Virginia Vignettes

The America we know today is forever in debt to a pivotal decision made on December 15, 1791. On this day, the Bill of Rights, drafted by Virginian James Madison, went into effect as a vote of ratification came from Virginia, the 10th and final state to do so to gain the necessary two-thirds approval. [...]

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 [...]

Bacon’s Castle is the oldest datable brick residence in Virginia, a rare surviving example of Jacobean architecture in America. Built in 1665 by immigrant Arthur Allen, a supporter of the colonial governor and member of the House of Burgesses, Allen was driven from his house in 1676 when Nathaniel Bacon and men staged an uprising [...]

Nature has often shaped Virginia’s modern history; the Chestnut Blight of the early twentieth century offers one example. Prior to the blight, southern Virginian mountain communities gathered and sold chestnuts, included them in their diet, and used them as animal feed. They also used the trees, as environmental scholar Ralph Lutts has noted, “in log [...]