Browse Items (47 total)

Coal is amongst Virginia’s most valuable natural resources.  The first coal mines in Virginia were developed in the 1790’s as exploration of the land led to the discovery of coal in central Virginia.  Coal was carried from the mines along the…

After the Civil War, the temperance movement swept the nation. Starting with Maine in 1851, states and localities around the country held referendums to let its citizens vote whether or not to ban alcohol. In 1886, Virginia adopted the “Local…

Antonio Sansone was born in 1856 in Termini Imerese, Sicily. He immigrated to the United States in 1880.  By 1899, he had established Antonio Sansone & Company, a wholesale dealer of fruit located on East Main Street, near the city market, in…

Maggie Lena Walker was an African American woman who became a banker, business leader, and social reformer. She was the first woman to establish and become the president of a bank in the United States. Walker was born in 1864 in Richmond, Virginia.…

Virgnia has a long history of growing peanuts. In the 1700’s, people from West Africa were brought to be enslaved in the colonies. Peanuts were a common food item in their home countries and, to feed people familiar products from home. For those…

During the 1920's, a dramatic change in communication and entertainment occurred. Radio allowed people to connect with others across the country and, eventually, across continents. The  development of new technology helped to increase production in…

Maggie Lena Walker was an African American woman, a banker, a business leader, and a civic leader. In 1903, she was the first woman to establish a bank in the United States, the Saint Luke Penny Savings Bank in Richmond. She was also the first…

In the 1930s, the Virginia State Commission on Conservation and Development’s Division of History and Archaeology received funds from the Works Progress Administration’s (later known as the Works Project Administration) Federal Art Project to…

The Atlantic hurricane season officially begins on June 1 and ends November 30, with the season’s peak occurring between August and October. During the very active hurricane season of 1933, the Chesapeake-Potomac Hurricane hit coastal Virginia on…

Waterways provided the people of the Eastern Shore and Hampton Roads regions with access to food, supplies, and transport long before English colonists arrived in 1607. As English settlements displaced and removed Indigenous people from the land near…