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 Nov 2: Danville Massacre killed the Readjuster Party
Episode Notes
A decade after the Civil War, a new party formed in Virginia: the Readjuster Party. With both black and white members, the Readjusters worked to reduce state debt, support public educat…
Week of October 26: Death and funeral of Daniel Webster Davis
Episode Notes
This week in 1913... A sea of humanity blocked the streets around Richmond’s First Baptist Church. They hoped to catch a glimpse of Daniel Webster Davis’ funeral cortege. Davis was a gi…
Week of October 19: Stonewall Jackson was unveiled
Episode Notes
This week in 1921... Swarms of Confederate veterans made their way into Charlottesville. It was the annual Virginia veterans’ reunion replete with picnics and receptions. And this year …
Week of October 12: Joseph Abrams freed his own family
Episode Notes
This week in 1851... Joseph Abrams walked up to the Richmond courthouse. Today he was manumitting his slaves. All nine of them. But this was no ordinary transaction. And Joseph Abrams w…
Week of October 5: Charlottesville banned all public gatherings
Episode Notes
This week in 1918... A century before the COVID-19 pandemic that we’re all intimately familiar with, a deadly influenza ravaged the nation and the world. Near the end of World War I, it…
Week of September 28: Virginia's first black school opens
Episode Notes
This week in 1760... Children excitedly entered the small white building in Williamsburg. It was the first day of school. But this wasn’t any regular school. This was the Bray school fo…
Week of September 21: Virginia goes dry
Episode Notes
Today in 1914... At 6am the bells rang in Charlottesville’s Presbyterian Church. They rang every hour on the hour until 6pm. A reminder to voters that it was Election Day. And not just …
Week of September 14: The declension of Prof. George Blaettermann
Episode Notes
Rude. Cantankerous. Arrogant. These were just a few of the many adjectives that professors and students used to describe modern languages professor George Blaettermann. But his arrival …
Week of September 7: Jamestown burns during the first rebellion in the Colonies
Episode Notes
Trouble began when the Doeg Indians raided a Virginia plantation. The colonists retaliated. But they attacked the wrong tribe -- which meant that that tribe retaliated. Before long, lar…
Week of August 31: Scandalmonger James Callender exposed Thomas Jefferson’s secret
Episode Notes
Political pamphleteer James Callender knew how to ruffle feathers. Thomas Jefferson began supporting him and his anti-federalist writings. But Callender went too far and got thrown in j…
Week of August 24: James T.S. Taylor joined the Union army
Episode Notes
This week in 1863... During the Civil War, the Confederate government forced free and enslaved Blacks to labor for the Confederate army. They were required to report to the county court…
Week of August 17: Hurricane Camille makes landfall
Episode Notes
This week in 1969... Hurricane Camille was a category 5 storm when it slammed into the Gulf Coast. Days later, it stalled over Nelson County. Rain fell in buckets for hours, and peacefu…
Week of August 10: The death of Charles Venable
Episode Notes
This week in 1900... If you live in Charlottesville, you've probably heard his name... Venable Elementary School and the Venable neighborhood. The man was Charles Scott Venable. And whe…
Week of August 3: Eugenics proponent declares most power in the state
Episode Notes
This week in 1923… The Virginia Bureau of Vital Statistics opened in 1912, and the man hired to lead this new department was Walter Plecker. Following the passage of Virginia's Racial I…
Week of July 27: Farmville Civil Rights protests began
Episode Notes
In 1963, Prince Edward County was the only place in the country without public education. Instead of desegregating their schools, they closed them. For years. Most white students went t…
Week of July 20: Elizabeth Key Grinstead won her freedom
Episode Notes
This week in 1656... Slavery started in the Virginia Colony in 1619. Over the next decades, the question of WHO exactly was considered a slave was in flux. Was slavery determined by soc…
Week of July 13: A brutal murder – and a mob makes no efforts at disguise
Episode Notes
The morning train chugged down Afton Mountain. On board was a prisoner named John Henry James. He would not make it to his trial in Charlottesville.
Week of July 6: Virginia’s first sit-down strike erupted in violence
Episode Notes
Back in 1929, the town of Covington, Virginia warmly welcomed their new rayon plant. The factory became an essential part of Covington’s economy and employed more than a thousand people…
Week of June 29: Death of a founding father
Episode Notes
James Madison slowly sat up in bed. He felt very weak that morning. The sun had just risen, and soon the enslaved maid Sukey would bring him his breakfast from the basement kitchen.
But…
Week of June 22: The Chesapeake-Leopard affair
Episode Notes
War between England and France was in full swing. The United States tried to stay neutral, but the British made that task difficult.
The British ship HMS Leopard intercepted the USS Ch…