Browse Items (217 total)

John Murray, fourth earl of Dunmore, was the last royal governor of Virginia. Assuming office in September 1771, he won support during what became known as Lord Dunmore’s War in 1774. Ostensibly to protect white settlers in the Ohio Valley region…

The Sons of Liberty threw hundreds of tea chests into Boston harbor in December 1773 to protest the passage of the Townshend Acts, which taxed a number of goods, including tea. The next year, Parliament responded to this destruction of about $1.7…

In May 1773 the British Parliament passed the Tea Act, granting the British East India Company a monopoly on importing tea. Intended in part to discourage colonists from buying smuggled tea on which they paid no taxes, the act implicitly acknowledged…

This portrait of Mary Willing Byrd (1740–1814) was painted early in the 1770s by artist Matthew Pratt. Born in Philadelphia, she was the daughter of a wealthy merchant and a god-daughter of Benjamin Franklin. In 1761 she married William Byrd…

During the 1760s, many Americans came to believe that the British government was imposing unfair taxes on goods coming into the colonies. Parliament levied its first direct tax on the colonists in 1764 to help pay for the costs of fighting the Seven…

Located in the Accomack County court records from 1758 is this advertisement for a fugitive enslaved person named Will. Prominent Richmond County planter Landon Carter placed the ad. Carter enslaved hundreds of adults and children on his plantation.…

The Fry-Jefferson map was first published in 1753. It was, at the time, the most comprehensive map of 18th century Virginia. Joshua Fry and Peter Jefferson were two of the most successful surveyors in the Virginia colony. They collaborated and…

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…

A bookplate is a small-sized, decorative label that is adhered to the inside front cover of a book. They are used to identify the owner of a book for personal use or for use in a library. Bookplates are designed to reflect a person’s interests or to…

Among his many skills, George Washington was a well-respected land surveyor. After the death of his father in 1743, eleven-year-old George Washington did not attend school in England like his older half-brothers, but had private tutors and may have…