Virginia Vignettes

Moncure Daniel Conway was a Unitarian minister and abolitionist who was once described as “the most thoroughgoing white male radical produced by the antebellum South.” Born in Stafford County to a slave-owning family related to presidents George Washington and James Madison, Conway turned to abolitionism and Transcendentalism in his early 20s and moved to Boston [...]

At least as early as the 1850s, many German residents of the Valley of Virginia celebrated the Christmas season with the unique custom of “belsnickeling.” The tradition’s origins are murky but the name comes from the Germans of the Palatinate region where Belznickel, or Saint Nicholas, brought small gifts for good children. In [...]

In the ante-bellum South, no one looked forward to Christmas more than the slaves. The coming of the Christmas season meant increased freedom, a minimum of a three-day holiday and extra provisions. Slaves held their own worship services and celebrated the season with song and dance, story-telling, ring games, jump rope and dances [...]

A religious revival called the Great Awakening hit the colonies in the 1740s. Many colonists, particularly in the middle and lower classes found the staid, ritualistic Anglican service unfulfilling or chaffed against their assigned place at the bottom of the traditional social order. The Awakening brought an evangelical message of “new birth” that divided older [...]

A good case could be made that it was the Reverend James Blair by virtue of his leadership of the Church of England in Virginia and the College of William and Mary, which gained its charter in 1693 primarily through his efforts. A Scotsman who had lost his parish in the religious debates of the [...]