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Time Period
16,000 BCE to 1622 CE
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At the time of the great northern glaciers, Native Americans followed the game they hunted to Virginia. Ten thousand years later, as the cold of the Ice Age gave way to a warmer, drier climate, they relied also on foraging and farming. After about 900 CE they settled into villages that united into chiefdoms. In 1607, in pursuit of opportunity in a new world, English settlers intruded into an eastern Virginia chiefdom of thirty-two tribes (15,000 to 20,000 people). Its leader then was Wahunsenacawh, whom the new settlers called by his title, Powhatan.
Time Period
1623 to 1763
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The colony prospered. Tobacco—grown by indentured servants and enslaved Africans—sustained the economy. The first popularly elected legislative body in the New World was established. Following the failed Indian uprising in 1622 and on orders from London, the native peoples were “removed” and reduced in number to 3,000 by a “War of Extermination.” During the next hundred years, the remainder of Virginia’s population expanded a hundred fold. Social inequalities, however, and frontier conflicts with the French and with Indians made this distant dominion increasingly difficult to govern from London.
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Byrd Family
A man driven by enormous ambition, William Byrd II of Westover was an exceptional figure in colonial America. Educated in
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Copies and Adaptations of de Bry
For more than two centuries, the 1590 engravings of Virginia Indians by de Bry and van Veen were copied for other
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Fanciful Figures
View illustrations of Virginia Indians as they were imagined by artists.
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Fitzhugh Family
The colonial history of Stafford and King George counties—and thus of northern Virginia—is inseparable from that of the large
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Gordon Family
The Gordon portraits depict the family of an Ulster merchant and planter of Scottish origin who emigrated to Lancaster County
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Interpreting Historical Images
A historical image can be interpreted in a number of ways. Each approach brings a different set of considerations, or frame
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Invented Scenes for Narratives
When artists were hired to illustrate written accounts of events in Virginia, they did not aim to make realistic
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The House
Virginia House was completed in 1928, and in 1929 it was presented to VHS.
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Theodore de Bry's Engravings
In 1590, Theodore de Bry reprinted Thomas Hariot's A briefe and true report of the new found land of Virginia. The text was
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Wormeley Family
The Wormeley family was one of the earliest to achieve prominence in Virginia. The first Ralph Wormeley, resident in the