Browse Items (217 total)

When the first English settlers arrived in 1607, the Church of England served as the official church of the Virginia Colony. Under the 1689 English Act of Toleration, Protestants who were not members of the Church of England were still required to…

Abraham Skipwith was the first Black man documented as a property owner in Richmond’s historic Jackson Ward district. Skipwith became a wealthy landowner after emancipating himself in the years following the American Revolution. His story illustrates…

The Marquis de Lafayette (1757–1834) was a French aristocrat whose family fortune ranked him among the wealthiest in France, but he was also one of America’s best-known Revolutionary heroes. Gilbert de Motier de Lafayette inherited his title at the…

Petitions to the General Assembly were the primary catalyst for legislation in the Commonwealth from 1776 until 1865. Public improvements, military claims, divorce, freeing of enslaved people, incorporation of towns, and religious freedom were just…

By 1775, approximately half a million enslaved Americans were living in the thirteen colonies. Thousands of Black Americans participated in the American Revolution. Some joined the British while others fought with the Americans, depending on whom…

By 1780, the Continental Army had been battling British forces for five years during the American Revolution. Although the Americans had secured some key victories in places as far-flung as New York and South Carolina, the British still held…

By 1775 more than half a million Black Americans, most of them enslaved, were living in the thirteen colonies. Thousands participated in the American Revolution. They often gave their loyalty to the side which offered the best path to freedom from…

The American Revolution was not only fought along the eastern seabord between the Continental Army and patriot militia and the British troops and their loyalist militia allies. An equally fierce battle raged in the Appalachian mountains between the…

Virginia has had three capitals since the English settlers first organized the colony's government. The first capital was located at Jamestown until 1699, when the House of Burgesses passed a resolution moving it to Williamsburg. In 1779, the General…

Women served in many capacities during the American Revolution. Thousands of women traveled with their husbands when they served in the Continental Army. Known as "camp followers," they marched with the supply wagons, set up camps nearby. These women…