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 /Colonial_Virginia Thu, 16 May 2013 14:50:38 EST http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Colonial_Virginia Thu, 16 May 2013 14:50:38 EST]]> /Account_of_the_Lottery_in_Leicester_by_Rogert_Hawfeilde_June_12_1618 Mon, 08 Apr 2013 13:57:29 EST http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Account_of_the_Lottery_in_Leicester_by_Rogert_Hawfeilde_June_12_1618 Mon, 08 Apr 2013 13:57:29 EST]]> /Relation_of_Juan_de_la_Carrera_March_1_1600 Mon, 08 Apr 2013 13:50:32 EST http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Relation_of_Juan_de_la_Carrera_March_1_1600 Mon, 08 Apr 2013 13:50:32 EST]]> /Newes_from_Virginia_The_lost_Flocke_Triumphant_by_Lord_Robert_Rich_1610 Mon, 08 Apr 2013 13:29:03 EST http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Newes_from_Virginia_The_lost_Flocke_Triumphant_by_Lord_Robert_Rich_1610 Mon, 08 Apr 2013 13:29:03 EST]]> /A_true_and_sincere_declaration_of_the_purpose_and_ends_of_the_plantation_begun_in_Virginia_by_the_Virginia_Company_of_London_1609 Mon, 08 Apr 2013 12:40:41 EST http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/A_true_and_sincere_declaration_of_the_purpose_and_ends_of_the_plantation_begun_in_Virginia_by_the_Virginia_Company_of_London_1609 Mon, 08 Apr 2013 12:40:41 EST]]> /Mahone_William_1826-1895 Mon, 08 Apr 2013 11:57:08 EST http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Mahone_William_1826-1895 Mon, 08 Apr 2013 11:57:08 EST]]> /Letter_from_the_Council_of_the_Virginia_Company_of_London_to_the_Mayor_and_Aldermen_of_the_City_of_Norwich_December_4_1617 Mon, 08 Apr 2013 11:37:40 EST http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Letter_from_the_Council_of_the_Virginia_Company_of_London_to_the_Mayor_and_Aldermen_of_the_City_of_Norwich_December_4_1617 Mon, 08 Apr 2013 11:37:40 EST]]> /Petition_from_Alderman_Johnson_et_al_to_King_James_I_April_1623 Mon, 08 Apr 2013 09:43:47 EST http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Petition_from_Alderman_Johnson_et_al_to_King_James_I_April_1623 Mon, 08 Apr 2013 09:43:47 EST]]> /_Instructions_to_George_Yeardley_by_the_Virginia_Company_of_London_November_18_1618 Wed, 20 Mar 2013 09:02:40 EST http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/_Instructions_to_George_Yeardley_by_the_Virginia_Company_of_London_November_18_1618 Wed, 20 Mar 2013 09:02:40 EST]]> /Late_Woodland_Period_AD_900-1650 Tue, 29 Jan 2013 14:36:46 EST http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Late_Woodland_Period_AD_900-1650 Tue, 29 Jan 2013 14:36:46 EST]]> /Tobacco_in_Colonial_Virginia Tue, 29 Jan 2013 14:14:00 EST http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Tobacco_in_Colonial_Virginia Tue, 29 Jan 2013 14:14:00 EST]]> /Reston_Virginia Thu, 29 Nov 2012 16:06:29 EST http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Reston_Virginia Thu, 29 Nov 2012 16:06:29 EST]]> /Progressive_Movement Wed, 19 Sep 2012 16:01:21 EST http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Progressive_Movement The Progressive movement in Virginia was a series of efforts by early-twentieth-century residents to correct what they perceived as problems or deficiencies in government, business, and society. Their work was part of a national reform movement that existed from late in the 1890s until the United States entered World War I in 1917. Progressive reform in Virginia had many parallels with its national counterpart, but like the rest of the movement's southern manifestation, it also varied from it in important ways. Nationally, Progressives sought to expand democracy, aid victims of industrialization, bring order and efficiency to government and business, and impose morality. State reformers, by contrast, showed little interest in social uplift or racial justice, or in increasing democracy or furthering workers' rights. Instead, they focused on adjusting government and society in ways that both safeguarded the existing social and racial hierarchy and provided order, stability, and economic progress. In Virginia, the movement's participants were predominately urban white professionals, businessmen, educators, church leaders, and politicians; or their wives and daughters. Although the state's reformers had a variety of aims, they worked primarily on restructuring the electorate; improving public education; modifying cities in ways that made them more healthful, efficient, and orderly; upgrading roads; and enacting prohibition of alcohol. They achieved these and other reforms by successfully lobbying government officials for new laws, oversight agencies, and funding measures. While Virginia's Progressives more often than not worked together on their various causes, like reformers elsewhere in the nation, they also occasionally disagreed about the practicality of specific solutions. Those being reformed—typically poor white and African American residents—opposed many of the movement's efforts but lacked the political power to block them.
Wed, 19 Sep 2012 16:01:21 EST]]> /Pistole_Fee_Dispute_The Mon, 17 Sep 2012 16:43:25 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.
Mon, 17 Sep 2012 16:43:25 EST]]> /Members_of_the_Virginia_State_Corporation_Commission Mon, 17 Sep 2012 10:23:35 EST http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Members_of_the_Virginia_State_Corporation_Commission Mon, 17 Sep 2012 10:23:35 EST]]> /Great_Depression_in_Virginia Fri, 14 Sep 2012 08:22:50 EST http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Great_Depression_in_Virginia The Great Depression of the 1930s was the most serious economic crisis in American history. A combination of economic maladies—including overproduction, inequitable distribution of wealth, excessive borrowing and speculation, inappropriate tax and tariff policies, and a shaky banking structure—produced an economic collapse that was announced by the stock market crash of October 1929. Over the next four years, millions of Americans (amounting to 25 percent of the work force) lost their jobs; millions more worked only part-time. Factories closed their doors, homes and farms were foreclosed, and the banking system verged on collapse. Itinerants, soup kitchens, and shantytowns became common features of the urban landscape. In Virginia the economic impact of the Great Depression was less severe than in other parts of the country. While the state suffered industrial reverses, above-normal unemployment, and much hardship, its citizens did not experience, in the same degree, the wholesale misfortune that much of the rest of the nation endured.
Fri, 14 Sep 2012 08:22:50 EST]]> /Gift_Exchange_in_Early_Virginia_Indian_Society Tue, 28 Aug 2012 09:17:06 EST http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Gift_Exchange_in_Early_Virginia_Indian_Society Algonquian-speaking Virginia Indians during the Late Woodland Period (AD 900–1650) practiced a gift-exchange economy. All Indians were required to give, accept, and, at a later date, reciprocate; failure to do so could lead to punishments of varying kinds. Rather than value the goods being exchanged, Indians valued the relationships of the people exchanging, with participants in the economy collecting personal debts rather than material wealth. In fact, goods were not owned but continuously passed from gift-giver to receiver. This system contrasted sharply with the commodity-exchange system with which Europeans were familiar, and each culture's unfamiliarity with the other's economy led to tensions and even violence. In 1571, a baptized Virginia Indian named Don Luís led a party that killed a group of Jesuit missionaries, an act of violence that can be best explained as a response to a violation of gift-exchange protocol. The Jesuits had declined to offer gifts to Don Luís's people while trading with neighboring groups, an act of humiliation that led to their deaths. At Roanoke, the Indians allowed such slights to pass, instead manipulating the English colonists for their own political advantage. At Jamestown, however, English ignorance of the gift exchange unleashed more violence, which was often symbolic. In one case, the mouths of English corpses were stuffed with bread, a repeated gift of sustenance for which the English had failed to reciprocate. The derisive term "Indian giver," the meaning of which has changed over time, has come to represent the frustration that resulted from each group's ignorance of the other's economic system.
Tue, 28 Aug 2012 09:17:06 EST]]> /Paleoindian_Period Wed, 30 May 2012 09:59:35 EST http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Paleoindian_Period Wed, 30 May 2012 09:59:35 EST]]> /Poverty_and_Poor_Relief_During_the_Civil_War Thu, 19 Apr 2012 16:21:58 EST http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Poverty_and_Poor_Relief_During_the_Civil_War Poverty and poor relief, especially in times of acute food shortages, were major challenges facing Virginia and Confederate authorities during the American Civil War (1861–1865). At first, most Confederates were confident that hunger would not be a problem for their nation. Southern farms and black slaves were expected to produce ample quantities of food while white men fought to secure independence. The reality, however, was quite different. The suffering of soldiers' families and the lower classes in cities resulted in a bread riot in the Confederate capital at Richmond, stimulated desertion from the army, and threatened the entire war effort. Governments at the local, state, and federal level responded with unprecedented efforts to control prices, supply provisions, and ease suffering, and yet neither the Confederate government nor the Virginia state government found a way to take effective action against inflation, speculation, or extortion. Direct relief, free markets, city-sponsored stores, and other innovative measures came into being. Nevertheless, these efforts proved inadequate, and the very idea of being dependent on charity was unsatisfactory to the yeoman class. Consequently, the problems of poverty seriously undermined the war effort in Virginia and throughout the Confederacy.
Thu, 19 Apr 2012 16:21:58 EST]]> /Speculation_During_the_Civil_War Tue, 03 Apr 2012 16:50:17 EST http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Speculation_During_the_Civil_War Speculation, which involved driving up prices on desperately needed consumer goods, was both rampant and roundly condemned in the Confederacy during the American Civil War (1861–1865). Along with conscription, the so-called Twenty Slave Law, and impressment, speculation helped to undermine support for the war among the less wealthy, in particular. Appalled at soaring prices, Virginians looked for explanations. The Union blockade of the Atlantic coast was partly to blame, and so was the Confederate Congress. Beholden to a states' rights philosophy and suspicious of a strong federal government, lawmakers refused to levy the taxes necessary to finance the war, thus guaranteeing high inflation. The victims of that inflation, however, preferred to point fingers at greedy speculators, or "extortioners." Such individuals certainly existed, but government attempts to regulate or punish them were either not forthcoming or proved to be ineffective. Accusations of speculation, meanwhile, were sometimes accompanied by anti-Semitism, challenges of patriotism, and, in one instance, arson.
Tue, 03 Apr 2012 16:50:17 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]]> /Salutary_Neglect Wed, 18 Jan 2012 17:07:41 EST http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Salutary_Neglect Wed, 18 Jan 2012 17:07:41 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]]> /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]]> /Davis_Westmoreland_1859-1942 Thu, 07 Apr 2011 11:11:50 EST http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Davis_Westmoreland_1859-1942 Westmoreland Davis was a Democratic governor of Virginia from 1918 to 1922. During his term as governor, Davis streamlined the state's fiscal operations and reformed its penal system. An agricultural reformer, he also cofounded the Virginia State Dairymen's Association in 1907 and represented the Progressive farm lobby through his monthly journal the Southern Planter.
Thu, 07 Apr 2011 11:11:50 EST]]> /Dan_River_Mills Wed, 15 Sep 2010 10:58:57 EST http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Dan_River_Mills Dan River Mills in Danville, Virginia, is a historic manufacturer of apparel fabrics and home fashion products such as bedding. Opened in 1882 as the Riverside Cotton Mills, the company grew to become the largest textile firm in the South. The mills were a prime target for union leaders, who reasoned that they could organize textile plants across the region if they could crack the strategically located Dan River Mills. In 1930 and 1951, major strikes occurred at the mills; both ended in defeat for the workers. From the 1970s, employment levels at the Virginia firm fell dramatically as it struggled to compete with cheap imported textiles, competition that eventually brought the historic firm to final dissolution in 2006.
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