Browse Items (215 total)

English expansion into Indigenous territories led to several violent eruptions of conflict in the first decades of settlement in Virginia. A series of wars called the Anglo-Powhatan Wars ended in 1646 with the death of Opechancanough, brother of…

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…

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…

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…

Indigenous Virginians and the English colonists conceived landownership in different ways. Tribal members did not "own" land individually, but lived in small communities and hunted, planted, and gathered food or other materials in the larger…

In 1716, Virginia's royal lieutenant governor Alexander Spotswood led an expedition over the Blue Ridge Mountains into the Shenandoah Valley. The explorers located Swift Run Gap, which provided relatively easy passage over the mountains, and…

Alexander Spotswood served from 1710 to 1722 as lieutenant governor of Virginia, in the place of the royal governor who never came to the colony. During his tenure Spotswood sought to improve the colony's security and economy and relations with…

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…

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…

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…