Browse Items (217 total)

By the seventeenth century, England was becoming a leader in the intercontinental trade of goods. Wealthy merchants created joint-stock companies which promoted exploration and increased trade routes. Investors in these companies pooled their…

Richmond's former city hall building, known as Old City Hall, is located on Broad Steet with one side facing Capitol Square and another facing the current city hall building. The building stands out as a remnant of the Gothic Revival style popular…

Skyline Drive is the main road that traverses the length of Shenandoah National Park. Shenandoah National Park was created in 1926 to preserve the beauty of the Blue Ridge Mountains for recreational use and for future generations. The creation of…

Pocahontas was the daughter of Powhatan, the powerful paramount chief of the Algonquin Indians in eastern Virginia, which the Indigenous Virginians called Tsenacomoco. She was about eleven years old when the English colonists arrived in 1607.…

Relations between Virgina's Indigenous peoples and the colonists who wanted to settle on their land were often contentious and violent. Virginia's colonial government passed multiple laws in the 17th century to regulate the actions of settlers and…

After a public notice appeared in a Richmond newspaper in October 1842 that a petition would be presented to the Virginia General Assembly to sell King William County property known as "Indian town lands," members of the Pamunkey tribe took action.…

Indigenous peoples, including Virginia Indian tribes, were not considered American citizens even after ratification of the Fourteenth Amendment. Between 1880 and 1920, many tribes established their own schools, as Black citizens did, likely for…

This photograph shows a deerskin mantle that was believed to have been presented by Paramount Chief Powhatan (whose given name was Wahunsonacock) to Captain Christopher Newport of the Virginia Company in 1608. The mantle is embroidered with shells…

On May 17, 1954, after nearly two decades of legal challenges against racial segregation in public schools and higher education, the United States Supreme Court ruled in Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas that school segregation was…

Since the establishment of the Virginia colony in 1607, the Church of England (Anglican) was the only religious denomination recognized by the government. Anyone not worshipping with the recognized church was labeled a dissenter. Dissenters did not…