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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
1825 to 1860
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The decades following the presidency of Virginian James Monroe (1817–1825) saw populations shift, the economy expand, and attitudes about slavery harden. More and more families migrated from the soil-depleted Tidewater and Piedmont, while new and diverse peoples in the Shenandoah Valley prospered. The beginnings of the Industrial Revolution encouraged the growth of industry, urban centers, and “internal improvements” (transportation by road, rail, and canal). Those “improvements”––funded by taxes––became a subject of political debate. Slavery was as vehemently attacked by abolitionists as it was defended by proponents.
Time Period
1925 to Today
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A century of foreign wars expanded the presence of both the federal government in Northern Virginia and the military in the Hampton Roads area. Growth in those regions helped transform the state from a rural to a primarily urban one, from a poor to a relatively affluent one, and from a state with few non-natives to one with many. Only painstakingly, however, have minorities gained equality. Since 1960, the population has doubled. The largest employer now is the government, next is agriculture, which adds billions of dollars to the state’s economy.