http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/img/EV_Logo_sm.gif This is the url http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org The first and ultimate online reference work about the Commonwealth /Chamberlaine_William_W_1836-1923 Thu, 17 May 2012 16:18:54 EST http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/encyclopediavirginia/cat29/~3/b2Dj4P5a9WU/Chamberlaine_William_W_1836-1923 William W. Chamberlaine was a Confederate army officer during the American Civil War (1861–1865), founder of the Norfolk Electric Light Company, first president of the Savings Bank of Norfolk, and a longtime railroad executive who retired as secretary of the Seaboard and Roanoke Railroad. Born in Norfolk, Chamberlaine was wounded at the Battle of Antietam (1862). After the war he worked at a bank with his father before becoming secretary and treasurer of the Seaboard and Roanoke Railroad in 1877. He stayed with the company through the rest of his career, during which time he also founded the light company (1884) and led the Savings Bank (1886). After retiring in 1904, he moved to Washington, D.C., and published a memoir about his wartime service (1912). He died in Washington in 1923.
Thu, 17 May 2012 16:18:54 EST]]>http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Chamberlaine_William_W_1836-1923 /Campbell_Christiana_ca_1722-1792 Fri, 04 May 2012 14:05:03 EST http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/encyclopediavirginia/cat29/~3/JF_bJJOiw-o/Campbell_Christiana_ca_1722-1792 Christiana Campbell was a tavern-keeper in Williamsburg from 1755 until the late 1770s. Campbell, who was raised in Williamsburg, opened her tavern to support herself and her two daughters after her husband died in 1752. For more than twenty years she ran one of Williamsburg's most successful businesses. On the eve of the American Revolution (1775–1783), the colony's leaders periodically met at Campbell's tavern to discuss their connections with England and whether they should seek independence. Campbell evidently closed her tavern in the late 1770s, and, at some point after October 8, 1787, relocated to Fredericksburg, where she died in 1792.
Fri, 04 May 2012 14:05:03 EST]]>http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Campbell_Christiana_ca_1722-1792 /Jackson_Giles_B_1853-1924 Fri, 04 May 2012 13:44:07 EST http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/encyclopediavirginia/cat29/~3/y7QxD9N_42Y/Jackson_Giles_B_1853-1924 Giles B. Jackson, although born enslaved, became an attorney, entrepreneur, real estate developer, newspaper publisher, and civil rights activist in the conservative mold of his mentor, Booker T. Washington. During the American Civil War (1861–1865), he served as a body servant to his master, a Confederate cavalry colonel. After the war, Jackson worked for the Stewart family in Richmond, where he learned to read and write. Subsequently, he was employed in the law offices of William H. Beveridge, who tutored Jackson in the law. In 1887, Jackson became the first African American attorney certified to argue before the Virginia Supreme Court of Appeals. The next year, he helped found a bank associated with the United Order of True Reformers, and in 1900 became an aide to Washington, who had just founded the National Negro Business League in Boston. Jackson organized and promoted the Jamestown Negro Exhibit at the Jamestown Ter-Centennial Exposition of 1907 in the face of criticism from some black intellectuals that his attempt to highlight black achievement was itself an accommodation of Jim Crow segregation. He published a newspaper designed to publicize the exhibition and, in 1908, a book detailing its history. His efforts at the end of his life on behalf of a congressional bill aimed at addressing interracial labor problems failed. Jackson died in 1924.
Fri, 04 May 2012 13:44:07 EST]]>http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Jackson_Giles_B_1853-1924 /Grand_Fountain_of_the_United_Order_of_True_Reformers Thu, 03 May 2012 16:09:02 EST http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/encyclopediavirginia/cat29/~3/ZbzdLYhz5G4/Grand_Fountain_of_the_United_Order_of_True_Reformers The Grand Fountain of the United Order of True Reformers was an African American fraternal organization that became the largest and most successful black business enterprise in the United States between 1881 and 1910. William Washington Browne founded and organized the Grand Fountain in Richmond in January 1881. A former slave, veteran of the Union army during the American Civil War (1861–1865), teacher, and Methodist minister, Browne created the Grand Fountain with a renewed purpose and energy out of the languishing Grand United Order of True Reformers, which began in the 1870s in Alabama and Kentucky. Where the original order taught temperance and provided members with sick and death benefits, Browne's vision expanded into an enterprise that cultivated a growing black middle class by offering services that included a savings bank, a real estate company, a retirement home, and a youth and children's division that taught discipline, thrift, and business skills. Although the Grand Fountain operated until 1934, it was never the same after 1910, when an embezzlement scandal and a number of large loan defaults caused the bank to close its doors. Despite the organization's downfall, the order left a powerful legacy because it provided employment and business opportunities to African Americans and helped to establish community leaders and business networks amidst a period of Jim Crow laws and strict racial segregation in Virginia.
Thu, 03 May 2012 16:09:02 EST]]>http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Grand_Fountain_of_the_United_Order_of_True_Reformers /Browne_William_Washington_1849-1897 Wed, 25 Apr 2012 16:29:29 EST http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/encyclopediavirginia/cat29/~3/6rFTU6gYchQ/Browne_William_Washington_1849-1897 William Washington Browne was a slave, a Union solder during the American Civil War (1861–1865), a teacher, a Methodist minister, and the founder of Richmond's Grand Fountain of the United Order of True Reformers, an African American fraternal organization. As leader of the True Reformers, Browne strived to help members live productive lives without depending upon the white community. By establishing insurance that provided members with sick and death benefits and by encouraging members to purchase land and engage in practices of temperance and thrift, Browne believed that blacks in the post–Civil War South could thrive. Browne's enterprising mind helped lead the True Reformers in creating and organizing a bank which became the nation's first chartered black financial institution and a model that others, such as Maggie Lena Walker, would follow. Browne died in 1897 and the True Reformers initially continued to prosper, but the order collapsed in the wake of the scandalous failure of its bank in 1910.
Wed, 25 Apr 2012 16:29:29 EST]]>http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Browne_William_Washington_1849-1897 /Slave_Ships_and_the_Middle_Passage Wed, 25 Apr 2012 16:18:00 EST http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/encyclopediavirginia/cat29/~3/iQcbmtnHeTw/Slave_Ships_and_the_Middle_Passage The slave ship was the means by which nearly 12.5 million enslaved Africans were transported from Africa to the Americas between 1500 and 1866. Leaving from its home port in Europe, a typical ship made its first passage to the west coast of Africa, trading goods for a full cargo of slaves—people who had been captured in war, convicted of petty crimes, or simply kidnapped. On the second, or "middle," passage, the captain sailed his cargo across the Atlantic Ocean to one or more ports in the New World, where he sold his slaves; purchased goods such as sugar, rum, and molasses; and, on the final passage, returned home. The Portuguese dominated the early slave trade, but at its height, in the eighteenth century, British and American merchants helped bring millions of Africans to the Americas, a small percentage of whom ended up in Virginia. About 15 percent of all Africans who made the voyage died, most from disease. Others suffocated in the tightly packed holds, while some committed suicide, refused to eat, or revolted. Crew members, meanwhile, died at an even higher rate, also mostly from disease. The victims of violence meted out by their officers, sailors in turn dispensed their own brand of terror to the Africans. For Africans who survived, the Middle Passage began with the separation from family and community, and ended with a lifetime of enslavement.
Wed, 25 Apr 2012 16:18:00 EST]]>http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Slave_Ships_and_the_Middle_Passage /Braxton_Carter_Moore_1836-1898 Thu, 19 Apr 2012 15:45:28 EST http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/encyclopediavirginia/cat29/~3/Z2zFEja8jJw/Braxton_Carter_Moore_1836-1898 Carter Moore Braxton was a civil engineer, businessman, and a Confederate artillery officer during the American Civil War (1861–1865). A Norfolk native, he fought in the Confederate Army of Northern Virginia's major campaigns, from the Seven Days' Battles outside Richmond in 1862 to the Gettysburg Campaign in 1863 and the Overland Campaign in 1864. One account claimed that he had seven horses shot from under him, but he was never wounded in the fighting. Following the war, he published a map of the battlefield at Fredericksburg. In June 1866 Braxton became president of the Fredericksburg and Gordonsville Railroad, and later formed his own engineering construction firm, Braxton, Chandler, and Marye, in Newport News. Braxton also founded a railway company and was vice president of both a bank and a gas company. He died of Bright's disease in Newport News in 1898.
Thu, 19 Apr 2012 15:45:28 EST]]>http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Braxton_Carter_Moore_1836-1898 /Alfriend_Edward_M_1837-1901 Thu, 08 Mar 2012 15:03:17 EST http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/encyclopediavirginia/cat29/~3/iv6P-Lv-JM0/Alfriend_Edward_M_1837-1901 Edward M. Alfriend was a Richmond playwright and businessman. During the American Civil War (1861–1865), he served in the 44th Virginia Infantry Regiment, fought in the Shenandoah Valley Campaign of 1864, but was court-martialed and cashiered from the Confederate army in 1865 for being absent without leave and disobeying orders. Following the war, he earned some distinction in his father's insurance company and in 1871 was a delegate to the National Insurance Convention. Alfriend is best known as the author of at least fourteen plays. His work, some of which was produced in New York, was dismissed by reviewers but popular with the public. He died unexpectedly of kidney failure in 1901.
Thu, 08 Mar 2012 15:03:17 EST]]>http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Alfriend_Edward_M_1837-1901 /Colonial_Williamsburg Fri, 20 Jan 2012 15:37:02 EST http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/encyclopediavirginia/cat29/~3/Uu6UuaefmYA/Colonial_Williamsburg Colonial Williamsburg is the restored and reconstructed historic area of Williamsburg, Virginia, a small city between the York and James rivers that was founded in 1632, designated capital of the English colony in 1698, and bestowed with a royal charter in 1722. It was a center of political activity before and during the American Revolution (1775–1783)—where George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, and Patrick Henry debated taxes, slavery, and the inalienable rights of men—and has since become the site of an ambitious restoration project launched in the 1930s and funded largely by the family of John D. Rockefeller Jr. With many of its historic structures rebuilt and with "interpreters" reenacting eighteenth-century life, Colonial Williamsburg has become a landmark in the history of the American preservation movement. More than that, though, the project serves as a self-conscious shrine of American ideals. The history and legacy of slavery, once downplayed at Williamsburg, is now dealt with openly—interpreters are both white and African American—but the focus remains on what the site's originators called "healthful" information about democracy, freedom, and representative government.
Fri, 20 Jan 2012 15:37:02 EST]]>http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Colonial_Williamsburg /Sandys_Sir_Edwin_1561-1629 Wed, 18 Jan 2012 11:11:15 EST http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/encyclopediavirginia/cat29/~3/nodrL-kb41w/Sandys_Sir_Edwin_1561-1629 Sir Edwin Sandys, one of the founders of the Virginia Company, was an author and parliamentarian as well as a colonizer. The son and namesake of an Archbishop of York, Sandys served a brief diplomatic mission that led to travels through Europe which became the basis for A Relation of the State of Religion (1605), a survey of religion on the continent that focused on Catholicism. As a member of Parliament for more than three decades, Sandys was an influential and outspoken critic of King James I, as well as an important supporter of English colonization efforts in Massachusetts, Bermuda, and especially Virginia. Sandys likely helped reorganize the Virginia colony in 1609, transferring control from the king to a company-appointed governor. In 1618, he helped draw up the "Great Charter," which established the General Assembly, and in 1619 he was elected treasurer, the Virginia Company's top leadership position. He failed at diversifying Virginia's economy away from tobacco, but succeeded in a strong effort to promote emigration and bolster its population. A negotiated tobacco monopoly with England in 1622 eventually led to an investigation of the financially troubled Virginia Company and Sandys's leadership in particular. The king revoked the charter and in 1624 the company dissolved. Sandys died in Kent in 1629.
Wed, 18 Jan 2012 11:11:15 EST]]>http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Sandys_Sir_Edwin_1561-1629 /Charlottesville_During_the_Civil_War Thu, 26 May 2011 14:45:02 EST http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/encyclopediavirginia/cat29/~3/fWmRwUHGK-g/Charlottesville_During_the_Civil_War Charlottesville provided the Confederate war effort with swords, uniforms, and artificial limbs during the American Civil War (1861–1865). It was also home to a 500-bed military hospital that employed hundreds of the town's residents, cared for more than 22,000 patients, and was superintended by Dr. James L. Cabell, a professor of medicine at the nearby University of Virginia. In the summer of 1861, the 19th Virginia Infantry Regiment was organized, recruiting most of its members from Charlottesville and Albemarle County. The unit served with the Army of Northern Virginia all the way through to the Appomattox Campaign (1865), including at Pickett's Charge (1863), where it lost 60 percent of its men. African Americans, both enslaved and free, who composed a majority of the town and county's population, were the subject of heightened white fears of violence, their movements controlled by a curfew. In 1863, black members of the biracial First Baptist Church established the Charlottesville African Church. Although the war's fighting stayed mostly to the east and west, a raid led by Union general George A. Custer was stopped just north of the city in the spring of 1864. Early the next year, town leaders surrendered Charlottesville to Custer, preventing the community's destruction.
Thu, 26 May 2011 14:45:02 EST]]>http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Charlottesville_During_the_Civil_War /Labor_in_Virginia_During_the_Twentieth_Century Thu, 07 Apr 2011 11:37:15 EST http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/encyclopediavirginia/cat29/~3/1CAuEIXtah8/Labor_in_Virginia_During_the_Twentieth_Century Thu, 07 Apr 2011 11:37:15 EST]]>http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Labor_in_Virginia_During_the_Twentieth_Century /Kepone Thu, 07 Apr 2011 11:35:53 EST http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/encyclopediavirginia/cat29/~3/fj1EYBTdXnA/Kepone Kepone, also known as chlordecone, is a toxic, nonbiodegradable insecticide that a chemical plant in Hopewell, Virginia dumped into the James River from 1966 until 1975. The chemical's negative effect on the environment was documented and eventually publicized, leading authorities to shut down the Allied Chemical Corporation plant that produced Kepone and to order fishing bans and advisories. The environmental and medical scandal was one of the first of its kind to play out nationally, and while it eventually led to the destruction of the Virginia fishing industry, it also led to improved environmental awareness.
Thu, 07 Apr 2011 11:35:53 EST]]>http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Kepone /Great_Migration_The Thu, 07 Apr 2011 11:26:24 EST http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/encyclopediavirginia/cat29/~3/wTOnC6vEIm0/Great_Migration_The Thu, 07 Apr 2011 11:26:24 EST]]>http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Great_Migration_The /Anderson_Joseph_Reid_1813-1892 Thu, 07 Apr 2011 10:22:21 EST http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/encyclopediavirginia/cat29/~3/se0FthdCa6c/Anderson_Joseph_Reid_1813-1892 Joseph Reid Anderson was an iron manufacturer and Confederate army officer during the American Civil War (1861–1865). In 1848 he purchased the Tredegar Iron Company, the largest producer of munitions, cannon, railroad iron, steam engines, and other ordnance for the Confederate government during the Civil War. One of Anderson's most notable decisions was to introduce slaves into skilled industrial work at the ironworks, and by 1864, more than half the workers at Tredegar were bondsmen. Anderson served as a brigadier general for the Confederate army, and fought and was wounded during the Seven Days' Battles. He resigned his commission in the Confederate Army in 1862 to resume control of the ironworks, and after the war, Anderson was a strong proponent for peace, hoping to keep the Union army from taking possession of the ironworks. He failed, but regained control of Tredegar after he was pardoned by U.S. president Andrew Johnson in 1865. By 1873 Anderson had doubled the factory's prewar capacity, and its labor force exceeded 1,000 men, many of them black laborers and skilled workmen who received equal pay with white workers. Though Tredegar failed to make the transition from iron to steel production late in the nineteenth century, the company survived into the 1980s. Anderson was a well-known member of the Richmond community, serving multiple terms on the Richmond City Council and in the House of Delegates before and after the war.
Thu, 07 Apr 2011 10:22:21 EST]]>http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Anderson_Joseph_Reid_1813-1892 /Taylor_Walter_H_1838-1916 Tue, 05 Apr 2011 11:40:03 EST http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/encyclopediavirginia/cat29/~3/Nzw2b37fxNo/Taylor_Walter_H_1838-1916 Walter H. Taylor served for most of the American Civil War (1861–1865) as adjutant to Robert E. Lee, overseeing the paperwork and administrative functions of the Confederate general's commands. A businessman and banker before and after the war, Taylor is best known for writing books that defended the reputations of Lee and his Army of Northern Virginia, books that today are considered to be important contributions to Lost Cause literature.
Tue, 05 Apr 2011 11:40:03 EST]]>http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Taylor_Walter_H_1838-1916 /Mahone_William_1826-1895 Thu, 31 Mar 2011 10:36:35 EST http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/encyclopediavirginia/cat29/~3/NeL3GdFXvVs/Mahone_William_1826-1895 William Mahone was a Confederate general, Virginia senator (1863–1865), railroad tycoon, U.S. senator (1881–1887), and leader of the short-lived Readjuster Party. Known by his nickname, "Little Billy," Mahone was, in the words of a contemporary, "short in stature, spare almost to emaciation, with [a] long beard, and keen, restless eyes." He attended the Virginia Military Institute on scholarship, worked as a railroad engineer, and eventually became president of the Norfolk and Petersburg Railroad. During the American Civil War (1861–1865), he distinguished himself at the Battle of the Crater (1864), leading a successful counterattack that also involved the massacre of surrendered black troops. After the war, Mahone founded the Atlantic, Mississippi, and Ohio Railroad, which, before it failed, served his business interests in Norfolk and Southside Virginia. In 1881, he was elected to the United States Senate as a member of the Readjuster Party, an unlikely coalition of poor whites and African Americans interested in repudiating a portion of the massive state debt and, in so doing, restoring social services such as free public education. One of the most successful biracial political coalitions in the New South, the Readjusters held power until 1886, when Mahone lost his Senate seat. A gubernatorial bid in 1889 failed, and Mahone died in Washington, D.C., in 1895.
Thu, 31 Mar 2011 10:36:35 EST]]>http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Mahone_William_1826-1895 /Walker_Maggie_Lena_1864-1934 Tue, 08 Mar 2011 13:04:12 EST http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/encyclopediavirginia/cat29/~3/bdHaqtzilnI/Walker_Maggie_Lena_1864-1934 Maggie Lena Walker was an African American entrepreneur and civic leader who broke traditional gender and discriminatory laws by becoming the first woman—white or black—to establish and become president of a bank in the United States—the St. Luke Penny Savings Bank in Richmond. As of 2010, when it was known as Consolidated Bank and Trust Company, it was the oldest continually African American–operated bank in the United States. In her role as grand secretary of the Independent Order of St. Luke, Walker also was indispensable in organizing a variety of enterprises that advanced the African American community while expanding the public role of women. Although as an African American woman in the post–Civil War South she faced social, economic, and political barriers in her life and business ventures, Walker, by encouraging investment and collective action, achieved tangible improvements for African Americans.
Tue, 08 Mar 2011 13:04:12 EST]]>http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Walker_Maggie_Lena_1864-1934 /Dan_River_Mills Wed, 15 Sep 2010 10:58:57 EST http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/encyclopediavirginia/cat29/~3/b_b_Y9s3_Is/Dan_River_Mills Dan River Mills in Danville, Virginia, is a historic manufacturer of apparel fabrics and home fashion products such as bedding. Opened in 1882 as the Riverside Cotton Mills, the company grew to become the largest textile firm in the South. The mills were a prime target for union leaders, who reasoned that they could organize textile plants across the region if they could crack the strategically located Dan River Mills. In 1930 and 1951, major strikes occurred at the mills; both ended in defeat for the workers. From the 1970s, employment levels at the Virginia firm fell dramatically as it struggled to compete with cheap imported textiles, competition that eventually brought the historic firm to final dissolution in 2006.
Wed, 15 Sep 2010 10:58:57 EST]]>http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Dan_River_Mills /Reston_Virginia Wed, 28 Apr 2010 10:22:54 EST http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/encyclopediavirginia/cat29/~3/OJVbLKpe0E0/Reston_Virginia Reston is a community in the Washington, D.C., metropolitan area located in western Fairfax County, Virginia. Conceived as an alternative to ailing cities and sprawling suburbs, Reston, along with Columbia, Maryland, was among the first post–World War II "new towns" in the United States. Founded in 1964 by Robert E. Simon Jr., Reston took its name from Simon's initials and represented a kind of urban utopia—a place with swimming pools, community centers, and tennis courts in every neighborhood and no restrictions based on race. Control of the project was taken over first by Gulf Oil—Simon's major lender—and then Mobil, but the community grew steadily. Its 2007 population was approximately 60,000; the town, meanwhile, enjoys a strong economy based on high technology and information.
Wed, 28 Apr 2010 10:22:54 EST]]>http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Reston_Virginia