virginia Company of London, she met both King James I and the bishop of London, after which she reunited briefly with Smith. Early in her return voyage to Virginia, she became ill and died at Gravesend in March 1617. In the centuries since, Pocahontas's life has slipped into myth, serving to represent Virginia's early claim to be the foundation-place of America. Many elite Virginians, meanwhile, have tenuously claimed her as a relative, even leading to a "Pocahontas clause" in the Racial Integrity Act of 1924.
Fri, 20 Jan 2012 15:46:33 EST]]> /Powhatan_d_1618 Fri, 20 Jan 2012 15:43:59 EST http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Powhatan_d_1618 Powhatan, whose given name was Wahunsonacock, was the paramount chief of Tsenacomoco, a political alliance of Virginia Indians whose core six groups all settled along the James, Mattaponi, and Pamunkey rivers. Introduced to the Jamestown colonists in 1607 as Powhatan, he was for a decade the most powerful point of contact for the English; in 1614, the marriage of his daughter, Pocahontas, to John Rolfe, helped end, at least temporarily, years of war. Coming to power in Powhatan, the Powhatan Indians' principal frontier town on the James River, Wahunsonacock likely was raised much as any other Algonquian-speaking Indian would have been—learning archery and hunting from the men of his village. By 1607, he was paramount chief of Tsenacomoco, having expanded it, through a combination of force and diplomacy, to between twenty-eight and thirty-two tribes and petty chiefdoms. Powhatan negotiated with the English, and especially John Smith, attempting to reach accommodation with the colonists and, when he could not, attempting to intimidate or kill them. In 1609, he moved his capital from Werowocomoco to Orapax, which was farther west, and intensified his efforts to kill Smith and expel the English. Pocahontas's marriage ended that stage of the conflict, and relations were peaceful until Powhatan's death in 1618. When his brother, Opechancanough, became leader of Tsenacomoco, he launched the attack that inaugurated the Second Anglo-Powhatan War (1622–1632).
Fri, 20 Jan 2012 15:43:59 EST]]> /Lawes_Divine_Morall_and_Martiall Fri, 20 Jan 2012 15:39:22 EST http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Lawes_Divine_Morall_and_Martiall Lawes Divine, Morall and Martiall, the rules and regulations issued in Jamestown beginning in 1610 and 1611, are the earliest extant English-language body of laws in the western hemisphere. It was not a legal code in the modern sense. No legislation created it, and no court enforced it. The laws were orders that the governor, appointed by the Virginia Company of London that settled and managed the colony between 1607 and 1624, issued to regulate the conduct of its members, employees, and servants. The laws recognized none of the principles of the English common law and did not provide for jury trials, even though the royal charters of the company specified that residents of the colony were entitled to all the rights of Englishmen.
Fri, 20 Jan 2012 15:39:22 EST]]> /Colonial_Williamsburg Fri, 20 Jan 2012 15:37:02 EST http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Colonial_Williamsburg Colonial Williamsburg is the restored and reconstructed historic area of Williamsburg, Virginia, a small city between the York and James rivers that was founded in 1632, designated capital of the English colony in 1698, and bestowed with a royal charter in 1722. It was a center of political activity before and during the American Revolution (1775–1783)—where George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, and Patrick Henry debated taxes, slavery, and the inalienable rights of men—and has since become the site of an ambitious restoration project launched in the 1930s and funded largely by the family of John D. Rockefeller Jr. With many of its historic structures rebuilt and with "interpreters" reenacting eighteenth-century life, Colonial Williamsburg has become a landmark in the history of the American preservation movement. More than that, though, the project serves as a self-conscious shrine of American ideals. The history and legacy of slavery, once downplayed at Williamsburg, is now dealt with openly—interpreters are both white and African American—but the focus remains on what the site's originators called "healthful" information about democracy, freedom, and representative government.
Fri, 20 Jan 2012 15:37:02 EST]]> /Elizabeth_I_1533-1603 Fri, 20 Jan 2012 15:28:55 EST http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Elizabeth_I_1533-1603 Elizabeth I was queen of England from 1558 to 1603, and Virginia was named in honor of her. Daughter of Henry VIII and his second wife, Anne Boleyn, Elizabeth Tudor became queen at the death of her married but childless half-sister Mary I. Elizabeth remained single, and her image as the "virgin queen" permeated the arts and politics of her reign, even as she used the possibility of marriage to shape foreign policy. Her reign saw the establishment of the Protestant Church of England in a form that has lasted for centuries. She faced a rebellion and plots in favor of her Catholic cousin, Mary, Queen of Scots, whose flight to England and claims to its throne caused Elizabeth first to imprison and then to execute her. Elizabeth oversaw her navy's defeat of the Spanish Armada in 1588, a victory that marked a high point of English protestant and nationalistic fervor. In the 1580s, she encouraged Sir Walter Raleigh's ventures to the New World, and even though his colonies at Roanoke failed, their brief existence enabled the English explorers to claim much of the eastern coast of North America as "Virginia." Elizabeth's love and patronage of plays, pageants, literature, and the fine arts was at the heart of the English Renaissance. Elizabeth was famous for her linguistic skills, sharp wit and temper, educated mind, frugality, and political caution. In her speeches, civic processions, and travels around the kingdom, she cultivated her popularity with her subjects. Elizabeth died in 1603 and was succeeded by her cousin James VI of Scotland.
Fri, 20 Jan 2012 15:28:55 EST]]> /Fry_Joshua_ca_1700-May_31_1754 Fri, 20 Jan 2012 13:46:26 EST http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Fry_Joshua_ca_1700-May_31_1754 Joshua Fry was a surveyor, soldier, and politician who is best known as the creator, along with Peter Jefferson, of the Fry-Jefferson map of Virginia. Born in England, Fry came to Virginia in or about 1726 and secured a teaching position at the College of William and Mary. After his marriage in 1736, he served Essex County as justice of the peace, sheriff, and coroner. In 1745 Fry became a resident of the newly formed Albemarle County, which he represented as a court justice, first lieutenant of the county, and a member of the House of Burgesses (1745–1754). In 1751 Fry, long a surveyor, helped create the Fry-Jefferson map, considered the definitive map of eighteenth-century Virginia. Following the map's completion, Fry was appointed a commissioner of the Treaty of Logstown (1752) between Virginia, the Ohio Company, and representatives of the Six Nations of the Iroquois. In 1754 Lieutenant Governor Robert Dinwiddie commissioned Fry colonel of the Virginia Regiment. Fry died on May 31, 1754, after falling from his horse while leading his troops into the Ohio territory.
Fri, 20 Jan 2012 13:46:26 EST]]> /Hakluyt_Richard_ca_1530-1591 Fri, 20 Jan 2012 13:38:30 EST http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Hakluyt_Richard_ca_1530-1591 Fri, 20 Jan 2012 13:38:30 EST]]> /Barlowe_Arthur_ca_1550-ca_1620 Fri, 20 Jan 2012 13:30:56 EST http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Barlowe_Arthur_ca_1550-ca_1620 Fri, 20 Jan 2012 13:30:56 EST]]> /Bucke_Richard_1581_or_1582-ca_1624 Fri, 20 Jan 2012 13:27:02 EST http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Bucke_Richard_1581_or_1582-ca_1624 Richard Bucke was an Anglican minister who came to Jamestown in 1610, performed the marriage ceremony for Pocahontas and John Rolfe in 1614, and in 1619 opened with prayer the first legislative assembly in Virginia. Born and educated in England, Bucke was delayed on his way to Virginia by a storm and spent almost ten months in Bermuda. For a time he was the only minister in Jamestown, and his experiences in the colony seem to have been difficult. His date of death appears to have been around 1624.
Fri, 20 Jan 2012 13:27:02 EST]]> /Byrd_William_1674-1744 Fri, 20 Jan 2012 13:22:09 EST http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Byrd_William_1674-1744 William Byrd (also referred to as William Byrd II of Westover) was an early and successful Virginia planter who is best known today as a writer and bibliophile. In addition, he was a surveyor who led expeditions to determine the border between Virginia and Carolina and the location of what would become Virginia's capital, Richmond. He was a natural historian who was a member of the Royal Society of London for the Improving of Natural Knowledge. And, finally, he was an entrepreneur who promoted Swiss immigration to settle southwestern Virginia and who explored an iron-mining venture in Germanna and Fredericksburg. The son of a Virginia planter and fur trader and the grandson of a London goldsmith, Byrd typified both the values of British colonial gentry and the ethos of an emerging American identity invested in self-improvement and the improvement of the colonial commonwealth.
Fri, 20 Jan 2012 13:22:09 EST]]> /Printing_in_Colonial_Virginia Fri, 20 Jan 2012 13:14:59 EST http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Printing_in_Colonial_Virginia Printing came to Virginia relatively late in its colonial development. For more than a century after its founding, the colony's governors deemed printing a destabilizing influence to the standing order and actively opposed introducing printing into their dominion. Often that resistance came at the order of their superiors in London. Thus when William Parks was finally authorized to produce imprints for the government in 1728, his commission was limited. He could produce little more than what the government required. Still, the availability of the few allowed imprints, such as his Virginia Gazette and Virginia Almanack, created a growing market for imprints produced in Williamsburg. That growth wrought a conflict for Virginia's solitary press between the demands of that new market and the needs of the government. After 1750, Parks's successors—William Hunter and Joseph Royle—faced these diverging interests with increasing difficulty. Hunter was able to maintain the governor's control of the press only by replacing his office staff, while Royle was facing the imminent arrival of a competitor when he died in 1766. Royle's passing marked the end of the colonial printing monopoly. Multiple press offices would become the norm in Virginia, just as resistance to imperial authority sparked a revolution.
Fri, 20 Jan 2012 13:14:59 EST]]> /Baptists_in_Colonial_Virginia Fri, 20 Jan 2012 13:11:55 EST http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Baptists_in_Colonial_Virginia Baptists during most of the colonial period in Virginia operated on the fringes of the religious mainstream and attracted a mere handful of adherents. Their numbers began to increase modestly in the 1750s, and then more rapidly thereafter, so that by 1790 the state could be described as one of the most "Baptist" places in the country. (At the beginning of the twenty-first century, Baptists collectively comprised the largest religious group in Virginia.) This upsurge, which was bookended by an expansion of Presbyterian and Methodist practices as well, was part of a dramatic transformation in Virginia's religious landscape. The Church of England had enjoyed exclusive legal privileges in the colony from its founding. Dissenters from Anglicanism initially were few, and they operated under significant legal restrictions defined by the 1689 Act for Toleration (which entered Virginia law in 1699). The rise of the Baptists ultimately became entwined with both secular and religious challenges to Anglican monopoly that culminated in disestablishment and the passage of Virginia's 1786 Act for Establishing Religious Freedom, which allowed a gradual evangelical turn in the state at large. Because Virginia was the origin point for many colonial and American migrants moving westward, the expansion of Baptist churches there can be understood as important to rooting the faith in the country at large.
Fri, 20 Jan 2012 13:11:55 EST]]> /Puritans_in_Colonial_Virginia Fri, 20 Jan 2012 13:08:19 EST http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Puritans_in_Colonial_Virginia Fri, 20 Jan 2012 13:08:19 EST]]> /Divorce_in_Early_Virginia_Indian_Society Thu, 19 Jan 2012 17:02:34 EST http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Divorce_in_Early_Virginia_Indian_Society Divorce was permitted, if not common, in early Virginia Indian society. What is known of the practice is limited to the observations of Jamestown colonists, visiting English observers, and later American historians, and applicable mostly to the Algonquian-speaking Powhatans and possibly speakers from other language families. A divorce among common married people could be obtained in cases of mere "disagreement." Because daily labor was divided between the sexes and every adult needed at least one opposite-sex partner to get all the work done, marriage was encouraged among the Indians as a means of survival. If a married person divorced or was widowed or abandoned, remarriage was therefore expected. If a spouse was captured and did not return, a divorce was assumed in order to encourage remarriage. The paramount chief Powhatan divorced each of his wives as soon as she gave him a child, sending her either to one of his under chiefs or back to her home, but eventually taking the child into his household. Among nonchiefs, the children were raised by one of the parents; accounts differ as to how custody was settled. English colonists reacted to the relative ease by which Virginia Indians obtained a divorce by characterizing them as sexually promiscuous. In the centuries following the settlement of Jamestown in 1607, however, divorce among the Indians came into line with English and new American practices, becoming much more difficult.
Thu, 19 Jan 2012 17:02:34 EST]]> /Claiborne_William_1600-1679 Thu, 19 Jan 2012 10:07:20 EST http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Claiborne_William_1600-1679 William Claiborne served as a member of the governor's Council (1623–1637; 1642–1661) and as secretary of the colony (1626–1634). Born in England and educated at Cambridge, Claiborne came to Virginia in 1621 as surveyor of the colony and by 1623 was a member of the Council. He operated a lucrative trading post on Kent Island but was evicted by Maryland authorities, who claimed the land as their own. In 1626, Claiborne became secretary of the colony and led a powerful faction on the Council that clashed with Governor Sir John Harvey and eventually evicted him from office. After serving in the militia during the Anglo-Powhatan War of 1644–1646, Claiborne, a Puritan sympathizer, helped negotiate the surrender of Virginia to Parliament in 1652 after the English Civil Wars. When Charles II was restored to the throne, Claiborne, who had a civil relationship with the long-serving loyalist governor Sir William Berkeley, retired from public life. He defended the governor during Bacon's Rebellion (1676), losing much of his property in the process. Claiborne died in 1679.
Thu, 19 Jan 2012 10:07:20 EST]]> /Pistole_Fee_Dispute_The Thu, 19 Jan 2012 09:52:37 EST http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Pistole_Fee_Dispute_The The pistole fee dispute of 1753–1754 was a political battle between the House of Burgesses and Virginia lieutenant governor Robert Dinwiddie over Dinwiddie's decision to charge a fee of one pistole (approximately 18 shillings) for each land patent to which he attached the colony's seal. Though royal policy gave colonial governors the right to establish officers' fees with the consent of the governor's Council, the practice was not enforced in Virginia, where fees were usually determined by the General Assembly. The controversy over the pistole fee was so heated that Dinwiddie and the House of Burgesses sent representatives to London to argue their cases before the Privy Council. The Privy Council upheld the fee and Dinwiddie's right to establish it, but imposed certain restrictions on the fee to conciliate the House of Burgesses—a compromise that was accepted by the opposing parties but did not address the constitutional issue of whether colonial legislatures had the right to defeat local taxes proposed by the British government. The questions that were raised by opponents of the fee (including Richard Bland and Landon Carter) regarding British authority and the rights of Virginians would resurface in 1765 with the passage of the Stamp Act.
Thu, 19 Jan 2012 09:52:37 EST]]> /Black_Confederates Thu, 19 Jan 2012 09:50:37 EST http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Black_Confederates Black Confederates is a term often used to describe both enslaved and free African Americans who filled a number of different positions in support of the Confederate States of America during the American Civil War (1861–1865). Most often this assistance was coerced rather than offered voluntarily. Male slaves were either hired out by their owners or impressed to work in various departments of the Confederate army. Free black men were also routinely impressed or otherwise forced to perform manual labor for the army. The government's use of black labor, whether free or slave, followed patterns established during the antebellum period, when county governments routinely engaged the service of black men to help maintain local roads and other public property. While large numbers of black men thus accompanied every Confederate army on the march or in camp, those men would not have been considered soldiers. Only a few black men were ever accepted into Confederate service as soldiers, and none did any significant fighting. Through most of the war, the Confederate government's official policies toward black men maintained that those men were laborers, not soldiers; changes to that policy in March 1865 came too late to make any difference to Confederate prospects for victory. Those changes were also accompanied by widespread debate indicating that a significant minority of white Southerners opposed any change to the institution of slavery, even if that change might help bring about a Confederate victory.
Thu, 19 Jan 2012 09:50:37 EST]]> /Governor_s_Council_The Thu, 19 Jan 2012 09:50:28 EST http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Governor_s_Council_The The governor's Council, also known as the Council of State or simply the Council, consisted of about a dozen of colonial Virginia's wealthiest and most prominent men. Beginning in the 1630s the Crown appointed Council members, although from 1652 to 1660 the General Assembly elected the members. Crown appointments were lifetime appointments. From 1625, when Virginia became a royal colony, until the outbreak of the American Revolution (1775–1783), the Council members advised the royal governor or his deputy, the lieutenant governor, on all executive matters. The Council and the governor together constituted the highest court in the colony, known initially as the Quarter Court and later as the General Court. The Council members also served as members of the General Assembly; from the first meeting of the assembly in 1619 until 1643 the governor, Council members, and burgesses all met in unicameral session. After 1643 the Council members met separately as the upper House of the General Assembly. The Virginia Constitution of 1776 effectively abolished the governor's Council and distributed its executive, judicial, and legislative functions to three separate bodies of men.
Thu, 19 Jan 2012 09:50:28 EST]]> /Old_Dominion Thu, 19 Jan 2012 09:33:26 EST http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Old_Dominion Old Dominion is one of the best-known nicknames for Virginia, along with Mother of Presidents and Mother of States. The nickname probably derives from the fact that Virginia was the first, and therefore the oldest, of the overseas dominions of the kings and queens of England. The seal and coat of arms of the colony in use from 1607 until 1624, when the Virginia Company of London directed the colonization of Virginia, included the words, "En Dat Virginia Quintam" (also spelled "Quintum"), indicating that Virginia was the fifth of the realms, or domains, of the Crown. At that time, the kings and queens of England also claimed the thrones of Scotland, Ireland, and France (dating back to the Norman Conquest in 1066). The same words appeared on the seal between 1625, when Virginia became the English king's first royal colony, and the 1707 Acts of Union that combined the kingdoms of England and Scotland into the kingdom of Great Britain. The motto on the seal of Virginia was then altered to "En Dat Virginia Quartam," there being thereafter four, not five, royal dominions. That motto was used on the colonial seal until the beginning of the American Revolution (1775–1783).
Thu, 19 Jan 2012 09:33:26 EST]]> /Early_Jubal_A_1816-1894 Thu, 19 Jan 2012 08:51:02 EST http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Early_Jubal_A_1816-1894 Jubal A. Early was a lawyer, a politician, and a Confederate general in the Army of Northern Virginia during the American Civil War (1861–1865). An excellent brigade and division commander, he was quick and aggressive on the offensive and steady and tough on the defensive. While, at times, he was outstanding in independent command or temporary corps command, especially at Chancellorsville (1863), he was less successful leading the Army of the Valley during the Shenandoah Valley Campaign of 1864. Known as "Old Jube," Early was opinionated and critical of others but slow to see his own faults. In an army famous for its religious revival, he was notoriously quick-tempered, witty, and profane; Robert E. Lee called him "my bad old man." Prematurely bent by arthritis, he was described by one Confederate in 1861 as "a plain farmer-looking man … but with all, every inch a soldier." In his later years, Early became preeminent in debates over the war, working to venerate Lee and isolate James Longstreet, who had once been Lee's second in command. In so doing, Early helped to invent the highly influential Lost Cause view of the war. As long as Early was alive, one of his former soldiers wrote, "no man ever took up his pen to write a line about the great conflict without the fear of Jubal Early before his eyes."
Thu, 19 Jan 2012 08:51:02 EST]]> /George_Washington_1732-1799 Thu, 19 Jan 2012 08:50:29 EST http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/George_Washington_1732-1799 George Washington served as commander in chief of the Continental army during the American Revolution (1775–1783), as president of the United States Constitutional Convention (1787), and as first president of the United States (1789–1797). Born to a family of middling wealth, Washington's formal education ended when he was about fifteen. Thanks to his half-brother's marriage into the wealthy Fairfax family, Washington acquired social polish, a taste for aristocratic living, and connections to Virginia's political elite. Long months on the frontier as a surveyor toughened the young Washington, preparing him for service in Virginia's militia during the French and Indian War (1754–1763). He held positions of command at a remarkably young age. Marriage to Martha Custis brought him great wealth. Increasingly restive under British taxation and trade restrictions, Washington took a leading role in the nascent revolutionary movement after British regulars killed colonists and seized private property at the battles of Lexington and Concord in Massachusetts in April 1775. As commander in chief, he led American forces for the entire eight-year war, losing more battles than he won but managing to keep the army together under the most difficult circumstances. By the middle of the war, he was already hailed as the "Father of His Country." His enormous prestige after the war led to his being chosen to lead the Constitutional Convention and to his election as first president.
Thu, 19 Jan 2012 08:50:29 EST]]> /Richard_Kemp_ca_1600-ca_1650 Wed, 18 Jan 2012 17:23:28 EST http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Richard_Kemp_ca_1600-ca_1650 Wed, 18 Jan 2012 17:23:28 EST]]> /Sea_Venture Wed, 18 Jan 2012 17:16:33 EST http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Sea_Venture The Sea Venture was the flagship of a convoy sent from England in June 1609 to re-supply and revive the failing colony at Jamestown. On July 24, just off the coast of the uninhabited island chain of Bermuda, the fleet sailed into a hurricane. The storm separated the flagship from the other vessels and left it gravely damaged. The 150 passengers and crew members, including Christopher Newport, the ship's captain, and the colony's intended new leaders, escaped death at sea but found themselves marooned on Bermuda. Before the ship sank, crewmen salvaged many of their supplies and even the rigging. For ten months the castaways remained on Bermuda, while their countrymen in Virginia and England assumed them dead. During that time, they built two small boats, which they named the Patience and the Deliverance, and sailed to Virginia, arriving on May 24, 1610. Word of their odyssey fascinated English men and women, who saw in the story providential design: surely, many concluded, God had saved the Sea Venture voyagers. The tale also attracted London's leading playwright: the Sea Venture contributed to the inspiration behind William Shakespeare's last major play, The Tempest. Most importantly for the still-floundering Virginia colony, the amazing story encouraged the English to stick with their American enterprise and even expand their colonial presence in North America.
Wed, 18 Jan 2012 17:16:33 EST]]> /Bennett_Richard_bap_1609-ca_1675 Wed, 18 Jan 2012 17:13:58 EST http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Bennett_Richard_bap_1609-ca_1675 Wed, 18 Jan 2012 17:13:58 EST]]> /Parks_William_d_1750 Wed, 18 Jan 2012 17:11:50 EST http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Parks_William_d_1750 William Parks was the first authorized printer in Virginia, the first "public printer" for the colonial government (1730–1750), publisher of the first authoritative collection of Virginia's laws (1733), and proprietor of its first newspaper, the Virginia Gazette (1736–1750). Born in England, Parks began producing official documents for the Maryland colony in 1726 and became its official printer the next year, with responsibility for all government publishing. In 1728, he expanded his business to Virginia, working as the public printer for both colonies from 1730 until 1737, when Maryland authorities accused him of neglecting his work and terminated his contract. In Virginia, his work was praised and it often flattered the local gentry. More importantly, it marked a shift by the colonial government from manuscript to print media while also enabling the growth of a public sphere in Virginia, especially through the publication of the Virginia Gazette. Responding to a story in that newspaper, a member of the House of Burgesses accused Parks of libel in 1742, but the General Assembly determined the story was true and so dismissed the charges. In the meantime, Parks published the Virginia Almanack , served as Williamsburg's postmaster, and built a large estate of property in Maryland and Virginia. His paper mill was the first south of Pennsylvania. Parks died in 1750 aboard a ship bound for England, where he was buried.
Wed, 18 Jan 2012 17:11:50 EST]]> /Salutary_Neglect Wed, 18 Jan 2012 17:07:41 EST http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Salutary_Neglect Wed, 18 Jan 2012 17:07:41 EST]]> /English_Civil_Wars_and_Virginia_The Wed, 18 Jan 2012 16:36:41 EST http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/English_Civil_Wars_and_Virginia_The Wed, 18 Jan 2012 16:36:41 EST]]> /Runaway_Slaves_and_Servants_in_Colonial_Virginia Wed, 18 Jan 2012 16:34:27 EST http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Runaway_Slaves_and_Servants_in_Colonial_Virginia Runaway slaves and indentured servants were a persistent problem for landowners in colonial Virginia. They fled from abusive masters, to take a break from work, or in search of family members from whom they had been separated. Some servants were lured away by neighbors attempting to steal labor. Early court cases reveal that whites and blacks sometimes ran off together but that punishments for the latter could be much harsher. As early as 1643, the General Assembly passed laws that established penalties for runaway slaves and servants, regulated their movement, identified multiple offenders (by branding them or cutting their hair), and provided rewards for their capture. In October 1669, the burgesses admitted that these laws "have hitherto in greate parte proved ineffectuall," as slaves and servants continued to brave wide rivers, often dangerous Indians, and the storm-tossed Chesapeake Bay. They fled mostly into Maryland but sometimes as far north as New Netherland and New England. In 1705 a sweeping new law allowed planters to discipline slaves to death or, in some cases, to kill runaways without penalty. Robert "King" Carter sought and received permission to dismember his runaways. Beginning in 1736, landowners advertised in the Virginia Gazette for their runaways; they describe more than 3,500 fugitives from 1736 until 1783. These advertisements affirmed a lingering desire for freedom on the part of slaves.
Wed, 18 Jan 2012 16:34:27 EST]]> /Convict_Labor_During_the_Colonial_Period Wed, 18 Jan 2012 16:31:33 EST http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Convict_Labor_During_the_Colonial_Period Wed, 18 Jan 2012 16:31:33 EST]]> /Gentry_in_Colonial_Virginia Wed, 18 Jan 2012 16:27:05 EST http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Gentry_in_Colonial_Virginia Wed, 18 Jan 2012 16:27:05 EST]]> /Elections_in_Colonial_Virginia Wed, 18 Jan 2012 16:15:26 EST http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Elections_in_Colonial_Virginia Wed, 18 Jan 2012 16:15:26 EST]]> /Digges_Edward_1621-1675 Wed, 18 Jan 2012 16:03:25 EST http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Digges_Edward_1621-1675 Wed, 18 Jan 2012 16:03:25 EST]]> /Starving_Time_The Wed, 18 Jan 2012 16:02:22 EST http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Starving_Time_The The Starving Time refers to the winter of 1609–1610 when about three-quarters of the English colonists in Virginia died of starvation or starvation-related diseases. In his unpublished account A Trewe Relacyon, George Percy, who served as president during these grim months, wrote that Englishmen felt "the sharpe pricke of hunger which noe man trewly descrybe butt he which hathe tasted the bitternesse thereof." Already for two years, the Jamestown colonists had died at alarming rates, mostly of summertime diseases. In 1609, the beginning of the First Anglo-Powhatan War (1609–1614) prompted the Indians to lay siege to the English fort, helping to provoke the famine. Settlers were forced to eat snakes, vipers, rats, mice, musk turtles, cats, dogs, horses, and perhaps even raptors. Although there is no archaeological corroboration, multiple gruesome stories even suggest that settlers devoured each other. The siege lifted in May 1610, and when the survivors of the Sea Venture wreck arrived in Virginia, they found just 60 gaunt remnants of the 240 people who had crowded the fort the previous November. Many observers argued that the colonists' idleness—their persistent refusal to work for their food—contributed to the famine. It is likely, though, that malnutrition and despair worked together to create symptoms that imitated laziness. In the end, Virginia survived, but just barely.
Wed, 18 Jan 2012 16:02:22 EST]]> /Jenings_Edmund_1659-1727 Wed, 18 Jan 2012 16:01:23 EST http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Jenings_Edmund_1659-1727 Edmund Jenings served as Virginia's attorney general (ca. 1680–1691) and secretary of state (1696–1712), as well as on the governor's Council (1691–1726). As the president, or senior member, of that body, he also served as acting governor (1706–1710). Born and educated in England, Jenings came to Virginia with an introduction from the future King James II and an appointment to the post of attorney general. He became a political ally of Ralph Wormeley II and Richard Lee II, and helped his own political rise by marrying their relative, Frances Corbin. On the Council, Jenings tended to support the authority of royal governors, and although described by Robert Quary as "a man who is thought by all parties to be an indifferent person and unconcerned on either side," he made powerful enemies by defending the widely disliked Governor Francis Nicholson. After Nicholson's replacement died in office, Jenings served for four years as acting governor. He was largely ineffective, however, and during his later years he appeared to suffer from mental illness. When he became overwhelmed by debt, one of his political opponents, Robert "King" Carter, took over Jenings's management of the Northern Neck Proprietary, using that position to mortgage Jenings's land and property. In 1726, with another governor ill, the Council recommended Jenings's removal rather than let him serve again as acting governor. He died the next year.
Wed, 18 Jan 2012 16:01:23 EST]]> /Blair_James_ca_1655-1743 Wed, 18 Jan 2012 16:00:14 EST http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Blair_James_ca_1655-1743 James Blair was an Anglican minister, a notoriously combative member of the governor's Council (1694–1695; 1696–1697; 1701–1743) who worked successfully to have three governors removed, and, with Francis Nicholson, the cofounder of the College of William and Mary in Williamsburg. Born and educated in Edinburgh, Scotland, Blair came to Virginia in 1685 as rector of Henrico Parish. He married, acquired land, and in 1689 became commissary, or the Anglican bishop's representative in America. Blair's clerical convocations in 1690, 1705, and 1719 were notoriously rancorous in part due to his tendency to sympathize more with the laity than his fellow clerics; however, the 1690 meeting proved especially significant for Blair's "Seven Propositions," which led to the founding of the College of William and Mary. As president for life, Blair secured funding and overcame powerful opposition from men like Virginia governor Sir Edmund Andros. In the meantime, Blair consolidated his own power by becoming rector of James City Parish in Williamsburg, and in 1698 he successfully fought to have Andros removed. Over the years, Blair did the same to two more governors while continually expanding his college. By the 1720s he had rebuilt the school after a fire; housed an Indian school, chapel, library, and president's house; drafted the first college statutes; hired the first full-time faculty; and transferred the original charter to the president and masters. Blair died in Williamsburg in 1743.
Wed, 18 Jan 2012 16:00:14 EST]]> /Bacon_s_Rebellion_1676-1677 Wed, 18 Jan 2012 15:59:22 EST http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Bacon_s_Rebellion_1676-1677 Bacon's Rebellion, fought from 1676 to 1677, began with a local dispute with the Doeg Indians on the Potomac River. Chased north by Virginia militiamen, who also attacked the otherwise uninvolved Susquehannocks, the Indians began raiding the Virginia frontier. The governor, Sir William Berkeley, persauded the General Assembly to adopt a plan that isolated the Susquehannocks while bringing in Indian allies on Virginia's side. Others saw in the Susquehannock War an opportunity for a general Indian war that would yield Indian slaves and lands, and would give vent to popular anti-Indian sentiment. They found a leader in Nathaniel Bacon, a recent arrival to Virginia and a member of the governor's Council. Bacon demanded a commission to fight the Indians; when none was forthcoming, he led "volunteers" against some of Virginia's closest Indian allies. This led to a civil war pitting Bacon's followers against Berkeley loyalists. The conflict was often bitter and personal—at one point, Berkeley bared his chest and dared Bacon to kill him—and involved the looting of both rebel and loyalist properties. Berkeley expelled Bacon from the Council, reinstated him, and then expelled him a second time. After the governor fled Jamestown for the Eastern Shore, he returned, only to be chased away by Bacon's army, which burned the capital. Bacon died suddenly in October 1676, but bitter fighting continued into January. The Crown dispatched troops to Virginia, which arrived shortly after the rebellion had been quelled. The causes of Bacon's Rebellion have long been disputed. Today it is generally regarded as part of a general crisis in Virginia's social, economic, and political arrangements. The argument that it should be seen as a revolt against English tyranny and a precursor to the American Revolution (1775–1783) has been discredited.
Wed, 18 Jan 2012 15:59:22 EST]]> /Bridges_Charles_bap_1672-1747 Wed, 18 Jan 2012 15:58:19 EST http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Bridges_Charles_bap_1672-1747 Charles Bridges was the first documented painter to live and work in Virginia and to produce work of good quality. Born to a gentry family in Northamptonshire, England, Bridges settled in London, where he may have trained as a painter and begun a career as a portraitist. After his wife's death, he moved to Williamsburg with his children in 1735. More than two dozen portraits of Virginians are attributable to Bridges, including members of the Blair, Bolling, Carter, Custis, Grymes, Lee, Ludwell, Moore, Page, and Randolph families. He returned to England about 1744 and died in Northamptonshire in December 1747.
Wed, 18 Jan 2012 15:58:19 EST]]> /Copeland_Joseph_d_after_April_22_1691 Wed, 18 Jan 2012 15:57:26 EST http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Copeland_Joseph_d_after_April_22_1691 Wed, 18 Jan 2012 15:57:26 EST]]> /Cities_of_Virginia Wed, 18 Jan 2012 15:54:52 EST http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Cities_of_Virginia Wed, 18 Jan 2012 15:54:52 EST]]> /Shenandoah_National_Park Wed, 18 Jan 2012 15:53:16 EST http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Shenandoah_National_Park Shenandoah National Park in the northern Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia was created in 1926 to preserve an area of natural beauty and provide recreational opportunities for the people in the surrounding region. Long populated by Siouan- and Iroquoian-speaking Indians, the area was first opened for settlement by whites early in the eighteenth century. When the National Park Service expressed an interest in a park in the Appalachian Mountains, a group of Virginia businessmen, in league with then-state senator Harry F. Byrd Sr., championed a "skyline" drive through the Blue Ridge. Byrd's fund-raising and administrative skills proved to be crucial to the project, especially in the wake of dwindling federal support during the Great Depression. The 160,000-acre park (which has since grown to almost 200,000 acres) was dedicated in 1936 and the Skyline Drive completed in 1939.
Wed, 18 Jan 2012 15:53:16 EST]]> /Jamestown_350th_Anniversary_1957 Wed, 18 Jan 2012 15:52:23 EST http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Jamestown_350th_Anniversary_1957 In 1957, Virginia hosted an eight-month-long celebration known as the "Jamestown Festival" to commemorate the 350th anniversary of the founding of the colony at Jamestown. Organized through the efforts of the Virginia 350th Anniversary Commission the festival emphasized the key role that Jamestown, as the first permanent English settlement in North America, played in American history. The event drew national and international attention to the state, and brought more than a million visitors to the Jamestown area, including then-U.S. vice president Richard Nixon and Queen Elizabeth II of England. It also suffered from the limitations of its day, namely the failure to take into account more fully the perspectives of Virginia Indians and African Americans.
Wed, 18 Jan 2012 15:52:23 EST]]> /Jackson_Giles_B_1853-1924 Wed, 18 Jan 2012 15:50:34 EST http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Jackson_Giles_B_1853-1924 Giles B. Jackson, although born enslaved, became an attorney, entrepreneur, real estate developer, newspaper publisher, and civil rights activist in the conservative mold of his mentor, Booker T. Washington. During the American Civil War (1861–1865), he served as a body servant to his master, a Confederate cavalry colonel. After the war, Jackson worked for the Stewart family in Richmond, where he learned to read and write. Subsequently, he was employed in the law offices of William H. Beveridge, who tutored Jackson in the law. In 1887, Jackson became the first African American attorney certified to argue before the Virginia Supreme Court of Appeals. The next year, he helped found a bank associated with the United Order of True Reformers, and in 1900 became an aide to Washington, who had just founded the National Negro Business League in Boston. Jackson organized and promoted the Jamestown Negro Exhibit at the Jamestown Ter-Centennial Exposition of 1907 in the face of criticism from some black intellectuals that his attempt to highlight black achievement was itself an accommodation of Jim Crow segregation. He published a newspaper designed to publicize the exhibition and, in 1908, a book detailing its history. His efforts at the end of his life on behalf of a congressional bill aimed at addressing interracial labor problems failed. Jackson died in 1924.
Wed, 18 Jan 2012 15:50:34 EST]]> /Governors_of_Virginia Wed, 18 Jan 2012 15:49:17 EST http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Governors_of_Virginia Wed, 18 Jan 2012 15:49:17 EST]]> /Games_by_Early_Virginia_Indians_Uses_of Wed, 18 Jan 2012 15:46:02 EST http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Games_by_Early_Virginia_Indians_Uses_of Early Virginia Indians played a variety of games, with some of these games reserved especially for men and others for women, girls, and boys. The men and boys had wrestling, footraces, and a game that resembled modern-day football, but the rules were never described in detail by the Jamestown colonists and later English settlers who observed them played among the Powhatan Indians. Gambling among Indian men, along with alcohol consumption, seems to have increased as a form of escapism with the arrival of the Europeans and was made worse by the availability of European trade goods. That behavior seems to have waned over time, however, and was not observed in the twentieth- or twenty-first-century Virginia Indian communities.
Wed, 18 Jan 2012 15:46:02 EST]]> /Fishing_and_Shellfishing_by_Early_Virginia_Indians Wed, 18 Jan 2012 15:45:13 EST http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Fishing_and_Shellfishing_by_Early_Virginia_Indians Virginia Indians living around the Chesapeake Bay and other people living along the bays and rivers of the Chesapeake region have long relied on harvesting fish and shellfish. Lacking long-handled tongs, Indian boys encountered by the Jamestown colonists dived for oysters in the Chesapeake, in addition to gathering clams and mussels and turning the byproducts of consumption into jewelry. Hard clamshells were crafted into cylinders and beaded, and by the seventeenth century this so-called wampum was being used as money. Indians fished using rods, line, and bone crafted into fishhooks; in shallow water, they speared fish with javelins. Spying Atlantic sturgeon asleep on the water's surface, Indians sometimes noosed the giant fish, requiring them to hold on, at risk to life and limb, as the sturgeon darted and dived in an attempt to escape. Powhatan Indians also used small fires, set in hearths aboard canoes, to throw bright lights and attract fish close enough to the surface and to the boat to be speared. Weirs and V-shaped rock dams also trapped fish. Ill-equipped to feed themselves, the English colonists generally expressed surprise and admiration at the Virginia Indians' expertise in fishing, eventually hiring Indian men to do the job for them.
Wed, 18 Jan 2012 15:45:13 EST]]> /Drummond_William_d_1677 Wed, 18 Jan 2012 14:44:51 EST http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Drummond_William_d_1677 Wed, 18 Jan 2012 14:44:51 EST]]> /Domesticated_Animals_During_the_Pre-Colonial_Era Wed, 18 Jan 2012 14:43:27 EST http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Domesticated_Animals_During_the_Pre-Colonial_Era Virginia Indians did not domesticate animals, in large part, because good candidates for domestication did not live in the Eastern Woodlands of North America. The one exception was wolves, which the Indians domesticated into dogs. Likely about knee-high and with an average weight of twenty pounds, these animals were not specialized or even especially tame, and were used only in hunting land fowl such as wild turkey. According to the Jamestown colonists, the Powhatan Indians did not eat their dogs but may have sacrificed them ritually. With no horses or oxen, Powhatans were unable to clear forests easily or practice plow agriculture. English colonists concluded that the Indians were "lazy" and "backward"; in fact, they had great physical endurance, although many suffered from arthritis while relatively young. Colonists brought horses, cows, goats, pigs, and large dogs from England, but because most of these animals required grass or other pasture vegetation for grazing, the Indians did not adopt them. Pigs, however, were turned loose into the forest and hunted by both Indians and colonists.
Wed, 18 Jan 2012 14:43:27 EST]]> /Cooper_Michael_L_1950- Wed, 18 Jan 2012 14:42:05 EST http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Cooper_Michael_L_1950- Michael L. Cooper is the author of more than a dozen nonfiction books for children and young adults on American history, including colonial life in Virginia. His works, based on primary sources, are known for their narrative style, vivid imagery, and accessibility to young readers.
Wed, 18 Jan 2012 14:42:05 EST]]> /Ceramics_Virginia_Indian Wed, 18 Jan 2012 14:38:04 EST http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Ceramics_Virginia_Indian Wed, 18 Jan 2012 14:38:04 EST]]> /The_Civilian_Conservation_Corps Wed, 18 Jan 2012 14:35:57 EST http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/The_Civilian_Conservation_Corps The Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) was the most popular of United States president Franklin Delano Roosevelt's New Deal programs, even winning the endorsement of Virginia's conservative U.S. senator Harry Flood Byrd Sr. (While Byrd was a fellow Democrat, he advocated a small federal government that did not spend ahead of means or interfere in state affairs.) Designed to alleviate the widespread unemployment caused by the Great Depression, the CCC recruited unmarried, unemployed young men between the ages of eighteen and twenty-five to spend six months in camps doing conservation work, primarily in the nation's forests. They were paid $1 a day, most of which was sent to their parents in $25 monthly allotments. The War Department ran most of the camps on a military basis, providing supervision and discipline. Although some critics saw a fascist-like militarism in such circumstances, the CCC had the positive, although unintended consequence of preparing men for service in World War II (1939–1945). At its peak, the CCC employed half-a-million men in more than 2,500 camps, and 2.5 million men enlisted during its nine-year existence.
Wed, 18 Jan 2012 14:35:57 EST]]> /Byrd_William_ca_1652-1704 Wed, 18 Jan 2012 14:33:00 EST http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Byrd_William_ca_1652-1704 William Byrd, also known as William Byrd I, was an Indian trader, explorer, member of the House of Burgesses (1679–1682), member of the governor's Council (1683–1704), and auditor- and receiver-general (1688–1704). Inheriting the bulk of his uncle's Virginia estate, Byrd spent his early years as an Indian trader and explorer. Early in 1676, his trade was cut off after Indian attacks, and he helped to persuade his partner, Nathaniel Bacon, to take unlawful command of a militia and lead it against the Indians. Bacon's Rebellion (1676–1677) resulted, but Byrd switched his loyalties to Governor Sir William Berkeley, opening the way for his political career. Elected to the House of Burgesses in 1677, Byrd commanded defense forces at the falls of the James River and operated as one of the most important Indian traders of the seventeenth century. He became an ally of Governor Thomas Culpeper, baron Culpeper of Thoresway, who appointed him to the Council in 1683. Five years later, after much lobbying, he received the combined posts of auditor- and receiver-general, putting him in charge of both collecting and maintaining all the colony's royal revenue. In the absence of Governor Francis Nicholson, he served three stints as president, or acting governor, of the colony. Byrd died in Charles City County in 1704.
Wed, 18 Jan 2012 14:33:00 EST]]> /Berkeley_Frances_Culpeper_Stephens_b_ap_1634-ca_1695 Wed, 18 Jan 2012 14:31:43 EST http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Berkeley_Frances_Culpeper_Stephens_b_ap_1634-ca_1695 Frances Culpeper Stephens Berkeley, best known as Lady Frances Berkeley, was the wife of Sir William Berkeley, the long-serving governor of the Virginia colony and whose authority was challenged so dramatically by his wife's relative Nathaniel Bacon. After arriving in Virginia with her parents about 1650, Frances Culpeper first married Captain Samuel Stephens, who became governor of the Albemarle settlements in present-day North Carolina. Upon Stephens's death, his wife inherited his large estate and soon married the Virginia governor, taking up residence at his estate, Green Spring, and vigorously supporting him during Bacon's Rebellion during the summer of 1676. Lady Berkeley pleaded her husband's case before King Charles II in 1676 but when she returned to Virginia the next year, it was with Governor Berkeley's replacement, Herbert Jeffreys. After Berkeley's death in 1677, Lady Berkeley became a leader of the so-called Green Spring faction, a powerful political group often at odds with the new governor. She married the colony's treasurer Philip Ludwell, but by the 1680s, her political influence had waned, despite Ludwell's service as deputy governor of North Carolina and South Carolina. Lady Berkeley died about 1695.
Wed, 18 Jan 2012 14:31:43 EST]]> /Andros_Sir_Edmund_1637-ca_1714 Wed, 18 Jan 2012 14:27:15 EST http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Andros_Sir_Edmund_1637-ca_1714 Sir Edmund Andros served as governor of Virginia from 1692 until 1698. Born in London, Andros enjoyed ties to the family of Charles II, served in the army, was appointed governor of New York by the future James II in 1674 and in 1686 of the Dominion of New England. His stay in New England was unpopular enough that he ended up imprisoned before returning to England. During the Glorious Revolution (1688) he supported William of Orange, who appointed him governor of Virginia with the hopes that he would aid New York during King William's War (1689–1697) and raise the salaries of the Anglican clergy. Andros's efforts were hindered by the war's effect on the tobacco trade; when prices fell, so did the salaries of clergymen, who were paid in the crop. Forced to battle with the clergymen's leader, James Blair, Andros raised salaries some but not enough. In the meantime, he subtly extended royal power in Virginia, tying the colony's laws closer to England's. Just staying in power despite a host of political enemies, Andros left office due to poor health, leaving Virginia in 1699. He served as lieutenant governor of Guernsey before dying in England sometime around 1714.
Wed, 18 Jan 2012 14:27:15 EST]]> /Hakluyt_Richard_1552-1616 Wed, 18 Jan 2012 14:05:16 EST http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Hakluyt_Richard_1552-1616 Richard Hakluyt, better known as Richard Hakluyt (the younger) or Richard Hakluyt (the minister) to distinguish him from his elder cousin of the same name, was an editor, geographer, and Anglican minister. With his cousin, he acted as one of the chief propagandists of English colonization in North America. In 1582, he published Divers Voyages Touching the Discoverie of America, and the Ilands Adjacent, probably in support of Sir Humphrey Gilbert's plan to settle North America. And when Gilbert's half brother Walter Raleigh inherited Gilbert's patent for colonization, Hakluyt wrote and presented to Queen Elizabeth a Discourse on Western Planting (1584), forcefully arguing for colonization predicated on Protestant proselytizing and economic expansion, both of which, he insisted, would help undermine Spain. Five years later he published Principall Navigations, Voiages and Discoveries of the English Nation, a remarkable collection of documents whose final section focused on English activities in the Americas. Hakluyt also played a key role in producing a book that brought England's first American colony to the attention of a wide and lasting audience: the first volume of Flemish engraver Theodor de Bry's multilingual America series, an edition of Thomas Hariot's narrative with John White's images and maps of the settlement at Roanoke Island. In later years, Hakluyt advised the East India Company; his was one of eight names on the original charter of the Virginia Company of London and he was listed as an investor in the second charter. An official for many years at Westminster Abbey, he died in 1616.
Wed, 18 Jan 2012 14:05:16 EST]]> /Parke_Daniel_1669-1710 Wed, 18 Jan 2012 14:02:43 EST http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Parke_Daniel_1669-1710 Daniel Parke was a Virginia politician who gained his first public office at age nineteen, when he was elected to the House of Burgesses for James City County (1688). By age twenty-six, he had acquired a seat on the governor's Council (1695–1697). He relocated to England in 1697. He served as an aide-de-camp to John Churchill, duke of Marlborough, during the War of the Spanish Succession (1701–1714), and carried news of Marlborough's victory at the Battle of Blenheim to Queen Anne in 1704. The queen rewarded Parke with a governorship in the Leeward Islands, a small island chain in the Caribbean, which he assumed in 1706. But Parke's accomplishments masked a darker side. Arrogant and at times violent, he became estranged from his wife and children in Virginia, had a number of extramarital relationships, and fathered offspring out of wedlock. Ultimately, Parke's sexual improprieties contributed to his political undoing. Residents of the Leeward Islands complained that he had "debauched" many of their wives and daughters, in addition to exceeding his authority as their governor; a bloody riot ended Parke's governorship, and his life, on December 7, 1710, when an angry mob pulled him from his home and murdered him.
Wed, 18 Jan 2012 14:02:43 EST]]> /Jarratt_Devereux_1733-1801 Wed, 18 Jan 2012 14:01:00 EST http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Jarratt_Devereux_1733-1801 Wed, 18 Jan 2012 14:01:00 EST]]> /Blair_John_ca_1687-1771 Wed, 18 Jan 2012 13:59:50 EST http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Blair_John_ca_1687-1771 John Blair sat on the governor's Council (1745–1770), becoming its president in 1757 and serving as acting governor on four occasions. Born in Scotland, he came to Virginia as a child, living in Williamsburg and earning a degree there at the College of William and Mary, founded by his uncle, James Blair. John Blair served as deputy auditor general from 1728 until 1771, reforming and improving the procedures by which the government collected revenue. In addition, he served as York County justice of the peace (1724–1745) and as a naval officer on the James River (1727–1728). Upon the death of his father, Archibald Blair, he joined the House of Burgesses representing Jamestown (1724–1736). In 1736, he was elected as a burgess from Williamsburg, serving until 1740. He is probably the same John Blair who also served as mayor of Williamsburg in 1751. After the governor's death and in ill health himself, Blair resigned from the Council in 1770 rather than serve as acting governor a fifth time. He died in 1771.
Wed, 18 Jan 2012 13:59:50 EST]]> /Brent_Giles_ca_1652-1679 Wed, 18 Jan 2012 13:56:47 EST http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Brent_Giles_ca_1652-1679 Wed, 18 Jan 2012 13:56:47 EST]]> /Cotton_John_d_after_October_24_1683 Wed, 18 Jan 2012 13:54:58 EST http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Cotton_John_d_after_October_24_1683 John Cotton wrote about the events of Bacon's Rebellion (1676–1677). Little is known about Cotton before 1657, when he witnessed a will in York County with his wife, Ann Cotton. He owned a plantation on Queen's Creek and often acted as an agent and attorney in the local courts. He was in Jamestown early in June 1676 when the governor arrested and released Nathaniel Bacon, after he had attacked a group of Virginia Indians. It is not known whether Cotton witnessed all the events he wrote about in his long narrative of the rebellion. His name is not attached to any surviving documents signed by Bacon's supporters nor on the official list of those who suffered property losses as a consequence of their support for the governor. Cotton last appears in the York County records in 1683, but the date and place of his death are unknown. Passed down through the Burwell family, Cotton's narrative was first published in 1814 in the Collections of the Massachusetts Historical Society.
Wed, 18 Jan 2012 13:54:58 EST]]> /Chicheley_Sir_Henry_1614_or_1615-1683 Wed, 18 Jan 2012 13:53:39 EST http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Chicheley_Sir_Henry_1614_or_1615-1683 Wed, 18 Jan 2012 13:53:39 EST]]> /Westmoreland_Slave_Plot_1687 Wed, 18 Jan 2012 13:52:05 EST http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Westmoreland_Slave_Plot_1687 The Westmoreland slave plot of 1687 involved an alleged conspiracy uncovered by Nicholas Spencer, who claimed that the participants intended to kill whites and destroy property in the county and throughout Virginia. Preceded by the Gloucester County Conspiracy (1663) and Bacon's Rebellion (1676–1677), the Westmoreland plot was the first conspiracy in British North America not involving white supporters or participants. As such, it heightened planters' fear of their slaves, already expressed in a 1680 act that sought to prohibit slaves' ability to carry weapons, meet in public, or travel without permission. After Spencer's revelation, Virginia governor Francis Howard, baron Howard of Effingham, convened what perhaps was British America's first oyer and terminer court, a criminal panel subsequently used to try slave rebels. Effingham also issued a proclamation reiterating the language of the 1680 act, something his successor felt compelled to do again, in 1690. After another attempted rebellion in Westmoreland in 1688, the General Assembly, in 1691, passed legislation allowing colonists to kill any slave who resisted, ran away, or refused to surrender when so ordered. This and other laws suggest that in the time since the Servants' Plot, Virginians began to see the danger of servile revolt as coming primarily from enslaved African Americans.
Wed, 18 Jan 2012 13:52:05 EST]]> /First_Anglo-Powhatan_War_1609-1614 Wed, 18 Jan 2012 13:48:03 EST http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/First_Anglo-Powhatan_War_1609-1614 The First Anglo-Powhatan War was fought from 1609 until 1614 and pitted the English settlers at Jamestown against an alliance of Algonquian-speaking Virginia Indians led by Powhatan (Wahunsonacock). After the English arrived in Virginia in 1607, they struggled to survive through terrible drought and cold winters. Unable to adequately provide for themselves, they pressured the Indians of Tsenacomoco for relief, which led to a series of conflicts along the James River that intensified in the autumn of 1609. Powhatan ordered something like a siege of the English fort, which lasted through the winter of 1609–1610 and precipitated the so-called Starving Time. This was the Indians' best chance to win the war, but the English survived and, after the arrival of reinforcements, viciously attacked. Using terror tactics borrowed from Queen Elizabeth's conquest of Ireland, English soldiers burned villages and towns and executed women and children. Eventually they defeated the Nansemonds and Kecoughtans at the mouth of the James and the Appamattucks near the falls. After two years, Captain Samuel Argall captured Powhatan's daughter Pocahontas in the spring of 1613 and turned his prisoner into the leverage necessary to make peace. Although not all scholars see the First Anglo-Powhatan War as a distinct conflict, at least from the Indians' perspective, many argue it to be England's first Indian war in America.
Wed, 18 Jan 2012 13:48:03 EST]]> /Braxton_Carter_1736-1797 Wed, 18 Jan 2012 13:44:52 EST http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Braxton_Carter_1736-1797 Carter Braxton was a member of the Continental Congress (1776) who supported and signed the Declaration of Independence, and of the Council of State (1786–1791; 1794–1797). Born to power—his maternal grandfather was the wealthy land and slave owner Robert "King" Carter—Braxton married it, as well, wedding first a niece of the Speaker of the House of Burgesses and then, after her death, the daughter of a member of the governor's Council. Braxton acquired large amounts of land and numbers of slaves, and he both cultivated and traded tobacco. While in the House of Burgesses (1761–1775), he served on various prestigious committees and, in May 1775, confronted Patrick Henry and a group of militiamen over their demand for reimbursement of Virginia gunpowder seized by the Crown. Braxton arranged for his father-in-law to pay for it. Although he supported independence, he published a pamphlet that challenged the democratic ideas of John Adams and, as a result, was sent home from the Continental Congress. The American Revolution (1775–1783) left Braxton virtually insolvent, but his political connections intact. He served on the Council of State, and during his second term, advised Henry, his one-time adversary and now Virginia governor. Braxton died in Richmond in 1797.
Wed, 18 Jan 2012 13:44:52 EST]]> /Berkeley_Sir_William_1605-1677 Wed, 18 Jan 2012 13:40:54 EST http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Berkeley_Sir_William_1605-1677 Sir William Berkeley was the longest-serving governor of Virginia (1641–1652, 1660–1677), a playwright, and author of Discourse and View of Virginia (1663), which argued for a more diversified colonial economy. After being educated at Oxford and after a brief study of the law, Berkeley gained access to the royal circle surrounding King Charles I, and one of his plays, The Lost Lady (1638), was performed for the king and queen. In 1641, he was named governor and captain general of Virginia, where he raised tobacco but also, at Green Spring, experimented with more diverse crops. His first stint as governor, marked by his willingness to share power and by the rise in stature of the General Assembly in Jamestown, ended with the king's execution. Berkeley's restoration coincided with King Charles II's, but his second governorship was much less successful. He failed to diversify the tobacco-based economy or to convince many settlers that the colony was adequately protecting them from Indian attacks. In 1676, Nathaniel Bacon challenged Berkeley directly, even laying siege to and then burning Jamestown. Although Bacon's Rebellion (1676–1677) was suppressed, Berkeley's authority had been undermined, and he was replaced by Herbert Jeffreys in 1677. In May of that year Berkeley sailed to England to plead his case, but before he could meet the king, he died on July 9.
Wed, 18 Jan 2012 13:40:54 EST]]> /Fauquier_Francis_bap_1703-1768 Wed, 18 Jan 2012 13:36:53 EST http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Fauquier_Francis_bap_1703-1768 Francis Fauquier served as lieutenant governor of Virginia from 1758 until his death in 1768 and during the terms of two absentee governors, John Campbell, fourth earl of Loudoun, and Sir Jeffery Amherst. Born and educated in London, Fauquier was influential in business and the arts before coming to Virginia. Beginning in the midst of the French and Indian War (1754–1763), his administration was fraught with unusual difficulties. He struggled to establish defenses against Indian raids on the frontier and to recruit and supply Virginia regiments to supplement British expeditionary forces; he worked for a compromise between colonials and English merchants over the issue of paper money; and he maintained a strong grip upon the government in the midst of the Stamp Act crisis and revelations of irregularities in the Treasurer's Office following the death of Speaker John Robinson (1705–1766). Influenced by the Enlightenment, Fauquier had a good relationship with Virginia's colonial leaders and generally promoted education. Before his death, he stipulated that the families of his slaves not be split up upon his death.
Wed, 18 Jan 2012 13:36:53 EST]]> /Keppel_William_Anne_second_earl_of_Albemarle_1702-1754 Wed, 18 Jan 2012 13:35:27 EST http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Keppel_William_Anne_second_earl_of_Albemarle_1702-1754 William Anne Keppel, second earl of Albemarle, served as governor of Virginia from 1737 until his death in 1754. His father was a confidant of William of Orange and later was made first earl of Albemarle. William Anne Keppel succeeded to his father's titles and estates in 1718. In a distinguished military career, he rose to the rank of lieutenant general and proved himself during the War of the Austrian Succession. Albemarle became ambassador to France in 1748 and a member of the Privy Council two years later. George II commissioned him governor of Virginia on November 4, 1737. Albemarle never went to America and instead employed lieutenant governors to administer the government in Williamsburg. Relations between Albemarle and his lieutenant governors were strained over their respective appointive powers, and he outmaneuvered them in making colonial appointments. These patronage policies undermined the lieutenant governors and contributed to increasing the importance of colonial assemblies and politicians. Unintentionally, Albemarle helped weaken imperial ties between the colony and England. He died in Paris on December 22, 1754.
Wed, 18 Jan 2012 13:35:27 EST]]> /Amherst_Sir_Jeffery_1717-1797 Wed, 18 Jan 2012 13:32:11 EST http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Amherst_Sir_Jeffery_1717-1797 Jeffery Amherst was a British army general and royal governor of Virginia from 1759 until 1768. Born in Kent County, England, Amherst served as commander of British forces in North America in 1758. He captured strategic forts at Ticonderoga, Niagara, Quebec, and Montreal. For these military successes, he was rewarded with the office of governor in Virginia. He never visited Virginia, leaving the colony's administration to the lieutenant governor, Francis Fauquier. After Fauquier's death, the British ministry decided that the royal governor should reside in Williamsburg and no longer entrust the government of the colony to a lieutenant governor. Amherst, refusing to live in Virginia, was dismissed from office. Amherst died in Kent County in 1797.
Wed, 18 Jan 2012 13:32:11 EST]]> /Bohun_Lawrence_d_1621 Wed, 18 Jan 2012 13:02:33 EST http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Bohun_Lawrence_d_1621 Lawrence Bohun was a member of the govenror's Council and physician general of the Virginia colony. Born probably in England, Bohun may have received his medical training at Leiden. He sailed to Virginia in 1610 as personal physician to the governor. Bohun returned to England and in 1612 was named as a shareholder in the third charter of the Virginia Company of London. While practicing medicine in London, he retained his interest in Virginia and may have been involved in an attempt to introduce silk culture there. Appointed physician general of the colony and a member of the Council in 1620, Bohun sailed for Virginia but was killed on March 19, 1621, when Spanish warships attacked his ship in the West Indies.
Wed, 18 Jan 2012 13:02:33 EST]]> /Dale_Sir_Thomas_d_1619 Wed, 18 Jan 2012 13:00:44 EST http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Dale_Sir_Thomas_d_1619 Sir Thomas Dale served as deputy governor of Virginia (1611–1616) and member of the Council of State (1612–1616), and is best known for issuing strict military and civil regulations designed to bring order and discipline to the Jamestown settlement. Fluent in English, Dutch, and probably French, Dale began his lifelong military career serving the Netherlands and by 1594 was a captain in the English army. After being knighted by James I, Dale was recommended for a three-year post in Virginia by the king's son and Dale's friend, Prince Henry. He took charge of the colony's discipline, erecting forts, and fighting Indians. In 1611, he issued military regulations that, combined with earlier civil orders, were printed with the title For The Colony in Virginea Britannia. Lawes Divine, Morall and Martiall, &c. (1612). The codes effected martial law on the colony, bringing order to a fractious and inefficient colony. In 1611, Dale founded the City of Henrico, or Henricus, in honor of Prince Henry, and in 1614, as acting governor, he assented to the marriage of Pocahontas and John Rolfe. His successful campaigns against the Indians, his discipline, and his husbandry of the colony's resources helped to make Virginia largely self-sufficient. He left the colony with Pocahontas and Rolfe in 1616 and died three years later leading an English force on the east coast of India.
Wed, 18 Jan 2012 13:00:44 EST]]> /Surrender_to_Parliament_Treaty_of_Jamestown Wed, 18 Jan 2012 12:59:10 EST http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Surrender_to_Parliament_Treaty_of_Jamestown On March 12, 1652, Virginia governor Sir William Berkeley and the governor's Council agreed to a negotiated surrender to the forces sent out by the Commonwealth government of England under the authority of the English Parliament. By capitulating, Virginia relinquished its status as a royal colony and ceased its formal support of the Stuart royal family. The surrender came after the colony endured an embargo and a blockade, both ordered by the Commonwealth government of England. The colonial government negotiated relatively favorable terms for its surrender, although Berkeley was forced to step down as governor. Virginia would return to royal colony status in 1660 with the Restoration.
Wed, 18 Jan 2012 12:59:10 EST]]> /Davies_Samuel_1723-1761 Wed, 18 Jan 2012 12:54:33 EST http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Davies_Samuel_1723-1761 Samuel Davies was an evangelical Presbyterian pastor and educator who lived and worked in Hanover County from 1748 to 1759. He played a critical role in the early years of the Great Awakening, the series of religious revivals that would eventually lead to the disestablishment of the Church of England as America's official church. Davies was a skilled orator whose sermons were filled with vivid language and punctuated with passionate calls for conversion; his rhetorical style influenced future revolutionary and Governor Patrick Henry, who as a boy accompanied his mother to Davies's church. Unlike other itinerant preachers of his day, Davies worked within the confines English law set for dissenters, and in doing so established no fewer than eight licensed meetinghouses in colonial Virginia. Davies also wrote poetry as a means of spreading God's word, and was one of the first colonial Americans to compose hymns. In 1753 he traveled to London to raise funds for the College of New Jersey (later Princeton University), and in 1759 left Virginia to become president of the college. He died in Princeton, New Jersey, on February 4, 1761, at age thirty-seven, and is buried in the presidents' plot of Princeton Cemetery.
Wed, 18 Jan 2012 12:54:33 EST]]> /Percy_George_1580-1632_or_1633 Wed, 18 Jan 2012 12:52:30 EST http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Percy_George_1580-1632_or_1633 George Percy was one of the original Jamestown settlers and the author of two important primary accounts of the colony. He served as president of the Council (1609–1610) during the Starving Time, and briefly as deputy governor (1611). Born in Sussex, England, to the eighth earl of Northumberland, Percy hailed from a family of Catholic conspirators; his father died while imprisoned in the Tower of London, his uncle was beheaded, and his older brother, the ninth earl of Northumberland, was also imprisoned. While his accounts suggest that Percy was awed by the natural beauty of Virginia, he was nevertheless overwhelmed by the many problems the first colonists faced, including hunger, disease, internal dissention, and often-difficult relations with Virginia Indians. While president of the Council, he and his fellow colonists suffered through the Starving Time, initiated in part by the Indians' siege of Jamestown at the beginning of the First Anglo-Powhatan War (1609–1614). Through support from his older brother, Percy seems to have lived in relative comfort, but he also suffered from recurring illness, finally leaving Virginia in 1612. His second account of Jamestown, A Trewe Relacyon , was written in the mid-1620s with the intention of rebutting Captain John Smith's popular version of events in the colony. Percy died in the winter of 1632–1633, leaving no will.
Wed, 18 Jan 2012 12:52:30 EST]]> /Bolling_Robert_1738-1775 Wed, 18 Jan 2012 12:51:37 EST http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Bolling_Robert_1738-1775 Robert Bolling was a poet, a member of the House of Burgesses (1761–1765), the sheriff of Buckingham County, and a member of the county court (1761–1775). Trained as a lawyer, he nearly fought a duel with William Byrd (1728–1777), a judge on the General Court, when Bolling accused the judges of bias in a murder case. Bolling was also involved in a suit brought by his youngest brother over an inheritance. The younger Bolling was represented by George Wythe, a signer of the Declaration of Independence, and Robert Bolling by Thomas Jefferson, the Declaration's author. Bolling is best known as a poet, however. He published more poetry than any other colonial American between 1759 and 1775, including the grotesque "Neanthe" (ca. 1763), which reflected elements of Italian traditions, colonial Virginia folklore, and English poetry. In addition, during the failed courtship of his distant cousin, Bolling kept a journal, "A Circumstantial Account," which provides a unique view of eighteenth-century Virginia gentry. Bolling died suddenly in 1775 while attending the Virginia Convention of July–August 1775.
Wed, 18 Jan 2012 12:51:37 EST]]> /Two_Penny_Acts_1755_1758 Wed, 18 Jan 2012 12:48:53 EST http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Two_Penny_Acts_1755_1758 The General Assembly adopted the Two Penny Acts of 1755 and 1758 as temporary relief measures in response to the failure of the Virginia colony's tobacco crops. Tobacco was Virginia's principal export, but it also backed the colony's currency, and these crop failures threatened Virginia's system of taxation for support of local and provincial government, including the parishes and clergy of the Church of England. The Two Penny Acts allowed vestries and county courts to collect taxes and pay salaries in money calculated at the usual market price for tobacco rather than in tobacco at windfall rates. Although it reduced their annual salaries, relatively few Virginia clergymen objected to the 1755 act, which expired after ten months. They were less amenable to the second act, however. Reverend Jacob Rowe spoke so vehemently against it that he was forced to apologize to the House of Burgesses. Reverend John Camm, meanwhile, took the protest to London and succeeded in having the act revoked, which set up a conflict between Lieutenant Governor Francis Fauquier and the power of the Crown. When clergymen sued for their back wages, the controversy known as the Parsons' Cause erupted and became a precedent for resistance to English authority.
Wed, 18 Jan 2012 12:48:53 EST]]> /Nickson_John_fl_1687 Wed, 18 Jan 2012 12:43:02 EST http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Nickson_John_fl_1687 Wed, 18 Jan 2012 12:43:02 EST]]> /John_Banister_1649_or_1650-1692 Wed, 18 Jan 2012 12:41:37 EST http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/John_Banister_1649_or_1650-1692 Wed, 18 Jan 2012 12:41:37 EST]]> /Methodists_in_Early_Virginia Wed, 18 Jan 2012 12:38:42 EST http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Methodists_in_Early_Virginia Methodists had only a small presence in Virginia at the beginning of the American Revolution (1775–1783), but by the time of the American Civil War (1861–1865) they had become, along with the Baptists, one of the state's dominant denominations. Organized at the University of Oxford in the 1730s by John Wesley and a group of fellow students, Methodism came to Virginia in the mid-1700s. Robert Williams arrived in the colony in 1772 and soon formed Virginia's first Methodist circuit. The Brunswick Circuit, as it was called, hosted major revivals in 1775–1776, a time in which the colony's Methodist population almost doubled. Following John Wesley's lead, many Methodists were antislavery and, during the Revolution, loyal to the British government. In 1784, the group formed its own national church, the American Methodist Episcopal Church, and a second major revival occurred in Virginia from 1785 until 1788. Thousands of converts were won over by the promise of forgiveness of sins and a style of worship that emphasized trances, dreams, visions, and bodily movement. By the time of the Second Great Awakening, the Methodists, although still hosting revivals in Virginia, had become more politically and socially mainstream. Their presence transformed Virginia religion, however, by helping to usher in an era free from state-sponsored religion.
Wed, 18 Jan 2012 12:38:42 EST]]> /Crewes_James_1622_or_1623-1677 Wed, 18 Jan 2012 11:43:31 EST http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Crewes_James_1622_or_1623-1677 James Crewes took part in Bacon's Rebellion (1676–1677). Born in England, by 1655 Crewes had settled in Virginia, where he kept a store at his Henrico County home and engaged in the fur trade. Fearful of Indian attacks, Crewes and his neighbors persuaded Nathaniel Bacon to organize local men to defend the colony. After Bacon attacked some Indians during the spring of 1676, he was rebuked by Governor Sir William Berkeley. Crewes took Bacon's side and possibly marched with a company of Bacon's men to Lower Norfolk County. He was captured and was among a group of prisoners delivered to the governor on January 19, 1677. Singled out at a court-martial as "a most notorious Actor & Assistor in the Rebellion," Crewes was one of seven men convicted of treason and rebellion against the king on January 24. He was sentenced to hang two days later.
Wed, 18 Jan 2012 11:43:31 EST]]> /Sherwood_Grace_ca_1660-1740 Wed, 18 Jan 2012 11:40:56 EST http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Sherwood_Grace_ca_1660-1740 Wed, 18 Jan 2012 11:40:56 EST]]> /Munford_Robert_d_1783 Wed, 18 Jan 2012 11:39:36 EST http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Munford_Robert_d_1783 Robert Munford is best known today as a playwright, but he was far better known in his lifetime for his civic and military roles. He served in the military before, during, and after the American Revolution (1775–1783), and was active in colony, state, and local government in Virginia. Among other duties, Munford chaired committees whose members included Patrick Henry and Thomas Jefferson. His literary output, consisting of two plays, a few poems, and a translation, were little known in his day. The Candidates and The Patriots both depict life in eighteenth-century Virginia and are believed to be the first comedies written in America, taking as their subject the politics of the day, from life in the House of Burgesses to the Revolutionary War.
Wed, 18 Jan 2012 11:39:36 EST]]> /Bland_Richard_1710-1776 Wed, 18 Jan 2012 11:37:38 EST http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Bland_Richard_1710-1776 Wed, 18 Jan 2012 11:37:38 EST]]> /Carver_William_d_1676 Wed, 18 Jan 2012 11:36:43 EST http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Carver_William_d_1676 Wed, 18 Jan 2012 11:36:43 EST]]> /Historical_Highway_Marker_Program Wed, 18 Jan 2012 11:35:30 EST http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Historical_Highway_Marker_Program Established in 1926, Virginia's Historical Highway Marker Program is one of the oldest in the nation. Originally intended to commemorate such traditional subjects as military events, colonial home sites, and prominent Virginians from early American society, topics today range from authors and musicians to architecture, transportation, and industry, and include significant people, places, and events from all segments of Virginia history and society. Early in the twenty-first century, the Virginia Department of Historic Resources, which administers the highway marker program, led a special effort to fund and create new markers honoring African Americans, Virginia Indians, and women, as well as significant places and events related to their accomplishments, in order to represent the scope of Virginia history more completely.
Wed, 18 Jan 2012 11:35:30 EST]]> /Gates_Sir_Thomas_d_1622 Wed, 18 Jan 2012 11:34:01 EST http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Gates_Sir_Thomas_d_1622 Sir Thomas Gates served as governor of Virginia in 1610 and then as lieutenant governor from 1611 until 1614. Born in the southwest of England, he served in the West Indies with Sir Francis Drake and fought with Robert Devereux, second earl of Essex, in Normandy and Cádiz, where Gates was knighted in 1596. Gates was an original investor in the Virginia Company of London and led an infantry company in the Netherlands until taking command of a massive resupply fleet to Virginia in 1609. Aboard the flagship Sea Venture, Gates and his crew were shipwrecked on Bermuda for nearly a year before finally making it to Virginia. There, Governor Gates encountered a colony on the brink of extinction, saved only by the timely arrival of a new governor, Thomas West, twelfth baron De La Warr. Advocating a strict, military-style regime, Gates instituted a set of rules that were expanded and, in 1612, published as For the Colony in Virginea Britannia. Lawes Divine, Morall and Martiall, &c. He participated in sometimes brutal attacks on the Indians during the First Anglo-Powhatan War (1609–1614), and, in England, worked as a tireless advocate for the Virginia Company. Returning to Virginia in 1611, Gates stiffened Jamestown's defenses and, with Sir Thomas Dale, cleared much of the James River of Powhatan Indians. Gates died in the Netherlands in 1622.
Wed, 18 Jan 2012 11:34:01 EST]]> /Culpeper_Thomas_second_baron_Culpeper_of_Thoresway_1635-1689 Wed, 18 Jan 2012 11:33:07 EST http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Culpeper_Thomas_second_baron_Culpeper_of_Thoresway_1635-1689 Thomas Culpeper, second baron Culpeper of Thoresway, was a governor of Virginia (1677–1683) and a proprietor of the Northern Neck. In 1649, the soon-to-be-exiled King Charles II granted Culpeper's father and six others ownership of the Northern Neck in Virginia but in the end was not able to make good on the gift. In the meantime, the younger Culpeper served the king as governor of the Isle of Wight and vice president of the Council for Foreign Plantations. In 1681, Culpeper, who already had permission from the king to collect rents from the Northern Neck, secured five-sixths ownership of the land, a claim he was forced to surrender when the Virginia colonists protested. Culpeper became the colony's governor in 1677 but was content to do so absentee until late in 1679, when Charles II forced him to sail to Virginia. There, he acted on the king's instructions by curtailing the power of the General Assembly, authorizing a series of regular taxes, including on tobacco exports, and, generally, clarifying the colony's subordinate relationship with England. Culpeper left Virginia in economic crisis and was replaced in 1683, but he continued to purchase land, and renewed his Northern Neck claim in 1688. The proprietary eventually descended to the family of his son-in-law, Thomas Fairfax, fifth baron Fairfax of Cameron. After supporting William of Orange during the Glorious Revolution (1688), Culpeper died in 1689.
Wed, 18 Jan 2012 11:33:07 EST]]> /Fry-Jefferson_Map_of_Virginia Wed, 18 Jan 2012 11:31:16 EST http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Fry-Jefferson_Map_of_Virginia The Fry-Jefferson map, first published in 1753, was the definitive map of Virginia in the eighteenth century. Created by two of the colony's most accomplished surveyors, Joshua Fry and Peter Jefferson, A Map of the Inhabited Part of Virginia containing the whole Province of Maryland, with Part of Pensilvania, New Jersey and North Carolina included their completed border survey for the western bounds of the Northern Neck and a portion of the Virginia–North Carolina dividing line. For the first time the entire Virginia river system was properly delineated, and the northeast-southwest orientation of the Appalachian Mountains was fully displayed. Published in eight known editions, or states, the map was widely copied, and served as an important resource for mapmakers like Lewis Evans and John Mitchell, whose Map of the British and French Dominions in North America (1755) was used to determine the boundaries of the United States as established in the Treaty of Paris (1783). John Henry also relied heavily on the Fry-Jefferson map as he plotted county boundaries in his New and Accurate Map of Virginia (1770), and Thomas Jefferson, Peter Jefferson's son, used his father's map to compile A Map of the country between Albemarle Sounds, and Lake Erie, which accompanied his Notes on the State of Virginia (written 1781).
Wed, 18 Jan 2012 11:31:16 EST]]> /A_briefe_and_true_report_of_the_new_found_land_of_Virginia_by_Thomas_Hariot_1588 Wed, 18 Jan 2012 11:30:02 EST http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/A_briefe_and_true_report_of_the_new_found_land_of_Virginia_by_Thomas_Hariot_1588 A briefe and true report of the new found land of Virginia, by Thomas Hariot, was the first book about North America to be produced by an Englishman who had actually visited the continent. First published in 1588 and reprinted first by Richard Hakluyt (the younger) and then by Theodor de Bry, Hariot's report documented his trip to Roanoke Island off the Outer Banks of present-day North Carolina from 1585 to 1586. With its descriptions of the region's flora and fauna, along with the Native Americans who lived there, A briefe and true report came to be one of the most important texts produced in relation to the beginnings of English settlement in the Americas. The de Bry editions included engravings of images by John White, who had accompanied Hariot and the 600 other colonists. Together, Hariot's text and White's images played a crucial role in encouraging English investors to continue their colonial endeavors in the New World, and thus led directly to the beginnings of English settlement in Virginia.
Wed, 18 Jan 2012 11:30:02 EST]]> /Spotswood_Alexander_1676-1740 Wed, 18 Jan 2012 11:28:52 EST http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Spotswood_Alexander_1676-1740 Alexander Spotswood served as lieutenant governor of Virginia from 1710 until 1722, ruling robustly in the absence of Governor George Hamilton, earl of Orkney. Born in Tangier, Morocco, Spotswood moved with his mother to England in 1683 and joined the military in 1693. After a seventeen-year military career, Spotswood was commissioned lieutenant governor of Virginia. Spotswood initially sought to improve relations with American Indians through regulated trade, to end piracy, and to increase gubernatorial power. He frequently and publicly expressed his unbridled contempt for those members of the House of Burgesses and governor's Council who disagreed with his policies and practices. But by the end of his administration, Spotswood had shifted from seeking to impose imperial will on Virginians to becoming a Virginian himself. He constructed ironworks in Spotsylvania County, making him the largest iron producer in the thirteen colonies, and designed and constructed the Bruton Parish Church building, a Williamsburg powder magazine, and the Governor's Palace. He also served as deputy postmaster general for North America after 1730. He died in 1740 in Annapolis, Maryland, while raising troops for the British campaign against the Spanish in South America.
Wed, 18 Jan 2012 11:28:52 EST]]> /Ann_fl_1706-1712 Wed, 18 Jan 2012 11:22:45 EST http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Ann_fl_1706-1712 Ann was a Pamunkey chief and a successor to the most famous Pamunkey queen, Cockacoeske, who led the Pamunkey for thirty years until her death in 1686. Cockacoeske was succeeded by an unidentified niece, perhaps the leader whose mark and the name "Mrs. Betty, the Queen," appear on a petition requesting the confirmation of a sale of Pamunkey land to English subjects that was submitted to the General Court on October 22, 1701. Sparse documentation and the Powhatan Indians' practice of changing their names on important occasions have led to confusion in identifying the principal leaders of the Pamunkey. It has been conjectured that the niece who succeeded Cockacoeske, Mrs. Betty, and Ann were the same woman and that she changed her name to Ann after Queen Anne ascended the English throne in 1702. In the few records that bear the mark of Ann, she fought for the rights of her people. For example, eighteenth-century petitions that she and the great men of the Pamunkey submitted to the colonial government request that squatters on Indian land be removed, that ownership of tribal lands be confirmed, and that the annual tribute be reduced. Ann likely died about 1723.
Wed, 18 Jan 2012 11:22:45 EST]]> /Act_of_Toleration_1689 Wed, 18 Jan 2012 11:21:44 EST http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Act_of_Toleration_1689 Wed, 18 Jan 2012 11:21:44 EST]]> /Carter_Robert_ca_1664-1732 Wed, 18 Jan 2012 11:20:43 EST http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Carter_Robert_ca_1664-1732 Robert Carter, also known as Robert "King" Carter, was a land baron, Speaker of the House of Burgesses (1696–1698), treasurer of the colony (1699–1705), and a member of the governor's Council (1700–1732). As senior member of the council, he served as president, or acting governor, from 1726 until 1727. Carter, as his nickname attests, was the richest and one of the most powerful Virginians of his day. Virginia-born, he inherited land from his uncle and his elder half-brother and spent much of the rest of his life accumulating more, most of it part of the Northern Neck Proprietary, for which he served as Virginia agent from 1702 until 1711 and from 1722 until 1732. At the time of his death, he held at least 295,000 acres of land, as well as numerous slaves. He also served as an agent for slave traders. Appointed to the Council by Governor Francis Nicholson, Carter nevertheless opposed Nicholson's, and later Lieutenant Governor Alexander Spotswood's, policies, designed to assert royal control, sometimes at the expense of the interests of the great planters. Carter died in 1721, leaving a will that filled forty pages.
Wed, 18 Jan 2012 11:20:43 EST]]> /Beverley_Robert_ca_1667-1722 Wed, 18 Jan 2012 11:15:44 EST http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Beverley_Robert_ca_1667-1722 Robert Beverley, also known as Robert Beverley Jr. or Robert Beverley the historian, was a member of the House of Burgesses (1699–1706) and clerk of that body, and served as chief clerk of the governor's Council. He is best known, however, as author of The History and Present State of Virginia, In Four Parts (1705), the first published history of a British colony by a native of North America. Probably born in Middlesex County, Beverley worked as a clerk in Jamestown, using family connections to advance politically while acquiring substantial wealth. In 1703 he sailed to England to appeal a suit he lost before the General Court, and there he penned his history, a collection of personal history, official accounts, and material borrowed from others. Beverley self-consciously identified himself as a Virginian and used the books to settle political scores. In particular, he was highly critical of Lieutenant Governor Francis Nicholson, who made sure that Beverley lost his positions as clerk of the House of Burgesses and of King and Queen County. In his later years, Beverley retired to his large estate, Beverley Park, where he experimented with wine-making. He may have accompanied Alexander Spotswood on his journey to the crest of Blue Ridge Mountains. Beverley died in 1722.
Wed, 18 Jan 2012 11:15:44 EST]]> /Sandys_Sir_Edwin_1561-1629 Wed, 18 Jan 2012 11:11:15 EST http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Sandys_Sir_Edwin_1561-1629 Sir Edwin Sandys, one of the founders of the Virginia Company, was an author and parliamentarian as well as a colonizer. The son and namesake of an Archbishop of York, Sandys served a brief diplomatic mission that led to travels through Europe which became the basis for A Relation of the State of Religion (1605), a survey of religion on the continent that focused on Catholicism. As a member of Parliament for more than three decades, Sandys was an influential and outspoken critic of King James I, as well as an important supporter of English colonization efforts in Massachusetts, Bermuda, and especially Virginia. Sandys likely helped reorganize the Virginia colony in 1609, transferring control from the king to a company-appointed governor. In 1618, he helped draw up the "Great Charter," which established the General Assembly, and in 1619 he was elected treasurer, the Virginia Company's top leadership position. He failed at diversifying Virginia's economy away from tobacco, but succeeded in a strong effort to promote emigration and bolster its population. A negotiated tobacco monopoly with England in 1622 eventually led to an investigation of the financially troubled Virginia Company and Sandys's leadership in particular. The king revoked the charter and in 1624 the company dissolved. Sandys died in Kent in 1629.
Wed, 18 Jan 2012 11:11:15 EST]]> /Cockacoeske_d_by_July_1_1686 Wed, 18 Jan 2012 11:09:59 EST http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Cockacoeske_d_by_July_1_1686 Cockacoeske, also known as Cockacoeweske, was a Pamunkey chief, and a descendant of Opechancanough, brother of the paramount chief Powhatan. After the death of her husband, Totopotomoy, chief of the Pamunkey from about 1649 until 1656, Cockacoeske became queen of the Pamunkey. In 1676, a few months before the outbreak of Bacon's Rebellion (1676–1677), the insurrection's leader, Nathaniel Bacon, and his followers attacked the Pamunkey, took captives, and killed some of Cockacoeske's people. That summer she appeared before a committee of burgesses and governor's Council members in Jamestown to discuss the number of warriors she could provide to defend the colony against frontier tribes. She gave a speech reminding the colonists of Pamunkey warriors killed while fighting alongside the colonists. In February 1677 she asked the General Assembly for the release of Pamunkey who had been taken captive and for the restoration of Pamunkey property. An astute politician, Cockacoeske signed the Treaty of Middle Plantation on May 29, 1677, reuniting under her authority several tribes that had not been under Powhatan domination since 1646. Cockacoeske ruled the Pamunkey until her death in 1686.
Wed, 18 Jan 2012 11:09:59 EST]]> /Brent_Margaret_ca_1601-1671 Wed, 18 Jan 2012 11:06:57 EST http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Brent_Margaret_ca_1601-1671 Wed, 18 Jan 2012 11:06:57 EST]]> /Argall_Samuel_bap_1580-1626 Wed, 18 Jan 2012 11:06:04 EST http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Argall_Samuel_bap_1580-1626 Samuel Argall was a longtime resident of Jamestown and the deputy governor of Virginia (1617–1619). He pioneered a faster means of traveling to Virginia by following the 30th parallel, north of the traditional Caribbean route, and he first arrived in June 1610, just after the "Starving Time" when the surviving colonists were ready to quit for Newfoundland. Although he joined in the war against the Virginia Indians, Argall also engaged in diplomacy, negotiating provisions from Iopassus (Japazaws) of the Patawomeck tribe. Argall explored the Potomac River region in the winter of 1612 and spring of 1613, and there, with Iopassus's complicity, kidnapped Pocahontas, a move that helped establish an alliance between the Patawomecks and the Virginians. In 1613 and 1614, Argall explored as far north as present-day Maine and Nova Scotia, and made hostile contact with the Dutch colony at Manhattan. He also helped negotiate peace with the Pamunkey and Chickahominy tribes. As deputy governor, Argall improved military preparedness but did not enforce martial law in the same way as Sir Thomas Dale had, making his administration a bridge between the old politics and a new more democratic era. Knighted by James I in 1622, Argall led an English fleet against the Spanish in 1625 and died at sea in 1626.
Wed, 18 Jan 2012 11:06:04 EST]]> /Aggie_Mary_fl_1728-1731 Wed, 18 Jan 2012 11:02:12 EST http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Aggie_Mary_fl_1728-1731 Mary Aggie was a slave who became a principal in a court case that changed Virginia's statute law. Although unsuccessful in suing for her freedom in 1728, she demonstrated her belief in Christianity to the satisfaction of the presiding judge, Lieutenant Governor William Gooch. In 1730 she was convicted by the York County court of oyer and terminer of stealing from her owner, which ordinarily would have doomed her to death or severe corporal punishment. In 1731, however, Gooch had her case sent to the General Court, where he hoped she could secure the benefit of clergy, a privilege in English law dating back centuries in which literate persons could escape death or the severest penalties for first convictions on most capital offenses. Before a final verdict could be rendered, on May 6, 1731, Gooch and the governor's Council pardoned Aggie on the condition that she would be sold out of the colony. The General Assembly referred to Aggie's cases in passing a law on July 1, 1732, that allowed virtually all Virginians to plead benefit of clergy except in certain cases, a privilege that continued for another sixty years.
Wed, 18 Jan 2012 11:02:12 EST]]> /Bacon_Nathaniel_bap_1620-1692 Wed, 18 Jan 2012 10:59:43 EST http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Bacon_Nathaniel_bap_1620-1692 Nathaniel Bacon, a member of the governor's Council, was often referred to as Nathaniel Bacon (the elder) in order to distinguish him from his namesake cousin, known as Nathaniel Bacon (the rebel) (1647–1676). Little is known about his early life. By 1653 Bacon had moved to Virginia. He settled in Isle of Wight County before moving to York County. In March 1656 Bacon represented York County in the House of Burgesses, and by December of that year he had become a member of the governor's Council, where he served for three years. After another term as a burgess in 1659, he had once again been named to the Council by August 1660. As the senior member of the Council by January 1682, on three separate occasions in the 1680s and early in 1690 he served as president and acting governor of the colony. Bacon had no children, and when he died on March 16, 1692, his niece Abigail Smith Burwell inherited his vast estate.
Wed, 18 Jan 2012 10:59:43 EST]]> /Drysdale_Hugh_1672_or_1673-1726 Wed, 18 Jan 2012 10:58:40 EST http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Drysdale_Hugh_1672_or_1673-1726 Hugh Drysdale was lieutenant governor of Virginia, ruling the colony in the absence of Governor George Hamilton, first earl of Orkney, from 1722 until his death in 1726. Born in Ireland and educated in Dublin and at Oxford, Drysdale served in the English army and probably saw action in Portugal early in the War of Spanish Succession (1701–1714). He retired in 1722 and likely knew Orkney, a leading military man and a member of the official household of George I. Through this connection, Drysdale was appointed lieutenant governor of Virginia and impressed the Council of State with his "Courteous disposition." He called the General Assembly in 1723 and amid fears of an insurrection proposed reforms to laws related to crimes committed by slaves. Taking the side of planters, Drysdale also approved a bill aimed at raising the price of tobacco. He failed, however, at reforming land office practices that had allowed the former governor Alexander Spotswood to accumulate large quantities of land. Shortly after calling a second assembly in 1726, Drysdale died in Williamsburg.
Wed, 18 Jan 2012 10:58:40 EST]]> /Baylor_John_III_1705-1772 Wed, 18 Jan 2012 10:57:09 EST http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Baylor_John_III_1705-1772 John Baylor III was a wealthy planter and one of the most significant importers and breeders of thoroughbred horses in pre-Revolutionary America. The son of a slave dealer described by Robert "King" Carter as "the greatest merchant in our country," Baylor was educated in England and, upon his return to Virginia, granted land along the Mattaponi River, where he built his estate, Newmarket. He represented Caroline County in the House of Burgesses (1742–1752; 1756–1765) and on the county court before falling out of political favor in a dispute over how best to oppose the Stamp Act (1765). Baylor's deepest passion was elite horseflesh and it nearly bankrupted him. By the mid-1750s, he had given up racing and was instead importing, at great expense, a dozen or more of the colony's best thoroughbreds, which attracted the mares of George Washington, among others, for breeding. In 1764, he purchased the thoroughbred Fearnought for the unprecedented price of a thousand guineas, and it became Virginia's premier breeding horse, whose genes were prized even into the twentieth century. Baylor, however, sank into debt and died at Newmarket in 1772 after a long illness.
Wed, 18 Jan 2012 10:57:09 EST]]> /Clayton_John_1695-1773 Wed, 18 Jan 2012 10:55:04 EST http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Clayton_John_1695-1773 John Clayton was a botanist and the clerk of Gloucester County (ca. 1720–1773). Born and educated in England, he first appears in colonial records in 1720 as the Gloucester County clerk, a position he held for more than fifty years. He owned a tobacco plantation and more than thirty slaves, and by 1735 was regularly providing naturalists such as Mark Catesby and John Frederick Gronovius with botanical specimens to be identified. Clayton himself identified and was the first to name the genus Agastache, a group of perennial, flowering herbs. In 1737, the Swedish botanist Carolus Linnaeus named the wildflowers of the genus Claytonia in Clayton's honor. During this same time period, Clayton compiled for Gronovius a Catalogue of Herbs, Fruits, and Trees Native to Virginia, which Gronovius translated into Latin and published as Flora Virginica, without Clayton's permission, in 1739. This and subsequent editions were the first, and until the mid-twentieth century, the only compilations of Virginia's native plants. Clayton was elected to the American Philosophical Society (1743), the Swedish Royal Academy of Science (1747), and the Virginian Society for the Promotion of Usefull Knowledge (1773), of which he was the first president. He died that same year.
Wed, 18 Jan 2012 10:55:04 EST]]> /Jamestown_Ter-Centennial_Exposition_of_1907 Wed, 18 Jan 2012 10:36:42 EST http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Jamestown_Ter-Centennial_Exposition_of_1907 The Jamestown Ter-Centennial Exposition, marking the three hundredth anniversary of the founding of Jamestown and the Virginia colony by settlers from England, was held in Norfolk, Virginia, from April 26 to November 30, 1907. The event was one in a series of large fairs and expositions held across the United States, beginning with the 1893 World's Columbian Exhibition in Chicago, which commemorated the four hundredth anniversary of Christopher Columbus's landing in America. Such events were designed as international showcases for arts and technology and were often linked to important anniversaries in order to highlight the notion of historical "progress." More than its predecessors, the Jamestown exhibition emphasized athletics and military prowess, the latter drawing some protests. Among many dignitaries who visited the exposition were U.S. president Theodore Roosevelt, the author Mark Twain, the educator Booker T. Washington, representatives from more than twenty nations abroad, and a number of foreign naval ships. Although the exhibition on African Americans was considered to be particularly successful, the event in general was a financial fiasco, plagued by poor management, overly ambitious plans, insufficient resources, and tight deadlines. The naval display, however, was impressive enough that in 1917 the exposition's site became home to Naval Air Station Hampton Roads (later Naval Station Norfolk).
Wed, 18 Jan 2012 10:36:42 EST]]> /Late_Woodland_Period_AD_900-1650 Wed, 18 Jan 2012 10:31:22 EST http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Late_Woodland_Period_AD_900-1650 Wed, 18 Jan 2012 10:31:22 EST]]> /Cotton_Ann_fl_1650s-1670s Wed, 18 Jan 2012 10:30:01 EST http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Cotton_Ann_fl_1650s-1670s Ann Cotton wrote one of the earliest personal accounts of Bacon's Rebellion (1676–1677). Nothing is known about her life until 1657, when she and her husband, John Cotton, witnessed a will in York County, where they lived. Unlike most other women in colonial Virginia, she was educated and literate. After the events of Bacon's Rebellion, she composed a highly personal narrative of the rebellion for a friend in England. The time and place of Cotton's death are unknown. The whereabouts of her original letter is not known. It was first published in the Richmond Enquirer in 1804 and in the first volume of Peter Force's Tracts and Other Papers, Relating Principally to the Origin, Settlement and Progress of the Colonies in North America in 1836, making it one of the first personal accounts of the rebellion to be published.
Wed, 18 Jan 2012 10:30:01 EST]]> /Chauco_fl_1622-1623 Wed, 18 Jan 2012 10:24:10 EST http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Chauco_fl_1622-1623 Chauco was one of several Virginia Indians who saved the lives of English colonists by warning of Opechancanough's plans to attack their settlements on March 22, 1622. He is named in no more than two known documents, leaving details about his parentage, birth, death, and tribal affiliation unknown. It is possible that he was the person referred to in 1624 as Chacrow, an Indian who a decade earlier had lived with an English colonist and knew how to use a gun. The story of a Christian Indian who, like Pocahontas, helped the Virginia colonists survive the hostilities of their own people is a popular Virginia legend.
Wed, 18 Jan 2012 10:24:10 EST]]> /_Declaration_Edward_Waterhouse_s Wed, 18 Jan 2012 10:20:49 EST http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/_Declaration_Edward_Waterhouse_s A Declaration of the state of the Colonie and Affaires in Virginia. With a Relation of the barbarous Massacre in the time of peace and League, treacherously executed upon the English Infidels, 22 March last … (1622), written by Edward Waterhouse, was the Virginia Company of London's official publication about an assault by Virginia Indians on the English plantations along the James River that took place on March 22, 1622. The company's secretary, Waterhouse collected information from eyewitnesses and Virginia's governing officials and concluded that the surprise attack, which killed more than a quarter of the colony's population, was executed with the purpose of their "utter extirpation." Waterhouse describes a time, just prior to the attack, of "firme peace and amitie," when Indians and colonists freely mingled. He notes that the Indians used this to their advantage, insinuating themselves into the homes of colonists, using the colonists' own tools to "basely and barbarously" kill them, and then disappearing into the woods. Outraged that most Indians, and in particular their leader Opechancanough, had not accepted Christianity, Waterhouse declares that the attack justified a policy whereby the English "destroy them who sought to destroy us." The attack, and the company's response to it, marks a point at which colonists, no longer dependent on the Indians economically, began in earnest to kill them and seize their land.
Wed, 18 Jan 2012 10:20:49 EST]]> /Museum_of_the_Confederacy Wed, 18 Jan 2012 10:19:39 EST http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Museum_of_the_Confederacy The Museum of the Confederacy opened in the former Confederate capital of Richmond in 1896 as the Confederate Museum. One of Richmond's oldest museums, it is the only institution in Virginia that began as a Confederate shrine and transformed itself into a modern history museum. The museum was a preservation effort on two levels: it rescued from destruction the former Confederate executive mansion and displayed in the mansion's rooms the artifacts—"relics" as they were called in the 1890s—of Confederate soldiers and civilians from the American Civil War (1861–1865) and the postwar Lost Cause era.
Wed, 18 Jan 2012 10:19:39 EST]]> /Johnston_Mary_1870-1936 Wed, 18 Jan 2012 09:58:32 EST http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Johnston_Mary_1870-1936 Mary Johnston was a novelist, historian, playwright, suffragist, and social advocate, as well as the first woman to top best-seller lists in the twentieth century. Her second and most famous novel, To Have and to Hold (1900), broke existing publishing records by selling 60,000 copies in advance and more than 135,000 copies during its first week of publication. A romantic tale of colonial Virginia, the book proved to be the biggest popular success between the publication of Uncle Tom's Cabin in 1852 and Gone With the Wind in 1936. A pair of early motion pictures dramatized the book. Two other novels, Audrey (1902) and Sir Mortimer (1904), were also commercial successes, although Johnston's popularity waned later in her career. In fact, Johnston's social activism may be of more lasting importance than her literary output. She was an early member of the Equal Suffrage League of Virginia, she depicted the horrors of lynching in her 1923 story "Nemesis," and she supported a number of other reformist causes. Her reputation as a writer, however, has been partially restored in recent years.
Wed, 18 Jan 2012 09:58:32 EST]]> /Cooke_John_Esten_1830-1886 Wed, 18 Jan 2012 09:52:39 EST http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Cooke_John_Esten_1830-1886 John Esten Cooke was a novelist, biographer, and veteran of the American Civil War (1861–1865). One of the most important literary figures of nineteenth-century Virginia, Cooke was the prolific author of historical adventures and romances in the tradition of Walter Scott and James Fenimore Cooper. His most famous and perhaps best work, The Virginia Comedians: or, Old Days in the Old Dominion (1854), follows the aristocratic cad Champ Effingham in Virginia before the American Revolution (1775–1783). In fact, Cooke saw himself as a critic of aristocracy, but that criticism was rarely particularly sharp, and after the Civil War, his work unselfconsciously glorified the Confederacy in the tradition of the Lost Cause. "Come!" Cooke wrote in Surry of Eagle's-Nest (1866). "Perhaps as you follow me, you will live in the stormy days of a cavalier epoch: breathe its fiery atmosphere, and see its mighty forms as they defile before you, in a long and noble line." A relative by marriage to Confederate general J. E. B. Stuart, Cooke served with the cavalryman during the war and wrote hagiographic biographies of generals Thomas J. "Stonewall" Jackson and Robert E. Lee.
Wed, 18 Jan 2012 09:52:39 EST]]> /Camm_John_bap_1717-1779 Wed, 18 Jan 2012 09:48:50 EST http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Camm_John_bap_1717-1779 John Camm, a Cambridge-educated Anglican priest, lived in Virginia for most of his life. He served as a professor (1749–1757; 1763–1771) and president of the College of William and Mary (1771–1777) and was elected to the governor's Council (1772). Because Virginia had no episcopate, Camm took it upon himself to protect the interests of the clergy. In 1757 he protested the governor's Council's decision to remove John Brunskill Jr. from his parish because he felt that only the church could strip a clergyman of his ordination. After the General Assembly passed the Two Penny Act of 1758, the second of two laws that stabilized the clergy's salary at a time when crop failure had inflated the price of tobacco, Camm went to England and obtained an order from the Privy Council that disallowed the acts but never fully invalidated them. He continued to fight the Two Penny Acts until the Privy Council ruled against his appeal in 1767. His political involvement extended to the College of William and Mary, where he often butted heads with the board of visitors. Despite these troubles, he was elected president of the College of William and Mary in 1772 and appointed to the governor's Council that same year. Because of his Loyalist sympathies during the American Revolution (1775–1783), he was removed as president in 1777. He held the rectorship of Yorkhampton Parish until his death in 1779.
Wed, 18 Jan 2012 09:48:50 EST]]> /Tyler_Lyon_Gardiner_1853-1935 Wed, 18 Jan 2012 09:44:24 EST http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Tyler_Lyon_Gardiner_1853-1935 Lyon Gardiner Tyler, son of U.S. president John Tyler (1841–1845), was a historian and genealogist well known for his defense of southern causes. His presidency of the College of William and Mary ranks as a watershed in the school's history. Born in Charles City County and educated at the University of Virginia, Tyler practiced law in Richmond and served as principal of a private school in Memphis, Tennessee, before procuring funds for the reopening of the Civil War–damaged College of William and Mary and assuming its leadership. During his presidency, he opened the college to women, established it as a state-funded institution, and founded the William and Mary Quarterly, now a highly respected history journal. During his lifetime, he published a number of works documenting his family's history, supporting his father's administration, and promoting new interpretations of Virginia history during the Federal period, which highlighted the importance of the Tidewater region.
Wed, 18 Jan 2012 09:44:24 EST]]> /Poll_Tax Wed, 18 Jan 2012 09:43:27 EST http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Poll_Tax Wed, 18 Jan 2012 09:43:27 EST]]> /Bacon_Nathaniel_1647-1676 Wed, 18 Jan 2012 09:28:46 EST http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Bacon_Nathaniel_1647-1676 Nathaniel Bacon was a member of the governor's Council and, in 1676, a leader of Bacon's Rebellion (1676–1677), a dramatic uprising against the governor that ended with Bacon's sudden death. Bacon was born and educated in England and moved to Virginia with his wife in 1674. A relative of both the governor, Sir William Berkeley, and his wealthy wife, Frances Culpeper Stephens Berkeley, the tall, handsome, and arrogant Bacon farmed land on the James River and, in 1675, was appointed to the Council. His rebellion erupted in a climate of political and economic uncertainty made worse by a series of Indian attacks. When the governor rebuked Bacon's attempt at reprisals, Bacon ignored him and was removed from the Council, after which he marched a militia to Jamestown. There, he was pardoned by the governor who then changed his mind, setting up a confrontation a few weeks later in which, at the House of Burgesses, Berkeley bared his chest and dared Bacon to shoot him. After issuing a declaration of grievance calling for a new assembly to be chosen under his own authority, Bacon marched his men to the lower Rappahannock River and attacked the friendly Pamunkey Indians. His subsequent siege of Jamestown provoked action from the English king, but Bacon died suddenly of dysentery on October 26, 1676. His rebellion remains one of the most controversial events in Virginia history.
Wed, 18 Jan 2012 09:28:46 EST]]> /Association_for_the_Preservation_of_Virginia_Antiquities Wed, 18 Jan 2012 09:22:56 EST http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Association_for_the_Preservation_of_Virginia_Antiquities Organized in 1889, the Association for the Preservation of Virginia Antiquities (APVA), currently known as APVA/Preservation Virginia, was the nation's first statewide historic preservation organization. Spearheaded by an elite mix of female antiquarians and their "gentlemen advisers," it became a sanctioned instrument of conservatives who strove to counter social and political changes after the American Civil War (1861–1865) by emphasizing southern history and tradition. The APVA enshrined old buildings, graveyards, and historical sites—many of which were forlorn, if not forgotten—and exhibited them as symbols of Virginia's identity. As the national preservation movement evolved, the APVA became less overtly political and now identifies itself as a professional organization dedicated to preserving and promoting the Commonwealth's heritage.
Wed, 18 Jan 2012 09:22:56 EST]]> /_Letter_to_the_Inhabitants_of_Maryland_Virginia_North_and_South_Carolina_1740 Wed, 18 Jan 2012 09:17:45 EST http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/_Letter_to_the_Inhabitants_of_Maryland_Virginia_North_and_South_Carolina_1740 "Letter to the Inhabitants of Maryland, Virginia, North and South Carolina" by the Anglican priest George Whitefield was published in 1740 by Benjamin Franklin in Three Letters from the Reverend Mr. G. Whitefield. An important leader of the First Great Awakening, Whitefield used the occasion to address slave owners in the American South, including Virginia. He chastised them for mistreating their enslaved African Americans and for not attempting to convert them to Christianity. Rather than encourage slaves to run away, Whitefield argued, Christian views would make them better slaves. In the end, Whitefield himself owned a plantation and slaves in South Carolina, but his message of salvation for slaves became typical of white southern evangelicals.
Wed, 18 Jan 2012 09:17:45 EST]]> /Jamestown_Settlement_Early Wed, 18 Jan 2012 09:14:31 EST http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Jamestown_Settlement_Early The Jamestown settlement, established in 1607, was the seat of England's first permanent colony in North America. After the failure of the Roanoke colonies, investors in the Virginia Company of London were anxious to find profit farther to the north, and in April 1607 three ships of settlers arrived at the Chesapeake Bay. The enterprise, fraught with disease, dissension, and determined Indian resistance, was a miserable failure at first. "The adventurers who ventured their capital lost it," the historian Edmund S. Morgan has written. "Most of the settlers who ventured their lives lost them. And so did most of the Indians who came near them." John Smith mapped out much of the Bay and established (sometimes violent) relations with the Powhatan Indians there. During the winter of 1609–1610, the colony nearly starved. The resupply ship Sea Venture, carrying much of Virginia's new leadership, was thought lost at sea. When it finally arrived in May 1610, fewer than a hundred colonists still survived. Discipline at Jamestown did not match the urgency of the moment until Sir Thomas Dale's arrival in 1611 and his full implementation of the strict Lawes Divine, Morall and Martiall. By year's end, Dale had founded an outside settlement at Henrico, near what became Richmond. The introduction of saleable tobacco soon after helped secure the colony's economy, and as political power expanded into the James River Valley, the influence of Jamestown waned.
Wed, 18 Jan 2012 09:14:31 EST]]> /Free_Blacks_in_Colonial_Virginia Wed, 18 Jan 2012 09:08:40 EST http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Free_Blacks_in_Colonial_Virginia Wed, 18 Jan 2012 09:08:40 EST]]> /Roanoke_Colonies_The Wed, 18 Jan 2012 09:07:17 EST http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Roanoke_Colonies_The The Roanoke Colonies were an ambitious attempt by England's Sir Walter Raleigh to establish a permanent North American settlement with the purpose of harassing Spanish shipping, mining for gold and silver, discovering a passage to the Pacific Ocean, and Christianizing the Indians. After three voyages the enterprise ended in the mysterious disappearance of the "Lost Colony." The first voyage, a reconnaissance venture led by Philip Amadas and Arthur Barlowe, landed in 1584 on the Outer Banks of present-day North Carolina and made mostly friendly contact there with the Algonquian-speaking Indians, even returning to England with two of them: Manteo and Wanchese. Boosted by Barlowe's positive report and Queen Elizabeth's grant to settle "Virginia," the second voyage, in 1585, established a fortified camp on Roanoke Island. John White and Thomas Hariot accompanied explorations of the mainland and the Chesapeake Bay, creating maps, paintings, and descriptions of native culture. But after less than a year in America and shortly after beheading the Indian chief Pemisapan (Wingina), the English abandoned the colony. They returned the next year, this time under White's leadership and intending to settle in the Chesapeake; instead, they reoccupied Roanoke. After White sailed to England to update Raleigh and obtain additional supplies, he was delayed by the Spanish Armada. By the time he returned in 1590, the colonists, including his granddaughter, Virginia Dare, had disappeared.
Wed, 18 Jan 2012 09:07:17 EST]]> /Virginia_s_First_Africans Wed, 18 Jan 2012 09:04:29 EST http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Virginia_s_First_Africans Virginia's first Africans arrived at Point Comfort, on the James River, late in August 1619. There, "20. and odd Negroes" from the Dutch ship White Lion were sold in exchange for food and some were transported to Jamestown, where they were sold again, likely into slavery. Historians have long believed these Africans to have come to Virginia from the Caribbean, but Spanish records suggest they had been captured in the Portuguese colony of Angola, in West Central Africa. They probably were Kimbundu-speaking people from the kingdom of Ndongo, and many of them may have been urban dwellers with some knowledge of Christianity. While aboard the São João Bautista bound for Mexico, they were stolen by the White Lion and an English ship, the Treasurer. Once in Virginia, they were dispersed throughout the colony. The number of Virginia's Africans increased to thirty-two by 1620, but then dropped sharply by 1624, likely because of the effects of disease and the Second Anglo-Powhatan War (1622–1632). Evidence suggests that many were baptized and took Christian names, and some, like Anthony and Mary Johnson, won their freedom and bought land. By 1628, after a shipload of about 100 Angolans was sold in Virginia, the Africans' population jumped dramatically. Meanwhile, their experience in West Central Africa cultivating tobacco contributed greatly to the crop's success in the colony.
Wed, 18 Jan 2012 09:04:29 EST]]> /Brown_Henry_Box_ca_1815 Thu, 12 Jan 2012 11:32:15 EST http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Brown_Henry_Box_ca_1815 Henry Box Brown was an abolitionist lecturer and performer. Born a slave in Louisa County, he worked in a Richmond tobacco factory and lived in a rented house. Then, in 1848, his wife, who was owned by another master and who was pregnant with their fourth child, was sold away to North Carolina, along with their children. Brown resolved to escape from slavery and enlisted the help of a free black and a white slaveowner, who conspired to ship him in a box to Philadelphia. In March 1849 the package was accepted there by a leader of the Pennsylvania Anti-Slavery Society. As a free man, Brown lectured across New England on the evils of slavery and participated in the publication of the Narrative of Henry Box Brown (1849). In 1850, a moving panorama, Henry Box Brown's Mirror of Slavery, opened in Boston. That same year, Brown, worried that he might be re-enslaved, moved to England, where he lectured, presented his panorama, and performed as a hypnotist. In 1875, he returned to the United States with his wife and daughter Annie and performed as a magician. Brown's date and place of death are unknown, but his legacy as a symbol of the Underground Railroad and enslaved African Americans' thirst for freedom is secure.
Thu, 12 Jan 2012 11:32:15 EST]]> /The_Original_Jamestown_Settlers_an_excerpt_from_The_Generall_Historie_of_Virginia_New-England_and_the_Summer_Isles_by_John_Smith_1624 Wed, 04 Jan 2012 15:28:57 EST http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/The_Original_Jamestown_Settlers_an_excerpt_from_The_Generall_Historie_of_Virginia_New-England_and_the_Summer_Isles_by_John_Smith_1624 Wed, 04 Jan 2012 15:28:57 EST]]> /Taylor_Peter_1917-1994 Wed, 04 Jan 2012 11:08:06 EST http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Taylor_Peter_1917-1994 Peter Taylor was a short-story writer and author of the Pulitzer Prize-winning novel A Summons to Memphis (1986). During a writing career that spanned six decades, much of which was spent in Charlottesville, he established himself as a master of short fiction, displaying elegance and lucidity of style in examining family life in the New South. Many early stories were published in the New Yorker, and after joining the faculty at the University of Virginia in 1967, Taylor experienced a mid-life second flowering and produced the fiction for which he is best remembered. In 1978, he was awarded the Gold Medal for the Short Story by the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters. Wider public notice followed, although it may still have been true, as he proclaimed himself, that he was "the best-known unknown writer in America."
Wed, 04 Jan 2012 11:08:06 EST]]> /Taylor_Eleanor_Ross_1920- Tue, 03 Jan 2012 16:12:51 EST http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Taylor_Eleanor_Ross_1920- Eleanor Ross Taylor was a poet, short-fiction author, and literary critic. An award-winning writer, she was born in North Carolina but has spent the last several decades working and publishing from her homes in Gainesville, Florida, and Charlottesville, Virginia. Widow of the noted short-fiction author and novelist Peter Taylor (1917–1994), Taylor is associated with a literary circle that includes figures such as Randall Jarrell, Robert Lowell, and Robert Penn Warren. She died in 2011.
Tue, 03 Jan 2012 16:12:51 EST]]> /City_Point_During_the_Civil_War Tue, 03 Jan 2012 11:47:24 EST http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/City_Point_During_the_Civil_War City Point (now Hopewell), located in central Virginia at the confluence of the James and Appomattox rivers, was the site of Union general-in-chief Ulysses S. Grant's field headquarters during the Petersburg Campaign at the end of the American Civil War (1861–1865). Founded in 1613 and incorporated as a town in 1826, City Point was a tiny, out-of-the-way place before the war, with few homes or businesses. But once the Union Army of the Potomac fought its way south to Petersburg late in the spring of 1864, City Point became a crucial Union port and supply hub. At least 100,000 Union troops and 65,000 animals were supplied out of the town, and in August 1864, a member of the Confederate Secret Service detonated a time bomb on a docked barge, hoping to disrupt work at the port. As many as fifty-eight people were killed, but the wharf was soon rebuilt and service to the front continued. City Point also was the site of the sprawling Depot Field Hospital, which served 29,000 patients. After the war, the United States government established City Point National Cemetery, and in 1983, the National Park Service reconstructed a cabin that had served as General Grant's headquarters on its original location.
Tue, 03 Jan 2012 11:47:24 EST]]> /Constitutional_Convention_Virginia_1901-1902 Tue, 03 Jan 2012 10:33:57 EST http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Constitutional_Convention_Virginia_1901-1902 The Virginia Constitutional Convention of 1901–1902 produced the Virginia Constitution of 1902 and is an important example of post-Reconstruction efforts to restore white supremacy in the American South by disenfranchising large numbers of blacks and working-class whites. Remaining in effect until July 1, 1971, the constitution did much to shape Virginia politics in the twentieth century—a politics dominated by a conservative Democratic Party that fiercely resisted the New Deal, the New Frontier, the Great Society, the civil rights movement, and, with special fervor, federally mandated public school desegregation. Yet the significance of the 1901–1902 convention extends beyond Virginia in that it demonstrates the irony of how Progressive Era reforms nationwide often resulted in state legislation that was far from progressive.
Tue, 03 Jan 2012 10:33:57 EST]]> /Jefferson_s_Mound_Archaeological_Site Thu, 15 Dec 2011 09:46:06 EST http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Jefferson_s_Mound_Archaeological_Site Thu, 15 Dec 2011 09:46:06 EST]]> /Green_Charles_C_et_al_v_County_School_Board_of_New_Kent_County_Virginia Thu, 15 Dec 2011 08:15:41 EST http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Green_Charles_C_et_al_v_County_School_Board_of_New_Kent_County_Virginia Thu, 15 Dec 2011 08:15:41 EST]]> /Confederate_Impressment_During_the_Civil_War Tue, 13 Dec 2011 12:00:17 EST http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Confederate_Impressment_During_the_Civil_War Impressment was the informal and then, beginning in March 1863, the legislated policy of the Confederate government to seize food, fuel, slaves, and other commodities to support armies in the field during the American Civil War (1861–1865). The tax-in-kind law, passed a month later, allowed the government to impress crops from farmers at a negotiated price. Combined with inflationary prices and plummeting morale following military defeats, impressment sparked vocal protests across the South. Discontent was exacerbated by what was perceived as the government's haphazard enforcement of the law, its setting of below-market prices, and its abuse of labor. As a result, citizens hoarded goods and in some cases even impersonated impressment agents in an effort to steal commodities.
Tue, 13 Dec 2011 12:00:17 EST]]> /Opechancanough_d_1646 Thu, 08 Dec 2011 16:57:59 EST http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Opechancanough_d_1646 Opechancanough was paramount chief of Tsenacomoco, a political alliance of Virginia Indians, and famously led massive assaults against the English colonists in 1622 and 1644. The younger brother (or cousin) of Powhatan, who was paramount chief at the time of the Jamestown landing in 1607, Opechancanough was possibly chief of the Youghtanund Indians and, as such, protected one of Tsenacomoco's most critical territories. Still, when another chief seduced his favorite wife, neither Opechancanough nor Powhatan had the power to return her. Although the colonist John Smith portrayed Opechancanough as immediately hostile to the English, the chief actually treated Smith well upon the Englishman's capture. As Powhatan aged, Opechancanough filled the apparent power vacuum, and while he did not immediately become paramount chief upon Powhatan's death in 1618, he appeared to wield the most power. He organized a large-scale assault on the English colonists in March 1622, starting the Second Anglo-Powhatan War (1622–1632); another assault, this time in April 1644, inaugurated the much shorter Third Anglo-Powhatan War (1644–1646), which ended with Opechancanough's capture. Neither attack deterred English expansion, and Opechancanough died in English custody. By early in the 1700s, the defeated Powhatans were distancing themselves from his memory, and popular writing about him since has tended to downplay his military and diplomatic achievements.
Thu, 08 Dec 2011 16:57:59 EST]]> /Cook_Fields_ca_1817-1897 Tue, 22 Nov 2011 15:08:24 EST http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Cook_Fields_ca_1817-1897 Tue, 22 Nov 2011 15:08:24 EST]]> /The_Dying_Time_an_excerpt_from_Observations_gathered_out_of_a_Discourse_of_the_Plantation_of_the_Southerne_Colonie_in_Virginia_by_George_Percy_1625 Mon, 14 Nov 2011 16:27:05 EST http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/The_Dying_Time_an_excerpt_from_Observations_gathered_out_of_a_Discourse_of_the_Plantation_of_the_Southerne_Colonie_in_Virginia_by_George_Percy_1625 Mon, 14 Nov 2011 16:27:05 EST]]> /_Upon_Sejanus_by_William_Strachey_1604 Mon, 14 Nov 2011 16:20:38 EST http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/_Upon_Sejanus_by_William_Strachey_1604 Mon, 14 Nov 2011 16:20:38 EST]]> /Revenge_upon_the_Indians_an_excerpt_from_A_Trewe_Relacyon_of_the_procedeings_and_ocurrentes_of_Momente_which_have_hapned_in_Virginia_by_George_Percy Mon, 14 Nov 2011 16:16:05 EST http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Revenge_upon_the_Indians_an_excerpt_from_A_Trewe_Relacyon_of_the_procedeings_and_ocurrentes_of_Momente_which_have_hapned_in_Virginia_by_George_Percy Mon, 14 Nov 2011 16:16:05 EST]]> /Ambler_James_M_1848-1881 Thu, 10 Nov 2011 14:54:57 EST http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Ambler_James_M_1848-1881 James M. Ambler was a Confederate cavalryman during the American Civil War (1861–1865) and, after the war, a United States Navy surgeon. Ambler graduated from medical school in Baltimore, Maryland, in 1870 and joined the Navy, serving on various ships and at the Norfolk Naval Hospital. In 1878, he reluctantly volunteered for service with an Arctic expedition aboard the Jeannette, a ship commanded by George W. De Long. The ship became imprisoned by ice late in 1879, and Ambler did well to keep the crew not only alive but relatively healthy. Still adrift in June 1881, the Jeannette struck ice, which crushed its wooden hull. While a few of the crew's thirty-three men survived, many froze to death, drowned, or starved, including Ambler, who died with De Long sometime around October 30, 1881.
Thu, 10 Nov 2011 14:54:57 EST]]> /_He_sould_me_to_him_for_a_towne_an_excerpt_from_Relation_of_Virginia_1609_1613 Wed, 09 Nov 2011 09:26:33 EST http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/_He_sould_me_to_him_for_a_towne_an_excerpt_from_Relation_of_Virginia_1609_1613 Wed, 09 Nov 2011 09:26:33 EST]]> /Letter_from_Thomas_Jefferson_to_Benjamin_Smith_Barton_1809 Mon, 07 Nov 2011 15:00:04 EST http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Letter_from_Thomas_Jefferson_to_Benjamin_Smith_Barton_1809 Mon, 07 Nov 2011 15:00:04 EST]]> /The_First_Anglo-Powhatan_War_Begins_an_excerpt_from_A_Trewe_Relacyon_of_the_procedeings_and_ocurrentes_of_Momente_which_have_hapned_in_Virginia_by_George_Percy Mon, 07 Nov 2011 14:23:11 EST http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/The_First_Anglo-Powhatan_War_Begins_an_excerpt_from_A_Trewe_Relacyon_of_the_procedeings_and_ocurrentes_of_Momente_which_have_hapned_in_Virginia_by_George_Percy Mon, 07 Nov 2011 14:23:11 EST]]> /Life_and_Death_on_Bermuda_an_excerpt_from_A_true_reportory_of_the_wracke_and_redemption_of_Sir_Thomas_Gates_Knight_by_William_Strachey_1625 Fri, 04 Nov 2011 09:48:03 EST http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Life_and_Death_on_Bermuda_an_excerpt_from_A_true_reportory_of_the_wracke_and_redemption_of_Sir_Thomas_Gates_Knight_by_William_Strachey_1625 Fri, 04 Nov 2011 09:48:03 EST]]> /The_Deliverance_and_the_Patience_an_excerpt_from_A_true_reportory_of_the_wracke_and_redemption_of_Sir_Thomas_Gates_Knight_by_William_Strachey_1625 Fri, 04 Nov 2011 09:44:54 EST http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/The_Deliverance_and_the_Patience_an_excerpt_from_A_true_reportory_of_the_wracke_and_redemption_of_Sir_Thomas_Gates_Knight_by_William_Strachey_1625 Fri, 04 Nov 2011 09:44:54 EST]]> /Delany_Martin_R_1812-1885 Wed, 02 Nov 2011 16:10:52 EST http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Delany_Martin_R_1812-1885 Martin R. Delany was an African American abolitionist, writer, editor, doctor, and politician. Born in Charles Town, Virginia (now West Virginia), he was the first black field officer in the United States Army, serving as a major during and after the American Civil War (1861–1865), and was among the first black nationalists. A fiercely independent thinker and wide-ranging writer, he coedited with Frederick Douglass the abolitionist newspaper North Star and later penned a manifesto calling for black emigration from the United States to Central America. He also authored Blake; or, The Huts of America, a serial publication about a fugitive slave who, in the tradition of Nat Turner, organizes insurrection. In his later life, Delany was a judge and an unsuccessful candidate for lieutenant governor of South Carolina. Despite all this, he remains relatively unknown. "His was a magnificent life," W. E. B. DuBois wrote in 1936, "and yet, how many of us have heard of him?" Historians have tended to pigeonhole Delany's contributions, emphasizing his more radical views (which were celebrated in the 1970s), while giving less attention to the extraordinary complexity of his career.
Wed, 02 Nov 2011 16:10:52 EST]]> /White_John_d_1593 Wed, 02 Nov 2011 14:01:32 EST http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/White_John_d_1593 John White was an English artist who in 1585 accompanied a failed colonizing expedition to Roanoke Island in present-day North Carolina and who, in 1587, served as governor of a second failed expedition, which came to be known as the Lost Colony. As an artist attached to the first group of colonists, White produced watercolor portraits of Virginia Indians and scenes of their lives and activities. He rendered the local flora and fauna and, using the English polymath Thomas Hariot as a surveyor, created detailed maps of the North American coastline. He also joined Hariot and others on an exploration of the Chesapeake Bay and made contact there with the Chesapeake Indians. Many of White's paintings were published, sometimes in altered form, by Theodor de Bry as etchings in Hariot's illustrated edition of A Briefe and True Report of the New Found Land of Virginia (1590). They are the most accurate visual record of the New World by an artist of his generation. After the first colony failed, White led a second, which was intended for the Chesapeake but which settled again at Roanoke. The colonists included White's daughter, Elinor White Dare, who gave birth to Virginia Dare, the first English child born in America. A poor and unpopular leader, White agreed to be a messenger back to England to inform the colony's backers of the location change and a need for new supplies. Waylaid by the Spanish Armada, he did not return until 1590; the colonists had disappeared. White died three years later.
Wed, 02 Nov 2011 14:01:32 EST]]> /Law_and_Justice_in_Early_Virginia_Indian_Society Wed, 02 Nov 2011 10:16:01 EST http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Law_and_Justice_in_Early_Virginia_Indian_Society Law and justice in early Virginia Indian society were not well understood by English observers, whose main concern was replacing the native system with their own. William Strachey wrote that the Indians ruled not by "posetive lawes," but by custom, and Henry Spelman, who lived among the Patawomeck Indians and spoke their language, wrote that he thought that the "Infidels wear [were] lawless" until he witnessed five of them brutally executed by being beaten and thrown into a fire. In fact, most of what is known about the laws and punishments among the Powhatan Indians can be reduced to a series of often graphically violent anecdotes in which men and women are killed for the crimes of infanticide, stealing, carrying on unsanctioned affairs, and even interrupting a weroance, or chief, while he is speaking. Powhatan custom demanded that revenge be exacted for wrongs against the person and against the chiefdom; the chiefs and paramount chief were powerless to intervene. This led to nearly constant, small-scale warfare, but it also caused problems with the English. Whenever a slight was made against an Indian, revenge was likely and was sometimes directed at the entire group rather than just at the individual. In the end, the English copied this practice, passing a law in 1641 giving colonists the power to hold otherwise innocent Indians hostage when the guilty party eluded capture.
Wed, 02 Nov 2011 10:16:01 EST]]> /Justice_and_Execution_an_excerpt_from_Relation_of_Virginia_1609_1613 Wed, 02 Nov 2011 09:43:47 EST http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Justice_and_Execution_an_excerpt_from_Relation_of_Virginia_1609_1613 Wed, 02 Nov 2011 09:43:47 EST]]> /Quitting_Virginia_an_excerpt_from_A_true_reportory_of_the_wracke_and_redemption_of_Sir_Thomas_Gates_Knight_by_William_Strachey_1625 Wed, 02 Nov 2011 09:38:28 EST http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Quitting_Virginia_an_excerpt_from_A_true_reportory_of_the_wracke_and_redemption_of_Sir_Thomas_Gates_Knight_by_William_Strachey_1625 Wed, 02 Nov 2011 09:38:28 EST]]> /_The_dangerous_and_dreaded_Iland_an_excerpt_from_A_true_reportory_of_the_wracke_and_redemption_of_Sir_Thomas_Gates_Knight_by_William_Strachey_1625 Wed, 02 Nov 2011 09:31:52 EST http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/_The_dangerous_and_dreaded_Iland_an_excerpt_from_A_true_reportory_of_the_wracke_and_redemption_of_Sir_Thomas_Gates_Knight_by_William_Strachey_1625 Wed, 02 Nov 2011 09:31:52 EST]]> /_Of_such_a_dish_as_powdered_wife_an_excerpt_from_The_Generall_Historie_of_Virginia_New-England_and_the_Summer_Isles_by_John_Smith_1624 Wed, 02 Nov 2011 09:26:39 EST http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/_Of_such_a_dish_as_powdered_wife_an_excerpt_from_The_Generall_Historie_of_Virginia_New-England_and_the_Summer_Isles_by_John_Smith_1624 Wed, 02 Nov 2011 09:26:39 EST]]> /_Misery_and_misgovernment_an_excerpt_from_A_true_reportory_of_the_wracke_and_redemption_of_Sir_Thomas_Gates_Knight_by_William_Strachey_1625 Wed, 02 Nov 2011 09:22:37 EST http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/_Misery_and_misgovernment_an_excerpt_from_A_true_reportory_of_the_wracke_and_redemption_of_Sir_Thomas_Gates_Knight_by_William_Strachey_1625 Wed, 02 Nov 2011 09:22:37 EST]]> /Religion_in_Early_Virginia_Indian_Society Fri, 28 Oct 2011 15:54:11 EST http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Religion_in_Early_Virginia_Indian_Society Knowledge of religion in early Virginia Indian society largely comes from English colonists like Captain John Smith, who stated that all Indians had "religion, Deare, and Bow and Arrowes." Because Smith and his countrymen almost exclusively dealt with the Powhatans of Tsenacomoco—an alliance of twenty-eight to thirty-two petty tribes and chiefdoms centered around the James, Mattaponi, and Pamunkey rivers—the most is known about them. The Powhatans worshipped a number of spirits, the most important of whom was Okee. Men cut their hair in imitation of Okee's. To assuage his anger in times of crisis or court his pleasure before the hunt, they made sacrifices. Other spirits included the benevolent Ahone, the Great Hare creator god, an unnamed female divinity, and the Sun god. In charge of managing relations with these various spirits were the kwiocosuk, or shamans, who lived apart from common Powhatans and wielded the society's ultimate authority. Quiocosins , or holy temples, housed the shamans and hosted various rituals. When weroances, or chiefs, died, they were reduced to bundles of bones and, for several years, stored in the temples. The Powhatans also had a variety of rituals associated with eating, hunting, male initiation, and the killing of prisoners of war. Smith described what appeared to be a "conjuration" and, on another occasion, a three-day dance that may have been a yearly harvest festival.
Fri, 28 Oct 2011 15:54:11 EST]]> /Huskanaw Fri, 28 Oct 2011 15:50:14 EST http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Huskanaw The huskanaw was a rite of passage by which boys become men. While such rituals were common among American Indian societies, the huskanaw was conducted by, among others, the Algonquian-speaking Powhatan Indians of Tsenacomoco, an alliance of twenty-eight to thirty-two petty tribes and chiefdoms centered around the James, Mattaponi, and Pamunkey rivers. Aligning it with various other religious rituals, they referred to the huskanaw as a sacrifice and told the Jamestown colonists that if they did not perform it their powerful god Okee would be angered and disrupt their hunting or cause natural disasters. Although the English colonists at first took this ceremony to be a literal sacrifice of boys, they quickly learned that the term was metaphorical. The word huskanaw refers to the youth of the initiates and to the fact that they were to be transformed into men.
Fri, 28 Oct 2011 15:50:14 EST]]> /Letter_from_Juan_Rogel_to_Francis_Borgia_1572 Wed, 26 Oct 2011 09:50:24 EST http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Letter_from_Juan_Rogel_to_Francis_Borgia_1572 Wed, 26 Oct 2011 09:50:24 EST]]> /John_White_Returns_to_Roanoke_an_excerpt_from_The_fift_voyage_of_Master_John_White_into_the_West_Indies_and_parts_of_America_called_Virginia_in_the_yeere_1590_1600 Wed, 26 Oct 2011 09:32:31 EST http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/John_White_Returns_to_Roanoke_an_excerpt_from_The_fift_voyage_of_Master_John_White_into_the_West_Indies_and_parts_of_America_called_Virginia_in_the_yeere_1590_1600 Wed, 26 Oct 2011 09:32:31 EST]]> /Van_Lew_Elizabeth_L_1818-1900 Wed, 12 Oct 2011 13:34:14 EST http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Van_Lew_Elizabeth_L_1818-1900 Elizabeth Van Lew was a Richmond Unionist and abolitionist who spied for the United States government during the American Civil War (1861–1865). Leading a network of a dozen or so white and African American women and men, she relayed information on Confederate operations to Union generals and assisted in the care and sometimes escape of Union prisoners of war being held in the Confederate capital. Van Lew, who worked with invisible ink and coded messages, has been called "the most skilled, innovative, and successful" of all Civil War–era spies. While some historians have claimed that she was open about her Unionist politics, deflecting suspicion by behaving as if she were mentally ill, others have argued that these "Crazy Bet" stories are a myth. After the war, Van Lew served as postmaster of Richmond during the administration of U.S. president Ulysses S. Grant, one of the generals to whom she had once fed information.
Wed, 12 Oct 2011 13:34:14 EST]]> /Beverley_Robert_bap_1635-1687 Thu, 06 Oct 2011 15:56:27 EST http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Beverley_Robert_bap_1635-1687 Robert Beverley, also known as Major Robert Beverley or as Robert Beverley the immigrant, served as clerk of the House of Burgesses from 1677 until his death in 1687 despite attempts by the Privy Council and various royal governors to displace him. Born in England, Beverley moved to Virginia after the death of his first wife. There, he served as surveyor of Middlesex County, justice of the peace, a church vestryman, a major in the militia, and, in 1676, acting attorney general. He became wealthy exporting tobacco and importing other goods, and during Bacon's Rebellion (1676), stoutly defended his friend the royal governor Sir William Berkeley. In 1677 he was elected clerk of the House but ran afoul of Berkeley's successor, to whom he refused to turn over the legislative journals. Beverley was arrested in 1682 and confined to jail for two years, charged with conspiring to destroy tobacco in order to inflate the crop's market price. After his release, he was elected to the House of Burgesses and reelected the House's clerk. He was accused to altering a bill after it was passed but he died before a trial could be held.
Thu, 06 Oct 2011 15:56:27 EST]]> /Great_Awakening_in_Virginia_The Thu, 06 Oct 2011 15:09:46 EST http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Great_Awakening_in_Virginia_The The Great Awakening was the most significant cultural upheaval in colonial America. The term refers to a series of religious revivals that began early in the eighteenth century and led, eventually, to the disestablishment of the Church of England as the official church during the American Revolution (1775–1783). Triggered by the preaching of the Anglican itinerant George Whitefield, the Great Awakening began in New England and the Middle Colonies, where thousands converted to an evangelical faith centered on the experience of the "new birth" of salvation. It also featured intense, emotional scenes of penitential sinners and new converts being filled, as they saw it, with the Holy Spirit, with associated outcries, visions, dreams, and spirit journeys. The Great Awakening's effects in Virginia developed slowly, beginning early in the 1740s. By the 1760s, evangelical Presbyterians and Baptists were making major inroads among Virginians, and challenging the established church in the colony. Perhaps the most notable historical result of the Great Awakening in Virginia was the end of the state's establishment of religion, which was ultimately accomplished through the Act for Establishing Religious Freedom (1786). The cause of religious freedom was championed politically by Thomas Jefferson and James Madison, but it depended on the popular support of legions of evangelicals, especially Baptists.
Thu, 06 Oct 2011 15:09:46 EST]]> /Ashuaquid_fl_1607 Tue, 04 Oct 2011 11:19:32 EST http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Ashuaquid_fl_1607 Ashuaquid, an Arrohateck chief, was the head of a tribe consisting of about sixty warriors who resided in a town on the north bank of the James River about thirteen miles below the fall line, well within the territory that was part of Powhatan's original inheritance. Powhatan frequently placed a close relative, such as a son, brother, or sister, in such leadership positions, but evidence of Ashuaquid's relationship to Powhatan is lacking. In May 1607, Ashuaquid's tribe twice welcomed Christopher Newport and a small group of men who were exploring the upper reaches of the James River. Later, after learning that the colonists' fort at Jamestown had been attacked by Indians hostile to the settlers, Ashuaquid advised the colonists on who their enemies were and how to better defend against them. The Arrohateck tribe is last mentioned in William Strachey's record of his visit to Virginia in 1609. The Arrohateck site had been abandoned by 1611 and the fate of Ashuaquid is unknown.
Tue, 04 Oct 2011 11:19:32 EST]]> /Surrender_at_Appomattox Tue, 20 Sep 2011 11:14:52 EST http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Surrender_at_Appomattox The surrender at Appomattox Court House occurred in April 1865 when Confederate general Robert E. Lee submitted to Union general-in-chief Ulysses S. Grant, all but ending the American Civil War (1861–1865). After the fall of Richmond on April 2–3, Lee and his Army of Northern Virginia had retreated west to the village of Appomattox Court House when, on April 9, the well-positioned Army of the James forced them to raise a white flag. Within hours an elated Grant hosted his adversary in the drawing room of a house owned by Wilmer McLean, who four years earlier had fled his home near the fighting at the First Battle of Manassas for the comparative quiet of the Appomattox countryside. Now Lee, in a spotless dress uniform, accepted generous terms from the more informally dressed Grant, who paroled the Confederate soldiers and allowed the officers to keep their sidearms and horses. Lee subsequently issued his famous farewell orders, praising his men's courage and blaming their defeat on superior Union resources. These documents, combined with stories by Confederate general John B. Gordon and Union general Joshua Chamberlain of generous Union tributes at the formal surrender on April 12, formed a narrative of reconciliation that remained influential into the twenty-first century. Generally left out of that narrative, however, have been African Americans, who, after emancipation, struggled against white supremacy in the South.
Tue, 20 Sep 2011 11:14:52 EST]]> /Spencer_Anne_1882-1975 Wed, 07 Sep 2011 16:42:52 EST http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Spencer_Anne_1882-1975 Anne Spencer was a poet, a civil rights activist, a teacher, a librarian, and a gardener. While fewer than thirty of her poems were published in her lifetime, she was an important figure of the black literary movement of the 1920s—the Harlem Renaissance—and only the second African American poet to be included in the Norton Anthology of Modern Poetry (1973). Noted for iambic verse preoccupied with biblical and mythological themes, Spencer found fans in such Harlem heavyweights as James Weldon Johnson, who commented on her "economy of phrase and compression of thought." In addition to her writing, Spencer helped to found the Lynchburg chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). She was also an avid gardener and hosted a salon at her Lynchburg garden, which attracted prominent figures of the Harlem Renaissance. Her former residence is now a museum that is open to the public.
Wed, 07 Sep 2011 16:42:52 EST]]> /Daniel_Wilbur_Clarence_Dan_1914-1988 Tue, 30 Aug 2011 15:27:00 EST http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Daniel_Wilbur_Clarence_Dan_1914-1988 Tue, 30 Aug 2011 15:27:00 EST]]> /Hygiene_During_the_Pre-Colonial_Era_Personal Fri, 26 Aug 2011 13:37:42 EST http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Hygiene_During_the_Pre-Colonial_Era_Personal Fri, 26 Aug 2011 13:37:42 EST]]> /Burwell_Lewis_1711_or_1712-1756_gt Thu, 25 Aug 2011 11:46:43 EST http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Burwell_Lewis_1711_or_1712-1756_gt Lewis Burwell, often referred to as President Lewis Burwell to distinguish him from others of the same name, was a member of the governor's Council (1743–1756) and served as acting governor of Virginia for a year beginning in November 1750. Born in Gloucester County to a prominent family that included Robert "King" Carter, Burwell was educated in England before returning to Virginia and serving in the House of Burgesses (1742). The next year, George II appointed him to the Council, and in 1750, he became the body's senior member. With the governor and lieutenant governor away from Virginia at the time, this made him president, or acting governor. During his year as president, the General Assembly never met, but Burwell did commission the Fry-Jefferson map of Virginia. Ill health limited his role in later years, and he died in 1756.
Thu, 25 Aug 2011 11:46:43 EST]]> /Tucker_St_George_1752_x2013_1827 Thu, 18 Aug 2011 18:21:30 EST http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Tucker_St_George_1752_x2013_1827 St. George Tucker was one of the most influential jurists and legal scholars in the United States late in the 1700s and early in the 1800s. Tucker served as judge on three different courts in Virginia: the General Court (1788–1804), the Virginia Court of Appeals (1804–1811), and the federal district court for the eastern district of Virginia (1813–1825). In addition to his work as a jurist, Tucker was an important legal scholar and educator. From 1788 until 1804, between court terms, Tucker taught law at the College of William and Mary . Perhaps Tucker's most significant contribution was his 1803 publication of a five-volume edition Commentaries on the Laws of England by William Blackstone. Tucker's "American Blackstone," the first major treatise on American law, helped shape a generation of lawyers and judges.
Thu, 18 Aug 2011 18:21:30 EST]]> /Edmunds_Abe_Craddock_1899-1959 Wed, 10 Aug 2011 16:43:21 EST http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Edmunds_Abe_Craddock_1899-1959 Wed, 10 Aug 2011 16:43:21 EST]]> /Colston_Raleigh_Edward_1825-1896 Wed, 03 Aug 2011 10:57:36 EST http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Colston_Raleigh_Edward_1825-1896 Wed, 03 Aug 2011 10:57:36 EST]]> /Chilton_Samuel_1805-1867 Tue, 02 Aug 2011 11:18:11 EST http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Chilton_Samuel_1805-1867 Tue, 02 Aug 2011 11:18:11 EST]]> /Christian_William_S_1830-1910 Tue, 02 Aug 2011 10:47:55 EST http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Christian_William_S_1830-1910 Tue, 02 Aug 2011 10:47:55 EST]]> /Craford_William_d_by_April_15_1762 Mon, 01 Aug 2011 16:46:33 EST http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Craford_William_d_by_April_15_1762 Mon, 01 Aug 2011 16:46:33 EST]]> /Virginia_Convention_of_1864 Mon, 01 Aug 2011 13:26:54 EST http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Virginia_Convention_of_1864 Mon, 01 Aug 2011 13:26:54 EST]]> /Caruthers_William_Alexander_1802-1846 Mon, 01 Aug 2011 13:07:47 EST http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Caruthers_William_Alexander_1802-1846 Mon, 01 Aug 2011 13:07:47 EST]]> /Hunter_William_d_1761 Tue, 19 Jul 2011 12:52:47 EST http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Hunter_William_d_1761 William Hunter was official printer to the Virginia colony (1750–1761), publisher of the Virginia Gazette (1751–1761), deputy postmaster general for the British North American colonies (1753–1761), and justice of the peace on the York County Court (1759–1761). Born in Yorktown, Hunter apprenticed to Virginia's first public printer, William Parks, and upon the latter's death in 1750, took over the position at a higher salary. His tenure was arguably the pinnacle of the colonial-era printing monopoly, with Hunter providing faithful service to the colonial administration. In 1753, he and his friend Benjamin Franklin won appointment as deputy postmasters of the colonies, with Hunter responsible for areas south of Annapolis, Maryland. The next year, Hunter became ill while inspecting postal routes with Franklin, and remained ill for several years, spending some of that time in England. In his absence, the printing office was run by John Stretch, whose loyalties seemed to lean away from the lieutenant governor and toward the General Assembly, creating royal pressure for Hunter to return to Virginia. Hunter's business flourished, but he died suddenly in 1761. His life has been seen as an exemplar of the role of familial connections in Virginia, in that his brother's merchant connections and associates gained through his sisters' marriages proved essential to his success and his legacy.
Tue, 19 Jul 2011 12:52:47 EST]]> /Plecker_Walter_Ashby_1861-1947 Wed, 29 Jun 2011 12:07:25 EST http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Plecker_Walter_Ashby_1861-1947 Walter Ashby Plecker was a physician and the first Virginia state registrar of vital statistics, a position he served in from 1912 to 1946. He was a staunch promoter of eugenics, a discredited movement aimed at scientifically proving white racial superiority and thereby justifying the marginalizing of non-white people. Employing Virginia's Racial Integrity Act of 1924, Plecker effectively separated Virginia citizens into two simplified racial categories: white and colored. The law, which remained in effect until 1967, when it was overturned by the United States Supreme Court in the case of Loving v. Virginia , required that a racial description of every person be recorded at birth, while criminalizing marriages between whites and non-whites. Plecker's policies used deceptive scientific evidence to deem blacks a lesser class of human beings, but they also targeted poor whites and anyone he or other eugenicists considered "feebleminded." Asserting that Virginia Indians were, in fact, "mixed-blooded negroes," Plecker also pressured state agencies into reclassifying Indians as "colored." The policy's legacy was effectively to erase "Indian" as an identity and has made it difficult for Virginia Indians to gain state and federal recognition.
Wed, 29 Jun 2011 12:07:25 EST]]> /Massive_Resistance Wed, 29 Jun 2011 11:09:35 EST http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Massive_Resistance Massive Resistance was a policy adopted in 1956 by Virginia's state government to block the desegregation of public schools mandated by the U.S. Supreme Court in its 1954 ruling in the case of Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas. Advocated by U.S. senator Harry F. Byrd Sr., a conservative Democrat and former governor who coined the term, Massive Resistance reflected the racial views and fears of Byrd's power base in Southside Virginia as well as the senator's reflexive disdain for federal government intrusion into state affairs. When schools were shut down in Front Royal in Warren County , Charlottesville , and Norfolk to prevent desegregation, the courts stepped in and overturned the policy. In the end, Massive Resistance added more bitterness to race relations already strained by the resentments engendered by the caste system and delayed large-scale desegregation of Virginia's public schools for more than a decade. Meanwhile, Virginia's defiance served as an example for the states of the Lower South, and the legal vestiges of Massive Resistance lasted until early in the 1970s.
Wed, 29 Jun 2011 11:09:35 EST]]> /New_Market_Battle_of Wed, 29 Jun 2011 10:45:35 EST http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/New_Market_Battle_of The Battle of New Market, fought on May 15, 1864, was part of Union general Franz Sigel's attempt to sweep the Shenandoah Valley of Confederate troops in conjunction with General Ulysses S. Grant's Overland Campaign during the American Civil War (1861–1865). While Grant battled Confederate general Robert E. Lee at the Wilderness and then at Spotsylvania Court House, he sent Sigel into the Valley to prevent the Confederates there from reinforcing Lee. Confederate general John C. Breckinridge quickly cobbled together two brigades of infantry, some cavalry, even a couple of hundred cadets from the Virginia Military Institute in Lexington, and confronted Union forces at the village of New Market. There, he attacked Sigel and was beaten back, but Sigel's counteradvance wavered. At about three o'clock in the afternoon, in a driving rainstorm, Breckinridge called for the cadets—"May God forgive me," he reportedly said—and ordered them and the rest of his men to charge. Sigel was forced to retreat across the Shenandoah River, burning the bridge behind him. Forty-seven VMI cadets were wounded and ten killed in the action, but Breckinridge's forces were now free to reinforce Lee north of Richmond.
Wed, 29 Jun 2011 10:45:35 EST]]> /Weather_During_the_Civil_War Tue, 28 Jun 2011 17:23:55 EST http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Weather_During_the_Civil_War Weather was influential in shaping events during the American Civil War (1861–1865). For instance, concerns about weather helped determine overall strategy as well as tactics on the battlefield. Generals looked to the skies to decide when to begin spring campaigns, cursed at flooded rivers for impeding progress, and pushed their men to endure the extremes of the Southern climate. Weather also colored the war experience for soldiers and civilians. Becoming a veteran soldier meant being seasoned by the weather as much as being transformed by combat. Meanwhile, men and women in Virginia and across the nation religiously recorded meteorological events in diaries, letters, and newspapers, knowing how decisive this force of nature, so completely beyond human control, could be on wartime events.
Tue, 28 Jun 2011 17:23:55 EST]]> /Billy_fl_1770s-1780s Thu, 23 Jun 2011 16:58:23 EST http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Billy_fl_1770s-1780s Billy was an enslaved African American who became a principal in a court case during the American Revolution (1775–1783). In 1781, the Prince William County Court indicted him for waging war against the state from a British armed ship. Despite his testimony that he had been forced to board the vessel against his will and had never taken up arms on behalf of the British, the court convicted Billy of treason and sentenced him to be hanged. Two dissenting judges argued to Governor Thomas Jefferson that a slave, being a noncitizen, could not commit treason. Billy received a gubernatorial reprieve, and the General Assembly pardoned him on June 14, 1781. What happened to him after that is not known. Billy made his mark on history because his trial forced white leaders to confront the logic of slavery. Excluded from the protections conferred by citizenship, he was ultimately shielded from execution because Virginia's law of treason could not logically apply to him.
Thu, 23 Jun 2011 16:58:23 EST]]> /Cheesman_Edmund_d_1677 Thu, 23 Jun 2011 16:14:08 EST http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Cheesman_Edmund_d_1677 Thu, 23 Jun 2011 16:14:08 EST]]> /George_III_1738-1820 Fri, 10 Jun 2011 15:32:52 EST http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/George_III_1738-1820 George III was king of Great Britain and Ireland from 1760 to 1811. The third monarch from the House of Hanover, George was just twenty-two years old when he succeeded his grandfather, George II, as king in 1760. His reign was shaped by the Seven Years' War (1756–1763), the Irish Rebellion (1798), and the French Revolution (1783–1815), but he is best known as the "tyrant," called "unfit to be the ruler of a free people" in the Declaration of Independence (1776), who lost the American Revolution (1775–1783). In reality, George III supported his cabinet's authority and, with a few exceptions, influenced but did not dictate policy; once the fighting began, he counseled his ministers to be consistent in their opposition to the American rebellion until the defeat at Yorktown. American patriots, hostile British contemporaries, and nineteenth-century historians all painted George III as personally responsible for the conflict and its loss, but historical scholarship since the 1930s has overturned this anachronistic and overly personalized reading of the king. Despite the American loss, George III was popular among his subjects in the decades following the war, and the fiftieth year of his reign was celebrated countrywide in 1809–1810. In 1810, an attack of an illness, probably porphyria, which had plagued him for nearly two decades, robbed him of his sight, hearing, and sanity. On February 5, 1811, his son George, Prince of Wales, was appointed regent and ruled in his place until January 29, 1820, when George III died at Windsor Castle.
Fri, 10 Jun 2011 15:32:52 EST]]> /Manners_and_Politeness_in_Early_Virginia_Indian_Society Fri, 10 Jun 2011 10:03:04 EST http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Manners_and_Politeness_in_Early_Virginia_Indian_Society Fri, 10 Jun 2011 10:03:04 EST]]> /Davis_Burke_1913-2006 Thu, 09 Jun 2011 10:26:43 EST http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Davis_Burke_1913-2006 Burke Davis was a journalist, novelist, and nonfiction writer, best known for popular war histories. A native of North Carolina, he lived for about thirty years in Virginia, and many of his histories and biographies tackled Virginia subjects, such as Thomas J. "Stonewall" Jackson, George Washington, and Lewis B. "Chesty" Puller. He was awarded the Mayflower Cup in 1959 for his history To Appomattox: Nine April Days, 1865, and the North Carolina Award for Literature in 1973.
Thu, 09 Jun 2011 10:26:43 EST]]> /Maury_Dabney_Herndon_1822-1900 Thu, 09 Jun 2011 10:20:50 EST http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Maury_Dabney_Herndon_1822-1900 Dabney Herndon Maury was a Confederate general during the American Civil War (1861–1865). The nephew of renowned scientist Commodore Matthew Fontaine Maury, he fought in the Western Theater, rising quickly in the ranks after the battles of Pea Ridge, Iuka, and Corinth in 1862. As commander of the District of the Gulf in the war's last two years, he became known for his tenacious defense of the port of Mobile, Alabama. After the war, however, he struggled with poverty. In 1869, he helped to found the Southern Historical Society, which became an important institution for advocates of the Lost Cause view of the war. His 1894 memoir, Recollections of a Virginian in the Mexican, Indian, and Civil Wars, was marked by Maury's distinctively intelligent affability. In fact, he was rare among former Civil War officers on either side for his willingness to maintain an equitable view of the Civil War.
Thu, 09 Jun 2011 10:20:50 EST]]> /Edmunds_Murrell_1898-1981 Thu, 09 Jun 2011 10:15:50 EST http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Edmunds_Murrell_1898-1981 Thu, 09 Jun 2011 10:15:50 EST]]> /Evans_Lezlie_1962- Thu, 09 Jun 2011 09:50:04 EST http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Evans_Lezlie_1962- Lezlie Evans is an author who specializes in picture books for young children that focus on family fun, feelings, weather, and other topics pertaining to toddlers. She also is known for her playful, multilingual books that teach school-age children how to count and to greet one another in foreign languages. A native of Utah, Evans previously lived in Manassas, Virginia, and in 2008 moved to Ashburn, Virginia, with her husband and six children.
Thu, 09 Jun 2011 09:50:04 EST]]> /Davis_Varina_1826-1906 Thu, 09 Jun 2011 09:37:48 EST http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Davis_Varina_1826-1906 Varina Howell Davis was the second wife of Confederate president Jefferson Davis and the First Lady of the Confederacy during the American Civil War (1861–1865). She was manifestly ill-suited for this role because of her family background, education, personality, physical appearance, and her fifteen-year antebellum residence in Washington, D.C. (She once declared that the worst years of her life were spent in the Confederate capital at Richmond while the happiest were in Washington.) A native of the urban South, she always preferred the city to the country, and after her husband died in 1889, she moved to New York, where she resided until her death in 1906.
Thu, 09 Jun 2011 09:37:48 EST]]> /Bowers_Fredson_1905-1991 Thu, 09 Jun 2011 09:32:03 EST http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Bowers_Fredson_1905-1991 Fredson Bowers was a literary scholar and a professor of English at the University of Virginia from 1938 to 1975. He raised the English department to national prominence while serving as its chair from 1961 to 1968 and as dean of the faculty of Arts and Sciences in 1968 and 1969. He was widely regarded for his contributions to the study of sixteenth- and seventeenth-century English literature but was best known for his work in bibliography and textual criticism. A prolific scholar, he founded and edited the journal Studies in Bibliography, wrote the standard guide to the physical description of books, published many theoretical articles on the editing of post-renaissance texts, and edited sixty-eight volumes of writings by authors from five centuries. Assisted by a forceful personality, he was one of the most widely known and influential scholars of his day.
Thu, 09 Jun 2011 09:32:03 EST]]> /Harrison_Burton_Mrs_1843-1920 Thu, 09 Jun 2011 08:42:40 EST http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Harrison_Burton_Mrs_1843-1920 Mrs. Burton Harrison, also known as Constance Cary Harrison, was a prolific American novelist late in the nineteenth century who came from a prominent Virginia family. As a young woman, she witnessed the destruction of the American Civil War (1861–1865) and nursed the Confederate wounded in Manassas and Richmond. After the war, Harrison toured Europe, eventually married, and settled down in New York City. She was active in elite New York society and produced a large body of work, much of it popular serialized fiction and sentimental romance, in which she recorded the social mores of her time. The author of more than fifty works, including short stories, articles and essays, children's books, and short plays, she is best known for her 1911 autobiography, Recollections Grave and Gay.
Thu, 09 Jun 2011 08:42:40 EST]]> /Belle_Isle_Prison Wed, 08 Jun 2011 16:15:07 EST http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Belle_Isle_Prison Belle Isle Prison, located on an island in the James River and connected by footbridge to Richmond, was a Confederate military prison during the American Civil War (1861–1865). Opened in June 1862 and closed in October 1864, the facility was subject to multiple closures and re-openings, which were contingent upon prisoner exchanges. While Richmond's Libby Prison was set aside for Union officers, Confederate authorities used Belle Isle to hold noncommissioned officers and privates. It was originally intended only as a holding facility until more adequate prisons were available. A hospital for prisoners and an iron factory were located on the island, but no barracks were ever built for the prisoners. They were sheltered only by tents,and forced to withstand excessive heat in the summer, frigid temperatures in the winter, and multiple disease epidemics.
Wed, 08 Jun 2011 16:15:07 EST]]> /Castle_Thunder_Prison Tue, 07 Jun 2011 13:08:11 EST http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Castle_Thunder_Prison Castle Thunder in Richmond (not to be confused with the prison of the same name in Petersburg) was an infamous Confederate military prison during the American Civil War (1861–1865). In service from August 1862 until April 1865, the facility was established for political prisoners, Unionists, and deserters, but its use quickly expanded to include women, spies, and African Americans. Castle Thunder's keepers—particularly Commandant George W. Alexander, who presided over the prison from October 1862 until February 1864—earned a reputation for brutality and were subject to investigation in 1863 by the Confederate House of Representatives. At the end of the war, Union military personnel took control of Castle Thunder and used it to incarcerate former Confederates.
Tue, 07 Jun 2011 13:08:11 EST]]> /Sapphira_and_the_Slave_Girl_1940 Mon, 06 Jun 2011 14:19:05 EST http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Sapphira_and_the_Slave_Girl_1940 Sapphira and the Slave Girl (1940) is the last novel by Willa Cather and the Virginia-born writer's only book set entirely in the state. Based on an incident in Cather's own family, in which her maternal grandmother helped a slave escape in 1856, the novel details the complicated marriage of Henry and Sapphira Colbert, who operate a mill and small farm in Back Creek outside Winchester in the years before the American Civil War. Sapphira wrongly suspects that one of her slaves, Nancy, is in an intimate relationship with her husband, and manipulates those around her to exact revenge. Henry and the couple's daughter, Rachel, intervene by helping Nancy flee to Canada. At the time of its release, Sapphira and the Slave Girl was praised by the New York Times for examining "the question of slavery without any portentous fanfare," but in the years since, the book has not been widely read. Most critics have charged Sapphira with being racist and overly nostalgic, while a few have defended it as a brilliant inversion of old stereotypes and a coded exploration of sexual desire.
Mon, 06 Jun 2011 14:19:05 EST]]> /Personal_Names_by_Virginia_Indians_During_the_Precolonial_and_Colonial_Eras_Uses_of Fri, 03 Jun 2011 14:44:20 EST http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Personal_Names_by_Virginia_Indians_During_the_Precolonial_and_Colonial_Eras_Uses_of Early Virginia Indians—the Algonquian-speaking Powhatans, in particular, and possibly other groups—used multiple personal names. Although these names had specific meanings, most were not translated by English colonists at Jamestown, and many of those meanings have been lost. Often, Indians held more than one name simultaneously, with different names used in different situations. Pocahontas, for instance, had a formal given name; a "secret," or highly personal name; and nicknames that were updated throughout her life, sometimes commenting on her personality or her position within the community. Indian men and boys were expected to earn names that described their feats as hunters and warriors. Chiefs, such as Powhatan, often took new names when assuming power and sometimes even changed their names again after that. After the mid-seventeenth century, Virginia Indians began to adopt English first names, which they sometimes paired with shortened versions of their Indian names.
Fri, 03 Jun 2011 14:44:20 EST]]> /Poe_Edgar_Allan_1809-1849 Thu, 02 Jun 2011 13:21:01 EST http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Poe_Edgar_Allan_1809-1849 Edgar Allan Poe was a poet, short story writer, editor, and critic. Credited by many scholars as the inventor of the detective genre in fiction, he was a master at using elements of mystery, psychological terror, and the macabre in his writing. His most famous poem, "The Raven" (1845), combines his penchant for suspense with some of the most famous lines in American poetry. While editor of the Richmond-based Southern Literary Messenger, Poe carved out a philosophy of poetry that emphasized brevity and beauty for its own sake. Stories, he wrote, should be crafted to convey a single, unified impression, and for Poe, that impression was most often dread. "The Tell-Tale Heart" (1843), for instance, memorably describes the paranoia of its narrator, who is guilty of murder. After leaving Richmond, Poe lived and worked in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and New York, seeming to collect literary enemies wherever he went. Incensed by his especially sharp, often sarcastic style of criticism, they were not inclined to help Poe as his life unraveled because of sickness and poverty. After Poe's death at the age of forty, a former colleague, Rufus W. Griswold, wrote a scathing biography that contributed, in the years to come, to a literary caricature. Poe's poetry and prose, however, have endured.
Thu, 02 Jun 2011 13:21:01 EST]]> /Haines_John_Meade_1924- Thu, 02 Jun 2011 09:55:19 EST http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Haines_John_Meade_1924- Thu, 02 Jun 2011 09:55:19 EST]]> /Reviewer_The Wed, 01 Jun 2011 11:21:09 EST http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Reviewer_The The Reviewer was a Richmond-based experimental literary magazine published from 1921 until 1925 in thirty-five issues that helped spark the Southern Literary Renaissance. With an open editorial policy, it offended some and earned praise from others because the submissions simultaneously invoked the Old South, called for a New South, and addressed controversial social perspectives with work from established and emerging writers.
Wed, 01 Jun 2011 11:21:09 EST]]> /Lynchburg_During_the_Civil_War Tue, 31 May 2011 10:25:50 EST http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Lynchburg_During_the_Civil_War Lynchburg, Virginia, is located just east of the Blue Ridge Mountains on the banks of the James River, where its founder, John Lynch, established a ferry service in 1757. On the eve of the American Civil War (1861–1865), Lynchburg was Virginia's sixth-largest city and a major transportation center, with access to the James River and Kanawha Canal, as well as the Virginia and Tennessee, the South Side, and the Orange and Alexandria railroads. In addition, the city was a major manufacturer of plug tobacco and, by the 1850s, the second-wealthiest city per capita in the United States. During the war, Lynchburg women established the Ladies' Relief Hospital, and the Confederate military made the city a major hub of supplies and transport, which Union troops attempted to disrupt at the Battle of Lynchburg in June 1864. After the fall of Richmond in April 1865, the state government relocated to Lynchburg briefly, only to return after Robert E. Lee's surrender a few miles to the east at Appomattox.
Tue, 31 May 2011 10:25:50 EST]]> /Meridian Fri, 27 May 2011 15:40:20 EST http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Meridian Meridian is a semiannual literary magazine produced at the University of Virginia and edited by students in the school's graduate creative writing program. The journal typically runs 176 pages; contains poetry, fiction, creative nonfiction, book reviews, and author interviews; and often features a "Lost Classic," an unpublished work by a famous writer of the past. Meridian Lost Classics often come from the University of Virginia's Special Collections Library holdings and have included poem fragments by Robert Frost, correspondence between William Faulkner and Marianne Moore, and essays by Mark Twain and Ezra Pound. The magazine has published the contemporary creative work of numerous Pulitzer Prize– and National Book Award–winners including Charles Wright, John Casey, Rita Dove, and Seamus Heaney, as well as writers Heather McHugh and Stephen Dixon. As a student-edited publication, however, the magazine puts a special emphasis on new voices, hosting annual "Editors' Prize" competitions in both fiction and poetry. In cooperation with Samovar Press, Meridian helps produce the Best New Poets series, an annual anthology of fifty poems by emerging writers.
Fri, 27 May 2011 15:40:20 EST]]> /Southside_Railroad Thu, 26 May 2011 16:48:24 EST http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Southside_Railroad The South Side Railroad, completed in 1854, was one of the most important supply routes in southern Virginia during the American Civil War (1861–1865). With tracks laid east to west across the state, the railroad began at City Point in Hopewell on the James River and extended westward through Petersburg, Burkeville, Farmville, Appomattox Station, and finally Lynchburg, in western Virginia, for a total of about 132 miles. The South Side Railroad was imperative to the Confederate army for the transport of food, military supplies, and troops throughout the war. Behind the lines of battle, the South Side line saw little damage for the first few years of the war; as the conflict moved south in 1864 and 1865, however, the railroad incurred heavy damage from both the Confederate and Union army as each sought to cut the supply lines of the other.
Thu, 26 May 2011 16:48:24 EST]]> /Letcher_John_1813-1884 Thu, 26 May 2011 16:41:48 EST http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Letcher_John_1813-1884 John Letcher was a lawyer, newspaper editor, member of the United States House of Representatives (1851–1859), and governor of Virginia (1860–1864) during the American Civil War (1861–1865). In a career that lasted decades, he weathered radical shifts of opinion and power by consistently positioning himself as a moderate, supporting, for instance, increased commercial ties between the eastern and western portions of the state and more political representation for western counties, codified in the Convention of 1850–1851. He advocated for a gradual emancipation of slaves and resisted the entreaties of radical secessionists while still arguing on behalf of states' rights. Western support and a divided Whig Party helped him narrowly win the governorship as a Democrat in 1859, but his term was often a difficult one. He ably mobilized Virginia for war and then threw the state's tremendous resources behind the Confederacy. But his willingness to requisition for the Confederacy needed supplies such as salt caused controversy at home, as did his support of impressments. Letcher returned to Lexington in 1864, ran for the Confederate Congress and lost, and was briefly imprisoned at the conclusion of the war. After his release, he resumed his law career, returning to state politics before dying in 1884.
Thu, 26 May 2011 16:41:48 EST]]> /Charlottesville_During_the_Civil_War Thu, 26 May 2011 14:45:02 EST http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Charlottesville_During_the_Civil_War Charlottesville provided the Confederate war effort with swords, uniforms, and artificial limbs during the American Civil War (1861–1865). It was also home to a 500-bed military hospital that employed hundreds of the town's residents, cared for more than 22,000 patients, and was superintended by Dr. James L. Cabell, a professor of medicine at the nearby University of Virginia. In the summer of 1861, the 19th Virginia Infantry Regiment was organized, recruiting most of its members from Charlottesville and Albemarle County. The unit served with the Army of Northern Virginia all the way through to the Appomattox Campaign (1865), including at Pickett's Charge (1863), where it lost 60 percent of its men. African Americans, both enslaved and free, who composed a majority of the town and county's population, were the subject of heightened white fears of violence, their movements controlled by a curfew. In 1863, black members of the biracial First Baptist Church established the Charlottesville African Church. Although the war's fighting stayed mostly to the east and west, a raid led by Union general George A. Custer was stopped just north of the city in the spring of 1864. Early the next year, town leaders surrendered Charlottesville to Custer, preventing the community's destruction.
Thu, 26 May 2011 14:45:02 EST]]> /Fort_Monroe_During_the_Civil_War Thu, 26 May 2011 14:42:22 EST http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Fort_Monroe_During_the_Civil_War Fort Monroe is a military installation located in Hampton Roads, Virginia, on the Peninsula overlooking the Chesapeake Bay. It was the only federal military installation in the Upper South to remain under United States control throughout the American Civil War (1861–1865). Early in the war, the fort became an outpost of freedom within the Confederacy when Union commanders used it to house refugee slaves. The fort also headquartered the Union Department of Virginia and North Carolina, and several significant military campaigns and combined operations were launched from the installation. Most notably, it served as the staging area for Union major general George B. McClellan's ill-fated Peninsula Campaign of 1862. After the war, the fort served as a destination for another brand of fugitive. Following his capture in May 1865 until his bail bond was accepted two years later, Confederate president Jefferson Davis was imprisoned at Fort Monroe.
Thu, 26 May 2011 14:42:22 EST]]> /Martinsburg_Virginia_During_the_Civil_War Mon, 23 May 2011 16:02:02 EST http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Martinsburg_Virginia_During_the_Civil_War Martinsburg, Virginia (now West Virginia), the county seat of Berkeley County, was in 1860 the Shenandoah Valley's second largest town, with a population of 3,364. Located in the northern portion of the valley, Martinsburg enjoyed a booming economy because of its location along the paved Valley Pike and because it was a major depot along the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad. The same strategic location that made Martinsburg economically prosperous prior to the American Civil War (1861–1865), however, also spelled its wartime demise. The town changed hands between Confederate and Union forces thirty-seven times, was the site of two battles, and played host for a time to the intrigue of Confederate spy Belle Boyd, who was born there.
Mon, 23 May 2011 16:02:02 EST]]> /Newspapers_in_Virginia_During_the_Civil_War_Confederate Wed, 18 May 2011 15:25:51 EST http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Newspapers_in_Virginia_During_the_Civil_War_Confederate Confederate newspapers in Virginia during the American Civil War (1861–1865) served as vital, if often flawed, sources of reporting on the conflict, as organs of national propaganda, and as venues in which to attack or defend the administration of Confederate president Jefferson Davis. At the start of the war, nearly every town in Virginia boasted a newspaper, with four dailies in Richmond alone. (A fifth began publishing in 1863.) These papers were staunchly partisan: the Richmond Enquirer endorsed the Democratic Party, the Richmond Whig cheered on the largely defunct Whig Party, and the Staunton Vindicator endorsed secession. During the war, they updated their readers on the Confederacy's military progress and relied on Northern papers when their own reporting failed. Along with its rivals, the Enquirer trumpeted victories and downplayed defeats, blurring the line between news and propaganda. The Richmond Examiner, meanwhile, under the editorship of John M. Daniel, became the loudest organ of dissent in the Confederate capital, its criticisms of President Davis turning more intense and more personal as the war dragged on. Propaganda from Virginia newspapers helped prop up Southern spirits early in the war, and it is likely that their political attacks eventually helped depress Confederate morale.
Wed, 18 May 2011 15:25:51 EST]]> /Clark_Adèle_1882-1983 Tue, 17 May 2011 16:24:45 EST http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Clark_Adèle_1882-1983 Adèle Clark was a founding member of the Equal Suffrage League of Virginia, nineteen years the chair of Virginia's League of Women Voters, dean of women at the College of William and Mary in Williamsburg, New Deal–era field worker, and an accomplished artist and arts advocate. Clark called politics and art her "creative spirits," and she exemplified the crucial role women played in the social reform movements of the twentieth century, applying her sharp intellect, artistic skills, and fiery determination to championing both women and the arts.
Tue, 17 May 2011 16:24:45 EST]]> /Tucker_George_1775-1861 Mon, 16 May 2011 13:01:57 EST http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Tucker_George_1775-1861 Mon, 16 May 2011 13:01:57 EST]]> /Scott_Winfield_1786-1866 Mon, 16 May 2011 09:55:53 EST http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Scott_Winfield_1786-1866 Winfield Scott was a hero of the Mexican War (1846–1848), the last Whig Party candidate for U.S. president, and commanding general of the United States Army at the start of the American Civil War (1861–1865). Known as "Old Fuss and Feathers" for his equal love of discipline and pomp, Scott by 1861 had served in the military for more than fifty years and under fourteen U.S. presidents. He had been severely wounded in battle, avoided several wars with his diplomatic skills, and commanded the army that conquered Mexico City in 1847, all of which made him the most admired and famous soldier in America. Less well known is the fact that Scott was convicted by court-martial for conduct unbecoming an officer, was investigated by a court of inquiry, once was accused of treason, and several times offered his resignation from the army. When the Civil War began, the Dinwiddie County native remained loyal to the Union, and while age had so reduced his once-towering frame that he could no longer even mount a horse, his ego and intellect were still intact. Scott's Anaconda Plan for winning the war proved to be prescient but politically out of step, and he eventually lost control of the army to George B. McClellan. He soon retired, published a two-volume memoir in 1864, and died in 1866.
Mon, 16 May 2011 09:55:53 EST]]> /Sigel_Franz_1824-1902 Mon, 16 May 2011 09:27:11 EST http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Sigel_Franz_1824-1902 Franz Sigel was a Union general during the American Civil War (1861–1865). Born in Germany and a leader of the failed insurrections of 1848, Sigel rallied German-Americans to the Union cause in 1861 with the slogan, "I goes to fight mit Sigel." As a general, however, he was only modestly successful and his relationship with his superiors was so contentious that he resigned from the army twice before returning; only his ties to the politically important German-American constituency saved him. In addition, those ties allowed him to be promoted to command of the Department of West Virginia in 1864, but he led his troops to a disastrous defeat at the Battle of New Market on May 15, 1864, against Confederate forces that included cadets from the Virginia Military Institute in Lexington. When a Confederate army under Jubal A. Early was able to reach the outskirts of Washington, D.C., a month later, Sigel was relieved of command and he resigned from the army a year later.
Mon, 16 May 2011 09:27:11 EST]]> /Culp_s_Hill_and_Wesley_Culp_1839-1863 Mon, 09 May 2011 11:14:37 EST http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Culp_s_Hill_and_Wesley_Culp_1839-1863 Culp's Hill is located about three-quarters of a mile south of Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. It forms the barb of a fishhook-shaped series of hills and ridges on which the fiercest fighting took place during the second and third days of the Battle of Gettysburg (1863) during the American Civil War (1861–1865). It was also near, if not on, Culp's Hill that Private John Wesley Culp of Company B, 2nd Virginia Infantry Regiment, Stonewall Brigade, was killed.
Mon, 09 May 2011 11:14:37 EST]]> /Chancellorsville_Campaign Mon, 09 May 2011 11:13:30 EST http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Chancellorsville_Campaign The Chancellorsville Campaign, which culminated in the Battle of Chancellorsville, fought May 1–6, 1863, produced one of the most stunning and ambivalent Confederate victories of the American Civil War (1861–1865). Confederate general Robert E. Lee had trounced the Army of the Potomac at Fredericksburg the previous December, but since then, Joseph Hooker had thoroughly reorganized and revitalized his dispirited Union troops. Declaring that he had created "the finest Army on the Planet," he set into motion an elaborate plan designed to quietly turn the left flank of the outnumbered and underfed Confederate Army of Northern Virginia, which was camped not far from Fredericksburg. In the face of Hooker's attack, Lee dangerously divided his army, sending Thomas J. "Stonewall" Jackson through the Wilderness, a wild and tangled woodland, and around Hooker's right side in what became one of the most famous flanking maneuvers of the war. A combination of bad Union generalship and good Confederate luck forced Hooker to retreat across the Rappahannock River. Jackson was accidentally killed by his own men in the fighting, and while his death may have been devastating for the Confederacy, so were the additional 13,459 casualties. Combined with the shocking losses at Gettysburg two months later, they nearly destroyed the army's offensive capabilities.
Mon, 09 May 2011 11:13:30 EST]]> /Crater_Battle_of_the Mon, 09 May 2011 11:12:21 EST http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Crater_Battle_of_the The Battle of the Crater, part of the Petersburg Campaign, was the result of an unusual attempt, on the part of Union forces, to break through the Confederate defenses just south of the critical railroad hub of Petersburg, Virginia, during the American Civil War (1861–1865). For several weeks, Pennsylvania miners in Union general Ambrose E. Burnside's Ninth Corps worked at digging a long tunnel, packed the terminus with explosives, and then on the morning of July 30, 1864, blew it up. In the words of a Maine soldier, the sky was filled with "Earth, stones, timbers, arms, legs, guns unlimbered and bodies unlimbed." Burnside had initially planned to send a fresh division of black troops into the breach, but his superiors, Ulysses S. Grant and George G. Meade, ruled against it. That role—literally via a short straw—went to James H. Ledlie, a hard-drinking political general who spent the day well behind the lines as his white soldiers piled into the explosion's deep crater rather than go around it. Unable to escape, and followed by Burnside's other three divisions, they turned into what one New Hampshire soldier described as "a mass of worms crawling over each other"—easy targets for Confederates. The battle was a Union disaster and marked by particularly cruel treatment of the black troops who participated, many of whom were captured and murdered. Although Congress later blamed Meade for the loss, it was Ledlie and Burnside who lost their commands.
Mon, 09 May 2011 11:12:21 EST]]> /Anaconda_Plan Mon, 09 May 2011 11:10:47 EST http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Anaconda_Plan The Anaconda Plan was the nickname attached to Lieutenant General Winfield Scott's comprehensive plan to defeat the Confederacy at the start of the American Civil War (1861–1865). Scott called for a strong defense of Washington, D.C., a blockade of the Confederacy's Atlantic and Gulf coasts, and a massive land and naval attack along the Mississippi River aimed at cutting the Confederacy in two. Although United States president Abraham Lincoln immediately instituted a naval blockade, he bowed to political pressure in 1861 and shelved the rest of the plan. In retrospect, Scott's strategy seems broadly prescient, although it aimed at political conciliation and did not anticipate the hard war fought in Virginia and elsewhere.
Mon, 09 May 2011 11:10:47 EST]]> /Newton_John_1822-1895 Mon, 09 May 2011 09:43:49 EST http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Newton_John_1822-1895 John Newton was a Virginia native and a Union general during the American Civil War (1861–1865). Born in Norfolk, the son of a long-serving congressman, Newton graduated from West Point and served in the Army Corps of Engineers before commanding a brigade and then a division in the Army of the Potomac. After the disastrous Union defeat at Fredericksburg in December 1862, Newton and fellow general John Cochrane met with United States president Abraham Lincoln in a veiled attempt at seeing Ambrose E. Burnside removed from command. Lincoln did remove him, but Newton's career suffered for his effort. Newton fought well during the Chancellorsville Campaign in May 1863, and after the death of John F. Reynolds on the first day of the Battle of Gettysburg, he took command of the First Corps. Within a year, however, he had been denied promotion, been sent west to participate in the Atlanta Campaign (1864), and eventually exiled to Florida. There, in March 1865, he was defeated in his ill-advised attempt on Tallahassee at the Battle of Natural Bridge. Newton worked as an army engineer after the war, retiring in 1886 and dying in New York City in 1895.
Mon, 09 May 2011 09:43:49 EST]]> /Butler_Benjamin_F_1818-1893 Mon, 09 May 2011 09:42:48 EST http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Butler_Benjamin_F_1818-1893 Benjamin F. Butler was a controversial, self-aggrandizing, and colorful politician who served as a Union general during the American Civil War (1861–1865). A state senator in Massachusetts, Butler was a delegate to the 1860 Democratic National Convention, where he briefly supported Jefferson Davis. Always popular, he was nevertheless dogged by charges of corruption, abuse of power, and, when he accepted a general officer's commission from Abraham Lincoln in 1861, incompetence. Even his appearance inspired commentary. A Union staff officer penned in his diary how Butler cut "an astounding figure on a horse! Short, fat, shapeless; no neck, squinting, and very bald headed, and, above all, that singular, half defiant look." During the Civil War, Butler made substantial contributions to the Union war effort, including a policy that allowed the United States government to skirt the provisions of the Fugitive Slave Law by claiming that escaped slaves were "contraband of war." In this way, he was able to put African American refugees to work on fortifications and helped to pave the way for emancipation. He also served as a military administrator for occupied regions in Virginia and Louisiana—where he was particularly hated—before a lackluster performance as commander of the Army of the James during the Petersburg Campaign (1864–1865). After the war, Butler was elected governor of Massachusetts. He died in 1893.
Mon, 09 May 2011 09:42:48 EST]]> /Lost_Cause_The Mon, 09 May 2011 09:35:42 EST http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Lost_Cause_The The Lost Cause is an interpretation of the American Civil War (1861–1865) that seeks to present the war, from the perspective of Confederates, in the best possible terms. Developed by white Southerners, many of them former Confederate generals, in a postwar climate of economic, racial, and gender uncertainty, the Lost Cause created and romanticized the "Old South" and the Confederate war effort, often distorting history in the process. For this reason, many historians have labeled the Lost Cause a myth or a legend. It is certainly an important example of public memory, one in which nostalgia for the Confederate past is accompanied by a collective forgetting of the horrors of slavery. Providing a sense of relief to white Southerners who feared being dishonored by defeat, the Lost Cause was largely accepted in the years following the war by white Americans who found it to be a useful tool in reconciling North and South. The Lost Cause has lost much of its academic support but continues to be an important part of how the Civil War is commemorated in the South and remembered in American popular culture.
Mon, 09 May 2011 09:35:42 EST]]> /Nicketti_Princess Thu, 05 May 2011 16:55:53 EST http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Nicketti_Princess Princess Nicketti is the name given to a Virginia Indian woman believed by some to have been the daughter of Opechancanough, a leader of the Powhatan Indians and the brother of the paramount chief Powhatan. While the name has been referenced almost exclusively on twenty-first-century genealogy websites by people claiming family relationship, no scholarly evidence exists that Princess Nicketti ever lived. A careful search of seventeenth-century records in Virginia yields no one by that name, male or female. And no name of a child of Opechancanough was ever recorded in that century. The writings about her stem from a single published source: Alexander Brown's genealogy The Cabells and Their Kin (1939). Significantly, Brown calls Nicketti's story only a "very interesting tradition" and adds, "I cannot vouch for it[s accuracy]," but he had heard about her from several prominent Piedmont Virginia families. Subsequent writers have quoted Brown's text as fact.
Thu, 05 May 2011 16:55:53 EST]]> /Hill_A_P_1825-1865 Thu, 05 May 2011 15:29:12 EST http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Hill_A_P_1825-1865 A. P. Hill was a Confederate general in the Army of Northern Virginia during the American Civil War (1861–1865). Behind Thomas J. "Stonewall" Jackson and James Longstreet, "Little Powell," as he was sometimes called, was Robert E. Lee's most trusted lieutenant, best known for leading his Light Division in headlong charges but just as effective when making stubborn defensive stands. Though usually reserved and courteous, he also was notoriously short-tempered. An argument with Longstreet almost led to a duel, while a dispute with Jackson put Hill under arrest as his division entered Maryland in 1862. Still, he fought hard and well at Antietam (1862) and Chancellorsville (1863), and after Jackson's death he took over the army's new Third Corps. For the remainder of the war, Hill's generalship and administrative skills were sometimes lackluster, at other times inspired, and he was forced to miss parts of campaigns due to illness. Exactly a week before Lee's surrender at Appomattox, he was killed outside Petersburg.
Thu, 05 May 2011 15:29:12 EST]]> /First_Rockbridge_Artillery Thu, 05 May 2011 09:01:11 EST http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/First_Rockbridge_Artillery The First Rockbridge Artillery was organized on April 29, 1861, in Lexington, Virginia, and served throughout the duration of the American Civil War (1861–1865), firing its first shot in anger at the First Battle of Manassas on July 21, 1861, and fighting in most major battles of the Army of Northern Virginia until its surrender at Appomattox Court House on April 9, 1865. Initially led by Lexington rector and West Point graduate William N. Pendleton, the battery quickly became renowned for its daring and firmness under fire as part of the Stonewall Brigade. Pendleton, with ecclesiastical panache, named the first four tubes of the battery "Matthew," "Mark," "Luke," and "John."
Thu, 05 May 2011 09:01:11 EST]]> /Army_of_the_Valley Tue, 03 May 2011 09:45:02 EST http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Army_of_the_Valley The Army of the Valley was a detachment of Confederate forces, commanded by Jubal A. Early, which Robert E. Lee ordered to the Shenandoah Valley in 1864 for independent operations. As Union general-in-chief Ulysses S. Grant and the Army of the Potomac pressed Lee's Army of Northern Virginia in the Overland Campaign, Lee desperately needed to relieve pressure on his dwindling Confederate forces, divert attention away from the capital at Richmond, and open a second front in Virginia. This newly created Army of the Valley broke camp with Lee's main army on June 13, 1864, and moved toward the Valley to begin one of the most critical campaigns of the American Civil War (1861–1865).
Tue, 03 May 2011 09:45:02 EST]]> /Burnside_Ambrose_E_1824-1881 Tue, 03 May 2011 09:42:33 EST http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Burnside_Ambrose_E_1824-1881 Ambrose E. Burnside was a major general in the Union army during the American Civil War (1861–1865). Instantly recognizable for his bushy sideburns (the term itself is derived from reversing his last name), Burnside was one of four men to command the Army of the Potomac in Virginia. Offered the job twice previously—following George B. McClellan's failed Peninsula Campaign in 1862 and following the Second Battle of Manassas later that summer—he turned it down, citing his own lack of experience and encouraging his peers and, subsequently, historians to question his self-confidence. When he did take command of the army, he led it into disaster at the Battle of Fredericksburg (1862), perhaps the Union's most lopsided defeat of the war. After his corps was badly defeated at the Battle of the Crater (1864) he went home on a leave of absence from which he was never called back to duty. Burnside's dismal reputation is probably unfair, however. He was an innovative engineer but an unlucky general who was often made a scapegoat for larger failures.
Tue, 03 May 2011 09:42:33 EST]]> /McClellan_George_B_1826-1885 Tue, 03 May 2011 09:39:42 EST http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/McClellan_George_B_1826-1885 George B. McClellan was a major general in the Union army during the American Civil War (1861–1865). Styled the "Young Napoleon" by the press, his battlefield successes and failures were eclipsed by controversies that arose between him and his superiors, especially U.S. president Abraham Lincoln. Following the Union debacle at the First Battle of Manassas in July 1861, McClellan formed and took command of the Army of the Potomac, expertly training it and earning the love and devotion of his men. He led the army first through the unsuccessful Peninsula Campaign and the Seven Days' Battles outside Richmond in 1862, and then through the climactic Battle of Antietam on September 17, 1862, which forced Confederate general Robert E. Lee to abandon his invasion of the North. Lincoln, however, was dissatisfied with McClellan's lack of aggression and relieved him of command. McClellan, a Democrat, responded by challenging the Republican president in the 1864 election. It was both the logical culmination of his advocacy for a limited-war strategy, and perhaps the clumsiest confirmation of his critics' accusations that his military caution was politically motivated. After McClellan lost his run for the presidency, he retired first to Europe and then to New Jersey, where he became governor.
Tue, 03 May 2011 09:39:42 EST]]> /McCausland_John_A_1836-1927 Tue, 03 May 2011 09:32:55 EST http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/McCausland_John_A_1836-1927 John A. McCausland was a Confederate general during the American Civil War (1861–1865). Known as "Tiger John," the former mathematics professor was hailed as a hero by the citizens of Lynchburg, Virginia, for repulsing an attack by the Union general David Hunter in June 1864. A month later, however, McCausland was condemned as a villain by the citizens of Chambersburg, Pennsylvania, for acting on the orders of Jubal A. Early and burning their Cumberland Valley town in retaliation for Union actions in the Shenandoah Valley. The incident followed the famously unreconstructed McCausland through the rest of his long life, forcing him to leave the country for a time after the surrender at Appomattox, and becoming the headline of his many obituaries in 1927.
Tue, 03 May 2011 09:32:55 EST]]> /Blaikley_Catherine_Kaidyee_ca_1695-ca_1771 Wed, 27 Apr 2011 16:11:04 EST http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Blaikley_Catherine_Kaidyee_ca_1695-ca_1771 Catherine Kaidyee Blaikley was a midwife who, during the mid-eighteenth century in Virginia, purportedly delivered as many as three thousand babies. Probably born in York County, Blaikley married a watchmaker who, when he died in 1736, left her a substantial estate, including land in Henrico County, a mill in Brunswick County, and a lot in Williamsburg. Catherine Blaikley maintained her relatively high standard of living by becoming a midwife in Williamsburg in 1739. By the time of her death in 1771, male midwives also were delivering babies, a process that led to male physicians gradually replacing female midwives.
Wed, 27 Apr 2011 16:11:04 EST]]> /Confederate_Battle_Flag Wed, 27 Apr 2011 11:30:34 EST http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Confederate_Battle_Flag The Confederate battle flag, initially authorized for units of the Confederate armed forces during the American Civil War (1861–1865), has become one of the most recognized, misunderstood, and controversial symbols in American history. Originally designed as a Confederate national flag by William Porcher Miles of South Carolina, it was rejected by the Confederate Congress but subsequently adopted by the Confederate army, which needed a banner that was easily distinguishable from the United States flag. The battle flag transformed into a national symbol as the Army of Northern Virginia, with which it was closely associated, also became an important symbol. It even was incorporated into the Confederacy's Second and Third National flags. Following the war, proponents of the Lost Cause used the battle flag to represent Southern valor and honor, although it also was implicitly connected to white supremacy. In the mid-twentieth century, the battle flag simultaneously became ubiquitous in American culture while, partly through the efforts of the Ku Klux Klan, becoming increasingly tied to racial violence and intimidation. African Americans conflated the battle flag to opposition to the civil rights movement, while neo-Confederates argued that its meaning had to do with states' rights and southern identity, not racial hatred. The political and social lines of dispute over the flag remain much the same at the beginning of the twenty-first century.
Wed, 27 Apr 2011 11:30:34 EST]]> /Boyle_Sarah_Patton_1906-1994 Tue, 26 Apr 2011 11:39:01 EST http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Boyle_Sarah_Patton_1906-1994 Sarah Patton Boyle was one of Virginia's most prominent white civil rights activists during the 1950s and 1960s and author of the widely acclaimed autobiography The Desegregated Heart: A Virginian's Stand in Time of Transition (1962). Her desegregation efforts began in 1950 when she wrote to Gregory Swanson welcoming him as the University of Virginia's first black law student. Through her experience with Swanson, her views on desegregation evolved from being a proponent of gradual desegregation to a leading and often controversial white voice for immediate desegregation in public schools and in higher education. Her 1955 article for the Saturday Evening Post, titled "Southerners Will Like Integration," prompted a fierce backlash that included having a cross burned in her Charlottesville yard. Boyle did not moderate her views, however, and worked closely with the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), earning praise from Martin Luther King Jr., Lillian Smith, and others, as well as numerous awards and a measure of national fame. The intensity of her political involvement triggered a deep depression, however, and she eventually became disillusioned with the civil rights movement, retiring from activism in 1967. In 1983, she authored a memoir that contemplated her experience dealing with age discrimination.
Tue, 26 Apr 2011 11:39:01 EST]]> /Paint_Lick_Mountain_Pictograph_Archaeological_Site Fri, 22 Apr 2011 10:05:29 EST http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Paint_Lick_Mountain_Pictograph_Archaeological_Site Fri, 22 Apr 2011 10:05:29 EST]]> /Lee_Robert_Edward_1807-1870 Wed, 20 Apr 2011 21:00:20 EST http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Lee_Robert_Edward_1807-1870 Robert E. Lee was a Confederate general during the American Civil War (1861–1865) who led the Army of Northern Virginia from June 1862 until its surrender at Appomattox Court House on April 9, 1865. Descended from several of Virginia's First Families, Lee was a well-regarded officer of the United States Army before the war. His decision to fight for the Confederacy was emblematic of the wrenching choices faced by Americans as the nation divided. After an early defeat in western Virginia, he repulsed George B. McClellan's army from the Confederate capital during the Seven Days' Battles (1862) and won stunning victories at Manassas (1862), Fredericksburg (1862), and Chancellorsville (1863). The Maryland and Pennsylvania campaigns he led resulted in major contests at Antietam (1862) and Gettysburg (1863), respectively, with severe consequences for the Confederacy. Lee offered a spirited defense during the Overland Campaign (1864) against Ulysses S. Grant, but was ultimately outmaneuvered and forced into a prolonged siege at Petersburg (1864–1865).
Wed, 20 Apr 2011 21:00:20 EST]]> /Chesapeake_Bay_Bridge-Tunnel Tue, 19 Apr 2011 08:49:54 EST http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Chesapeake_Bay_Bridge-Tunnel The Chesapeake Bay Bridge-Tunnel (CBBT) connects the Virginia mainland at the city of Virginia Beach directly with the Delmarva Peninsula. Completed in 1964 and recognized by the American Society of Civil Engineers in 1965 as one of the "Seven Engineering Wonders of the Modern World," the structure is comprised of bridges, tunnels, and land roads that span a total of twenty-three miles. Initially considered to be a risky financial move, the CBBT is now a profitable and expanding enterprise.
Tue, 19 Apr 2011 08:49:54 EST]]> /Richmond_Fredericksburg_and_Potomac_Railroad_During_the_Civil_War Mon, 18 Apr 2011 15:05:23 EST http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Richmond_Fredericksburg_and_Potomac_Railroad_During_the_Civil_War The Richmond, Fredericksburg, and Potomac Railroad (RF&P) was a strategically important rail line linking the Potomac River near the United States capital at Washington, D.C., and the Confederate capital at Richmond during the American Civil War (1861–1865). Incorporated in 1834, the railroad was seized by Confederates after Virginia seceded in April 1861, but struggled to maintain its lines under the increased traffic of men and matèriel. The Union army captured a portion of the railroad at Aquia Creek, and engineers led by Herman Haupt engaged in sometimes astonishing feats of engineering—laying three miles of track in three days, for instance, and constructing a 400-foot-long bridge in nine days. Throughout the war, portions of the railroad were destroyed and rebuilt, and Confederates found it increasingly difficult to keep up with repairs for lack of equipment and labor. By the end of the war, its lines were almost completely unusable, but within two months of Robert E. Lee's surrender at Appomattox Court House, service between Richmond and Hamilton's Crossing in Spotsylvania County was restored.
Mon, 18 Apr 2011 15:05:23 EST]]> /Weldon_Railroad_Battle_of_the Mon, 18 Apr 2011 15:03:39 EST http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Weldon_Railroad_Battle_of_the The Battle of the Weldon Railroad (or Globe Tavern) was fought August 18–21, 1864, and provided the key element of Union general-in-chief Ulysses S. Grant's fourth offensive during the Petersburg Campaign of the American Civil War (1861–1865). This Union victory resulted in the permanent capture of one of Confederate general Robert E. Lee's most important supply lines. On August 18, the Union Fifth Corps of the Army of the Potomac seized a portion of the vital railroad that connected Petersburg with Wilmington, North Carolina, at a point three miles south of Petersburg. A determined Confederate counterattack the following day battered but did not break the Union troops' hold on the tracks, and a second Confederate assault on August 21 failed miserably.
Mon, 18 Apr 2011 15:03:39 EST]]> /Danville_During_the_Civil_War Fri, 15 Apr 2011 14:50:18 EST http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Danville_During_the_Civil_War Danville, Virginia, in Pittsylvania County, is situated on the banks of the Dan River just three miles from the North Carolina border. During the American Civil War (1861–1865), its relative remoteness spared its citizens from many of the hardships experienced by other Virginians. It successfully converted its pre-war tobacco industry–related buildings into a variety of facilities that supported the Confederate war effort, such as hospitals, factories, and prisons. Because of their relative prosperity throughout the war years, Danville's residents extended charitable assistance to the families of soldiers and other needy individuals. The same isolation and wealth that protected Danville throughout the war made it the object of widespread interest at the end of the war. After the fall of Richmond on April 2, Confederate president Jefferson Davis and his cabinet relocated to Danville, and following Robert E. Lee's surrender at Appomattox Court House, many homeward-bound Confederate troops found the town an attractive passing-through point. Union forces occupied the town briefly at war's end, leaving by the end of 1865.
Fri, 15 Apr 2011 14:50:18 EST]]> /Richmond_and_Danville_Railroad_During_the_Civil_War Fri, 15 Apr 2011 11:47:11 EST http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Richmond_and_Danville_Railroad_During_the_Civil_War The Richmond and Danville Railroad, which connected the Confederate capital at Richmond with Southside Virginia, was an instrumental supply route for the Confederacy during the American Civil War (1861–1865). The railroad began construction in 1848 and maintained 140 miles in Virginia, holding one of the largest rolling stocks. The line moved southwest from Richmond to the city of Danville, Virginia, near the North Carolina border. While this railroad's tracks did not exceed the state's boundaries, it did provide connections to various sections of Virginia, particularly Southwest Virginia, through the Richmond and Petersburg and South Side railroads. Though the Richmond and Danville suffered immense damage during the Civil War, the Confederacy continuously used the railroad until Confederate general Robert E. Lee's surrender at Appomattox in April 1865.
Fri, 15 Apr 2011 11:47:11 EST]]> /American_Civil_War_and_Virginia_The Thu, 14 Apr 2011 13:12:56 EST http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/American_Civil_War_and_Virginia_The The American Civil War was fought from 1861 until 1865. It began after Virginia and ten other states in the southern United States seceded from the Union following the election of Abraham Lincoln as U.S. president in 1860. Worried that Lincoln would interfere with slavery and citing states' rights as a justification, Southern leaders established the Confederate States of America with Jefferson Davis as its president and Richmond as its capital. After Confederates fired on Fort Sumter, South Carolina, the war moved to Virginia. Union forces made several failed attempts to capture Richmond, and Confederate general Robert E. Lee twice invaded the North, only to be defeated in battle. Most, but not all, Virginians supported the Confederacy. In 1863, Unionists in the western part of the state established West Virginia. On the home front, both white and African American families suffered food shortages or were forced to flee their homes. The Confederate government instituted a draft, or conscription law, and in some cases impressed, or confiscated, private property. By the time Lee surrendered in 1865, much of the state had been ravaged by war. But the end of fighting also meant emancipation, or freedom, for enslaved African Americans. In the years that followed, many white Virginians saw their fight for independence as the Lost Cause, while black Virginians struggled to overcome institutionalized white supremacy and earn full citizenship rights.
Thu, 14 Apr 2011 13:12:56 EST]]> /Slavery_During_the_Civil_War Thu, 14 Apr 2011 11:46:34 EST http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Slavery_During_the_Civil_War Virginia had the largest population of enslaved African Americans of any state in the Confederacy, and those slaves responded to the American Civil War (1861–1865) in a variety of ways. Some volunteered to assist the Confederate war effort, while many others were forced to support the Confederacy, working on farms and in factories and households throughout Virginia. Thousands escaped to the Union army's lines, earning their freedom and forcing the United States to develop a uniform policy regarding emancipation. Others remained on their home plantations and farms but took advantage of the war to gain some measure of autonomy for their families. Slaves' wartime actions most often exhibited their strong desire for freedom, and even those who chose not to escape frequently welcomed the Union army as liberators.
Thu, 14 Apr 2011 11:46:34 EST]]> /Refugees_During_the_Civil_War Wed, 13 Apr 2011 10:14:16 EST http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Refugees_During_the_Civil_War Virginia possessed the largest number of the estimated 200,000 Southerners who fled their homes during the American Civil War (1861–1865). There were three broad classes of refugees in Virginia during the war—slaves, white Unionists and other dissidents, and Confederates—although historians have tended to focus only on Confederates. These three groups shared some of the same dislocations, but their experiences of the war differed dramatically. White and black Unionists and dissidents who fled to Union lines contributed to the Northern war effort. Confederates, in contrast, bitterly resented the Union invaders, but the hardships of refugee life exacerbated feelings of war weariness. This, combined with social divisions inside Virginia, factored into Confederate defeat.
Wed, 13 Apr 2011 10:14:16 EST]]> /Pendleton_William_Nelson_1809-1883 Tue, 12 Apr 2011 12:01:30 EST http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Pendleton_William_Nelson_1809-1883 William Nelson Pendleton was an Episcopal priest and chief of artillery for the Army of Northern Virginia during the American Civil War (1861–1865). No Confederate officer in the East generated less heat on the battlefield and more away from it than Pendleton. As Robert E. Lee's chief of artillery, he was responsible for hundreds of guns and thousands of cannoneers, but he never fully utilized the potential of the army's "long arm" in battlefield to meri