Browse Items (217 total)

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…

Sir Walter Raleigh (ca. 1552–1618) was an English explorer, soldier, writer, and a favorite at the court of Queen Elizabeth I, who granted him a charter to explore North America. Although he sponsored the attempts in the 1580s to colonize Roanoke…

Long associated with coal mining, southwest Virginia has an impressive list of other industries including farming, salt production, timber, and the mining of lead, copper, gypsum, and iron. These industries helped the region become known as the…

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The woman suffrage movement coincided with major national reform movements seeking to improve public education, create public health programs, regulate business and industrial practices, and establish standards to ensure safety in food and public…

Benjamin Henry Latrobe (1764–1820) was born in England, where he worked for an engineer and an architect before immigrating to the United States. He became one of the young nation's most significant architects and designed the U.S. Capitol. While…

Hampton Normal and Agricultural Institute opened in 1868 near the site of Fort Monroe, which had served as a refugee camp for thousands of enslaved men, women, and children who sought freedom there during the Civil War. The fort and surrounding…

The fight for woman suffrage was a decades-long struggle that included many participants who held different opinions on how to achieve the goal of voting rights for women. In 1915, suffragists in Virginia split over this issue. Since its founding in…

The Vietnam War was a 40-year conflict between the communist regime of North Vietnam and its southern allies, known as the Viet Cong, and South Vietnam whose principal ally was the United States. This war stemmed from a war of independence from…

In January 1754, Virginia's lieutenant governor (acting in place of the absent royal governor), Robert Dinwiddie, sent a small force of Virginia soldiers to build a fort at the forks of the Ohio River, where present-day Pittsburgh now stands. In…