Browse Items (215 total)

On April 14, 1945, U.S. President Franklin Delano Roosevelt was buried in Hyde Park, New York, following funeral services at the White House. Roosevelt had been elected four times to the office of president, a feat never matched, and one that is now…

Patrick Henry (1736–1799) could be considered Virginia’s most outspoken revolutionary. Born in Hanover County, Henry studied law on his own and was admitted to the bar in 1760. In 1763, he spoke out against the action of the king's Privy Council,…

The power of the president to pardon those who commit offenses against the United States is enumerated in the Article Two of the U. S. Constitution. A presidential pardon is an executive order granting clemency for a conviction of a crime, with the…

Lynchburg native Desmond T. Doss (1919–2006) was the first conscientious objector to receive the Congressional Medal of Honor. A conscientious objector is one who is opposed to serving in the armed forces and/or bearing arms on the grounds of moral…

Thomas West (1576–1618), the twelfth Baron De La Warr, was appointed by King James I in 1606 to be part of the royal council that oversaw the Virginia Company of London. He monitored the situation in the Virginia colony from England and may have…

Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826) was born at Shadwell, along the Rivanna River in what is now Albemarle County. When his father died, the fourteen-year-old Jefferson inherited more than 5,000 acres of land, about twenty enslaved laborers, and his…

William Berkeley (1605–1677) was the longest-serving royal governor of Virginia. He served as a Crown governor (an appointee of the King) between 1642 until 1652 and again from 1660 until his death in 1677. In his late twenties, Berkeley was a part…

James Madison (1751–1836) was one of the most influential and successful Virginians of the Revolutionary generation. His service in the House of Delegates and in the Continental Congress taught him to be a pragmatic politician, something that served…

Black Hawk, born in 1767 and known in his native language as Makataimeshekiakiak, was a Sauk warrior and tribal leader. The Sauk lived on the Rock River, a tributary of the Mississippi, in what is now Illinois, and fought against the United States…

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…