Virginia Vignettes

Saul Matthews was a slave from Norfolk County who served the patriot cause in the double capacity of a soldier in the American army and as a spy for the American commanders in the British army during the Revolutionary War. During the time when many slaves of Norfolk and Princess Anne counties followed the [...]

William Flora (1755-1820) was one of the African Americans in the Norfolk area who distinguished himself as a soldier fighting on the American side during the Revolution and eventually found success as a business leader. Flora was a free black born in Portsmouth, Virginia who stood his ground at the Battle of Great Bridge, [...]

In the years prior to the Civil War, many slaves successfully escaped aboard ships leaving from ports in the Upper South, especially Norfolk. In the 1870’s, many former abolitionists published books about their Underground Railroad operations. William Still, an ex-slave who worked as an operator in the Underground Railroad, collected and recorded a [...]

Historians of Norfolk have long regarded the city as an anomaly to the traditional view of a southern seaport. Its white citizens were known for their opposition to the war until the firing on Fort Sumter, at which point they became staunch secessionists. Its free black citizens were known for their quiet abolitionism (e.g., [...]