The search results below contain listings from our website. To search our library and museum collections catalogs, please visit the Collections page.
Time Period
1623 to 1763
Image
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.
Time Period
1877 to 1924
Image
After the Civil War, Virginia remained largely rural, but Virginians embraced economic development and the new technologies that were revolutionizing everyday life. At the same time, however, they resisted political and social change––especially racial and gender equality. Living standards improved and income rose, but the political system became less democratic and society was rigidly segregated by race. “The New South” brought economic renewal but little reform. The Virginia legislature rejected a woman’s right to vote in 1919, and it passed a regressive Racial Integrity Act in 1924.
Time Period Chapter
A New Virginia
Image
In the early twentieth century, the nation’s economy was becoming more industrialized and its population more urbanized.
Time Period Chapter
Racial Inequality
Image
Confederate defeat threatened to change white southern identity. Suddenly African Americans were free to determine the...
Time Period Chapter
The French and Indian War
Image
To shield against Indian attacks and French expansion, and to deter runaway slaves from establishing colonies in the...
Time Period Chapter
Virginia and the Planter Class
Image
Governor William Berkeley set out to imitate the society of inequality of wealth and education that he knew in England.
Time Period Chapter
Virginia and Women’s Suffrage
Image
Despite the socio-political changes that occurred during Reconstruction, women at the dawn of the twentieth century...
Time Period Chapter
Virginia’s Traffic in the Atlantic World
Image
Tobacco proved to be good as gold for Virginians. Wealth from its sale and easy navigation of the colony’s rivers...