Browse Items (215 total)

During the secession crisis of 1860–1861, attitudes about leaving the United States varied widely throughout Virginia. While the majority of white men supported the secession referendum that was approved in a vote on May 23, 1861, many white…

Theodore de Bry (1528–1598) was born in Liege, Flanders (now part of the Netherlands), to a wealthy Protestant family and was trained as a goldsmith and engraver. As the Spanish and British began to explore North and South America, de Bry became…

Like many “race leaders” in the early 20th century, Maggie L. Walker rose to prominence from modest beginnings as a result of her intellect, education, and business acumen. Her mother was a formerly enslaved woman and her father had served in the…

In 1848, Spain ceded a vast western territory to the United States as part of the Treaty of Hidalgo that ended the Mexican-American War. This included California, home to about 6,500 Californios of Mexican descent, 700 Americans, and 150,000…

The contributions of African Americans to the politics, life, and culture of the Commonwealth of Virginia have often been ignored in traditional histories and textbooks. Historian Luther Porter Jackson (1892–1950), however, researched and wrote…

In 1801, following Gabriel's failed slave rebellion, the Virginia General Assembly decreed that county commissioners of the revenue were to return a complete list of all free Black men and women in their districts on an annual basis. The list was to…

Hopewell, Virginia, was like many small towns in the south that benefited financially from outside industrial development early in the 20th century. At the outbreak of World War I in 1914, the E.I. DuPont de Nemours Company began producing guncotton…

In 1803, Congress appropriated money for an exploration of the Louisiana Purchase, the vast expanse of land the United States had purchased from France for $15 million. Americans had not yet explored much of the 828,000 square miles, and President…

The American Civil War was fought between 1861 and 1865. The war began after eleven southern states, including Virginia, seceded from the United States in the months after Abraham Lincoln was elected president in November 1860. After four years of…

The Brafferton School was one of several colonial “Indian Schools” intended to Christianize and educate Indigenous men and boys in a western scholastic tradition. It was part of a larger effort by Europeans to westernize and Christianize the…