This Week in Virginia History
Sure, Virginia history includes big moments, big battles, and big names. But the richer history is full of smaller events occurring in the fullness of time. The disenfranchised, the nonconformists, and just regular people making Virginia history. Week in, week out. This Week in Virginia History explores those stories, curated by Nathan Moore and culled from the vast archives at Encyclopedia Virginia.
- Update frequency
- every 6 days
- Average duration
- 2 minutes
- Episodes
- 125
- Years Active
- 2020 - 2023
Week of March 22: The Jamestown Massacre
Episode Notes
This week in 1622... Ever since Pocahontas married John Rolfe, the Native Americans and English had been at a relative peace with each one another. But then, the tobacco trade exploded.…
Week of March 15: The Marquis de Lafayette came to Virginia
Episode Notes
This week in 1781... The 23-year old Marquis de Lafayette had spent a year drumming up French support for the American Revolution. And now he was back in America, full of revolutionary …
Week of March 8: The battle of the ironclads
Episode Notes
This week in 1862... After Virginia seceded from the Union, retreating Federal forces scuttled and sank ships in Portsmouth harbor. They didn’t want the ships to fall into Confederate h…
Week of March 1: The first Black-owned bank in the U.S. opens in Richmond
Episode Notes
This week in 1888... The Rev. William Washington Browne worked to transform Richmond's black community. It began with a bank. Browne knew that a Black bank needed to be run by Blacks. B…
Week of Feb 22: The Dahlgren Affair
Episode Notes
This week in 1864... Federal Colonel Ulric Dahlgren felt it was his duty to contribute more to the war effort. He and Brigadier General Hugh Judson Kilpatrick devised a plan to invade R…
Week of Feb 15: Shadrach Minkins was arrested in Boston
Episode Notes
The Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 threatened self-emancipated Black people in the northern states. The federal law required the return of escaped slaves from one state to another. And one …
Week of Feb 8: An appeal to Jefferson for Black schools
Episode Notes
Robert Pleasants was a man of action. He lived his beliefs. As a Quaker, that meant being an anti-slavery activist. So when the Virginia General Assembly debated a bill to provide for p…
Week of Feb 1: The Jefferson Family Feud
Episode Notes
For years, Thomas Jefferson’s grandson Jeff Randolph and his brother-in-law Charles Bankhead had been at loggerheads. Eyewitness accounts differ as to who threw the first blow, but one …
Week of Jan 25: Virginia’s black army regiment gets mustered out of service
Episode Notes
War fervor was in full swing when the U.S. declared war on Spain in 1898. More than 800 Black Virginians formed the 6th Virginia Volunteer Regiment. The regiment dealt with racism throu…
Week of Jan 18: The "Lost Cause" narrative gathered steam
Episode Notes
This week in 1872…The “Lost Cause” narrative gathered steam. The chapel at Washington & Lee University was packed with a crowd gathered to hear Confederate general Jubal Early deliver h…
Week of January 11: America gets more than it bargained for
Episode Notes
Thomas Jefferson’s administration was itching to settle beyond the Mississippi River. The plan was simple. James Monroe would go to Paris and try to buy the City of New Orleans from Nap…
Week of January 4: Virginia’s first woman in Congress starts her term
Episode Notes
Virginia officially became part of the United States when it ratified the Constitution in 1788. For the next 200 years, only men represented Virginia’s citizens in the U.S. Congress. Un…
Week of Decembrer 28: Holiday Horror
Episode Notes
This week in 1811... The day after Christmas began with merriment. The Richmond Theatre scheduled two full-length plays to delight the city’s residents. But the theatre was a disaster w…
Week of December 21: The Slipper Slayer gets a Governor’s pardon
Episode Notes
Edith Maxwell came home late one night to find her angry father waiting up. A scuffle ensued. Edith struck her father with her high heeled slipper and he died. She was arrested for murd…
Week of December 14: George Washington died
Episode Notes
Martha Washington sat at the end of the curtained bed. She watched the labored breathing of her husband. In the hallway three doctors discussed George’s serious condition in muffled voi…
Week of Dec 7: UVA's Company G disbanded
Episode Notes
This week in 1861... On the eve of the Civil War, the University of Virginia was a Confederate cradle. Even before Virginia left the Union, students broke into the Rotunda to raise the …
Week of Nov 30: Ferdinando Fairfax's emancipation plan
Episode Notes
This week in 1790... The end of the American Revolution brought forth a freedom fervor, but slavery was heavily entrenched in Commonwealth. Plans for outright abolition fell flat. Enter…
Week of Nov 23: Blackbeard’s reign ends
Episode Notes
He was the terror of the colonial coastline. Better known as the pirate Blackbeard, Edward Teach attacked ships from Virginia to Jamaica. And Virginia Lt. Governor Alexander Spotswood w…
Week of Nov 16: Court orders two men sold into slavery
Episode Notes
It started as a typical workday for William Breedlove and William Chandler. The free Black men operated a ferry boat across the Rappahannock River. One day, they ferried a black man who…
Week of Nov 9: The death of a 19th century founder
Episode Notes
This week in 1828... Virginia-born former slave Lott Cary had saved up and bought his freedom. He felt it was his mission in life to preach the Gospel to Africans. So when the American …