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Time Period

16,000 BCE to 1622 CE

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.

Media

1619: Jamestown and the Forging of American Democracy

On October 17, 2018, James Horn delivered the J. Harvie Wilkinson, Jr. Lecture, “1619: Jamestown and the Forging of American Democracy.”

Along the...

Time Period

1825 to 1860

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

1877 to 1924

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.

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2023 Hazel and Fulton Chauncey Lecture - The Jeffersonians

On July 19, 2023, historian and bestselling author, Kevin R. C. Gutzman, presented the 2023 Hazel and Fulton Chauncey Lecture. Before the consecutive...

Article

A Beardless Boy of Seventeen Years

Even before Aristophanes wrote of Lysistrata’s plan to end the Peloponnesian War (431–404 BCE) by convincing the women...

Exhibition

A Better Life for Their Children:

Two people hold an ornately frame painted portrait of two people in early 1900s dress

From 1912-37, the Rosenwald schools program built 5,357 schools, shops, and teacher’s homes across 15 Southern and...

Article

A Connected Legacy: John Marshall and George Washington

John Marshall’s inscription inside The Life of George Washington book

Both the first object acquired by the Virginia Historical Society and arguably one of the best objects in the VMHC...

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A Constitutional Commonwealth

On July 13, 2023, historian and author Brent Tarter lead a discussion of his new book, Constitutional History of Virginia, covering more than 300...

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A Fiendish Murder: The Sad Saga of Charles and Susan Watkins

On April 22, 2020, historian John Long gave a virtual Banner Lecture that examined the trial of Charles Watkins for the murder of his wife, which was...

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A Kingdom Strange: The Brief and Tragic History of the Lost Colony of Roanoke

On May 27, 2010, James Horn discussed his book A Kingdom Strange: The Brief and Tragic History of the Lost Colony of Roanoke.

In 1587, a small band...

Article

A Landscape Saved: The Garden Club of Virginia at 100

The landscape of the state is enchanting and, when threatened, Garden Club members unite to educate themselves and the...

Article

A Life Rediscovered: The Story of Emily Winfree

An oval portrait in black and white of Emily Winfree

Emily Winfree, an African American woman who lived through slavery, the Civil War, Reconstruction, and Jim Crow, never...

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A Nation of Deadbeats: An Uncommon History of America's Financial Disasters

On November 8, 2012, Scott Reynolds Nelson delivered a Banner Lecture entitled "A Nation of Deadbeats: An Uncommon History of America's Financial...

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A New Era in Building: Black Educational Activism in Goochland County, 1911–1932

Join historians Brian Daugherity and Alyce Miller for a lecture about Black educational activism in Goochland County in the early twentieth century.

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Time Period Chapter

A New Virginia

In the early twentieth century, the nation’s economy was becoming more industrialized and its population more urbanized.

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A Saga of the New South: Race, Law, and Public Debt in Virginia

On March 16, Brent Tarter delivered a Banner Lecture entitled “A Saga of the New South: Race, Law, and Public Debt in Virginia.”

A Saga of the New...

Media

A. D. Price Funeral Establishment

In this video, Lauranett Lee, former Curator of African American History, discusses the A. D. Price Funeral Establishment, one of the oldest African...

Media

Abolitionist Art and the American Slave Trade

On January 26, 2012, Maurie D. McInnis delivered a lecture entitled "Abolitionist Art and the American Slave Trade."

In 1853 Eyre Crowe, a young...

Article

Abolitionist Pitcher

Learn about how this pitcher based on Uncle Tom's Cabin was used as propoganda in the mid-1800s.