For the past several years we’ve been busy working on content about colonial Virginia, and this week we just published an overview entry called, appropriately, Colonial Virginia. In one place you’ll get everyone from Powhatan and Opechancanough to John Smith and Nathaniel Bacon. You’ll get Indian languages and the whole business at Roanoke, not to [...]

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On this day in 1732, George Washington was born at Popes Creek farm in Westmoreland County, the son of Augustine Washington and his second wife, Mary Ball Washington. It’s a little confusing, because by Washington’s calendar, he was actually born on February 11, 1731. That’s because at the time England (and therefore Virginia) used the [...]

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Happy Presidents Day! Virginia was the birthplace of eight of 44 United States presidents (18 percent). Encyclopedia Virginia has entries now on two: George Washington and Woodrow Wilson. Who were the other six? Thomas Jefferson James Madison James Monroe William Henry Harrison John Tyler Zachary Taylor Speaking of Washington, he was really into maps, and [...]

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On this day in 1864, the Confederate Congress changed the requirement of the so-called Twenty-Slave Law so that owners of  just fifteen, rather than twenty, able-bodied slaves were exempted from being drafted into the army. It also required planters with exempted overseers to deliver one hundred pounds of bacon or its equivalent for every slave [...]

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Happy birthday to Joseph Reid Anderson, who was born on this day in 1813 in Botetourt County. In 1848 he purchased the Tredegar iron works in Richmond, or what became the largest producer of munitions, cannon, railroad iron, steam engines, and other ordnance for the Confederate government during the Civil War. On this day in [...]

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On this day in 1862, Union general Ulysses S. Grant was busy laying siege to Fort Donelson on the Cumberland River in Tennessee when Confederate troops under John B. Floyd attempted to escape. Floyd was a former Virginia governor, son of a governor, and a former United States secretary of war who, while in office, [...]

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It is with great sadness that we report the death of Sara Bearss, editor of the Dictionary of Virginia Biography at the Library of Virginia and a good friend of Encyclopedia Virginia. Our thoughts and prayers go out to her friends, family, and colleagues. She will be missed. IMAGE: Sunset Near River Road, Richmond, Virginia [...]

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IMAGE: Washington, D.C., 1916. “Convention of former slaves. Annie Parram, age 104; Anna Angales, age 105; Elizabeth Berkeley, 125; Sadie Thompson, 110.” National Photo Company Collection glass negative. (Shorpy)

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The Encyclopedia Virginia staff has gone fishing to Mount Vernon today. In our absence, here’s a roundup of this day in Virginia history: On this day in 1587, after being tried and convicted of plotting the death of Queen Elizabeth of England, Mary Stuart was beheaded at Fotheringhay Castle in Northamptonshire. In 1693, a royal [...]

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Hontas Farmer, a graduate student at DePaul University, has briefly set aside her interest in quantum physics in order to take issue with our entry on Princess Nicketti, written by Helen C. Rountree. First, a bit of background: Princess Nicketti is the name given to a Virginia Indian woman believed by some to have been [...]

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On this day in 1865, Confederate general John H. Winder died of a heart attack. He was old by then, having served in the Seminole War down in Florida and the Mexican War, and after a stint as Richmond‘s provost marshal he was now running all Confederate prisons in Georgia and Alabama. Which included Andersonville. [...]

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Two birthdays today. On this day in 1882 Annie Bethel Scales Bannister was born on a farm in Henry County. Better known by her married name, Spencer, she was a poet, a civil rights activist, a teacher, a librarian, and a gardener. While fewer than thirty of her poems were published in her lifetime, she [...]

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On this day in 1811, King George III, who suffered from a debilitating physical and mental illness (possibly porphyria), was declared unfit to rule. His son George, Prince of Wales, was appointed regent.

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On this day in 1924, Woodrow Wilson, born in Staunton, died not far away in Washington, D.C. (He is the only president to be buried there.) Wilson had never been particularly healthy, suffering from the flu and attacks of asthma as president and then, in 1919, the stroke that paralyzed him on the left side [...]

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On this day in 1973, the Richmond Times-Dispatch featured a photograph of Adèle Clark on its front page with the skeptical headline, “Beginning of an ERA?” The ninety-year-old Clark had shown up at the Highway Department auditorium—the largest meeting room near the Capitol—along with 800 others to express her opinion on the Equal Rights Amendment. [...]

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On this day in 1864, Confederate forces under George E. Pickett were fighting down in North Carolina. They faced Union troops who were hip deep in swamps and dug into the riverbanks around New Bern, and after a tough, middle-of-the-night firefight, Pickett’s Virginians managed to cut off and capture most of Company F, 2nd North [...]

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