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VIRGINIA, Va. -- It's probably the last time that Timothy M. Kaine will step outside his house in the morning to find two dead deer and a turkey on his doorstep. But yesterday, the outgoing Virginia governor and his wife, first lady Anne Holton, stood outside the Executive Mansion in Richmond to preside over a Thanksgiving tradition that dates to the late 1600s -- Virginia's Indian tribes paying tribute to the governor. On a damp and gray but mild morning, Kaine welcomed about 200 people, including members of several generations of Indians in traditional garb, as well as Capitol Square...

The 1850s American Farm exhibit at the Frontier Culture Museum in Staunton, Virginia, features vintage structures including s sheathed log house. The buildings were located originally near Eagle Rock in Botetourt County, Virginia, and were moved to the Museum grounds and reconstructed as one of the original exhibits in 1988.

The Virginia Frontier Culture Museum's 1740s log cabin is displayed as a work in progress. The cabin is a typical peeled-log, saddle-notched settler's cabin of the kind favored by Scotch-Irish moving into the wilds of the Backcountry. The construction was simple and required few tools. The museum's replica is built with one door and no windows -- a common practice which led to laws requiring homesteader's cabins have at least one window.

Just about every American, from the time they're 6 or so, learns that Mount Vernon is Founding Father George Washington's home. They draw pictures of the grand farmhouse in art class. Study it in history. File onto buses and reverently visit the hallowed ground along the Potomac River. And right now, that's Mount Vernon's problem. There's just too much George, according to some international culture experts, who are considering whether the historic estate belongs on the United Nations' list of World Heritage sites. A group advising the U.S. government on getting American sites onto the prestigious list initially rejected Mount...

Three descendants of Venus' son, who was called West Ford, say that according to a family tradition two centuries old, George Washington was West Ford's father. They hope to develop DNA evidence from Washington family descendants and his hair samples to bolster their case... There is, however, reason to believe that if the child's father was not Washington, it might have been someone closely related to him. The cousins' claim has several elements of truth, enough to set up a historical mystery as to the identity of West Ford's father and to add a new strand to the emerging links...

Actor Duvall enters battle to save Va. battlefield By STEVE SZKOTAK LOCUST GROVE, Va. (AP) - Academy Award-winning actor Robert Duvall has fired a verbal salvo against plans to build a Wal-Mart Supercenter near a Virginia Civil War battlefield where Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee first fought the Union's Ulysses S. Grant. Duvall, who is a descendant of Lee, said he will help preservationists in "chasing out" the retailer from a site near the Wilderness Battlefield. At a news conference on Monday, Duvall said he has no grudge against Wal-Mart but believes in capitalism coupled with sensitivity. Duvall was joined...

Today is Friday, April 17, 2009 Today in U.S. Civil War History 1861 - Virginia left the Union. Within the next 5 weeks Arkansas, Tennessee, and North Carolina seceded bringing the total of Confederate states to eleven.

(Fredericksburg, VA) -- Virginia Governor Tim Kaine will speak at an event today aimed at raising awareness and funding for the state's historic battlefields. Kaine will speak at 10 a.m. to a group in Fredericksburg that helps fund and upkeep the Fredericksburg battlefields, where Robert E. Lee is credited for a victory against the Union Army during the Civil War. In the first year of his administration, Governor Kaine set up the Virginia Historic Battlefield Preservation Fund which helps upkeep the state's numerous battlefields.

Later this month, an archaeologist at Thomas Jefferson's historic home of Monticello in Charlottesville, Va., will speak at Smith College about the use of the late president's plantation by the estate's residents, both free and enslaved. Sara Bon-Harper, archeological research manager, will lecture at 7:30 p.m. Tuesday, Feb. 24, in McConnell Hall, Room 103, about "Defined Spaces: Landscape on the Monticello Plantation." The event is sponsored by the Program in Archaeology and the Lecture Committee and is free and open to the public. Bon-Harper's work at Monticello focuses on an archaeological survey of the original 5,000-acre plantation and the excavation...

“We found the houses taken down and the place very strongly enclosed with a high palisade of great trees, with curtains and flankers very fortlike, and one of the chief trees or posts at the right side of the entrance had the bark taken off, and five feet from the ground in fair capital letters was graven CROATAN, without any cross or sign of distress. We entered the palisade, where we found many bars of iron, two pigs of lead, four fowlers, iron sacker-shot and such like heavy things, thrown here and there, almost overgrown with grass and weeds.” --...

Some Virginians are giving thanks early this Thanksgiving. It's because President Bush is set to bring recognition to a little-known thanksgiving site in Virginia between Williamsburg and Richmond. On Monday, the president plans to stop by Berkeley Plantation, where English settlers held a thanksgiving service almost two years before the Pilgrims' feast in Massachusetts.

President Bush will speak next week about Thanksgiving during a visit to a historic Thanksgiving site — in Virginia, not Massachusetts. On Monday, the president will head to Berkeley Plantation, where English settlers held a Thanksgiving service almost two years before the Pilgrims' feast in Massachusetts that came to be considered the first Thanksgiving. "The president will talk about what we as a nation can be thankful for during the holiday season," White House spokesman Blair Jones said. Berkeley Plantation is on the banks of the James River, between Williamsburg, Virginia's Colonial capital, and Richmond, the state's capital today. When...

Although in his day Charles James Faulkner was hailed nationally as an outstanding lawyer, statesman and diplomat, today he is barely remembered outside his hometown. His one-time fame has been eclipsed by the more flamboyant figures of the Civil War era. mat, today he is barely remembered outside his hometown. His one-time fame has been eclipsed by the more flamboyant figures of the Civil War era. Faulkner's moderate views never allowed him to become totally committed to the secession of his native state; consequently, he barely participated in the great struggle. Faulkner, Scots-Irish in ancestry, was born in Martinsburg, Va.,...

1864 : Battle of the Crater On this day, the Union's ingenious attempt to break the Confederate lines at Petersburg by blowing up a tunnel that had been dug under the Rebel trenches fails. Although the explosion created a gap in the Confederate defenses, a poorly planned Yankee attack wasted the effort and the result was an eight-month continuation of the siege. The bloody campaign between Union General Ulysses S. Grant and Confederate Robert E. Lee ground to a halt in mid-June, when the two armies dug in at Petersburg, south of Richmond. For the previous six weeks, Grant had...

Two old steamer trunks sit in the rare-book room at the Virginia Historical Society, looking worn and forlorn. The smaller one was once red but the paint has faded to a dull rust. The larger one is brown with a piece of tin patching a hole in the top. On one side, a name is stenciled: "M. LEE." That's Mary Custis Lee, Gen. Robert E. Lee's adventurous eldest daughter. In 1917, she stored these wooden trunks in the "silver vault" in the basement of Burke & Herbert Bank & Trust in Alexandria. A year later, she died at the age...

<p>ROANOKE ISLAND, N.C. - Researchers believe they may be able to use DNA to uncover the fate of the Lost Colony, which vanished shortly after more than 100 people settled on Roanoke Island in 1587.</p> <p>Using genealogy, deeds and historical narratives, researchers have compiled 168 surnames that could be connected to settlers in what is considered the first attempt by the English to colonize the New World. The team will try to trace the roots of individuals related to the colonists, to the area's 16th century American Indians or to both.</p>

RICHMOND, United States (AFP) - Britain's Queen Elizabeth II headed Thursday for a rare state visit to the United States, to mark the 400th anniversary of an English settlement that laid the foundations of history's greatest superpower. After arriving on a chartered British Airways jet, Elizabeth was due to start her six-day trip in the Virginia capital Richmond and address the state's legislature, which is America's oldest representative body. Virginians from Governor Tim Kaine down brushed up on royal protocol as they prepared to greet the British queen during a walkabout and musical concert at the grounds of the newly...

Queen Elizabeth II and her husband, Prince Philip, stepped off a chartered British Airways airplane just after 3 p.m. Thursday in Richmond, Va., signaling the beginning of a six-day American trip. It is her first visit to the United States in 16 years. The queen stopped at the end of a red carpet while both British and American National Anthems were played. Her motorcade left shortly afterward. On Thursday evening, she was expected to take a horse-drawn carriage through Colonial Williamsburg. And while the queen represents a monarchy the United States went to some trouble to get rid of, her...

RICHMOND, Virginia (AP) -- Terry O'Neill was just a wee lad from Liverpool the last time he got within a few feet of Queen Elizabeth II. Years later, the burly owner of the Beatles-influenced Penny Lane Pub in Richmond plans to have a second brush with English royalty on Thursday -- with a little help from his friends. O'Neill and his wife, Rose, were among thousands of people expected to jam Capitol Square for a glimpse of the queen and her husband, Prince Philip, when the royals arrive to mark the 400th anniversary of the Jamestown colony. "I left England...

Jamestown -- the birth of a nation 400 years ago The replica Jamestown ships, The Susan Constant, center, Godspeed, right, and Discovery ply the waters of Hampton Roads as they make their way to Virginia Beach to participate in the celebration of the 400th anniversary of the founding of Jamestown, Va., Tuesday, April 24, 2007. The centerpiece of the 18-month commemoration of the 400th anniversary of America's first permanent English settlement is almost here after a decade of planning. About two-thirds of the tickets for the 'America's Anniversary Weekend' extravaganza May 11-13 remain available; 31,587 had been sold as of...

WILLIAMSBURG — Advocates of our version of “The DaVinci Code” were back in town Friday, calling for another excavation to locate the “secret vault” of Sir Francis Bacon, which they still allege is buried beneath the churchyard of Bruton Parish Episcopal Church. It is a replay of a saga from 14 years ago that put the church in an awkward position of dispelling some very weird myths. A media circus resulted. The story propagated by Sir Francis Bacon's Sages of the Seventh Seal has all the elements of Dan Brown's theological thriller. The Bacon story relies on a conspiracy theory...

Washington, D.C.-Nearly one year after the U.S. Supreme Court's shocking Kelo v. New London decision touched off a firestorm of bipartisan support for stronger property rights protections, some anti-property rights groups are receiving support from a surprising source: Senator George Allen (R-VA).Senator Allen is the chief sponsor of legislation that would create a massive federal "National Heritage Area" that would stretch from Charlottesville, VA, through Frederick County, MD, and end in Gettysburg, PA. Such areas are best described as heavily regulated corridors where property rights may be strictly curtailed.

WILLIAMSBURG—If one becomes a British knight by rendering extraordinary service to the crown, it's hard to imagine anyone more deserving of a knighthood than Capt. John Smith. Yet Smith, a soldier, explorer and diplomat of the first order, a man some consider largely responsible for the success of the first permanent English settlement in the New World, was never knighted. That's because the importance of Smith's accomplishments was not recognized until after his death. But a group of local residents doesn't think little things like death or 400 years should keep Britain from recognizing the man who opened the New...

ARCHAEOLOGISTS have uncovered a rare but perfectly preserved early 17th-century Scottish pistol at the historic former British colony known as the birthplace of the United States, making the firearm one of the oldest artefacts of European origin ever discovered in North America. The weapon probably belonged to one of the first settlers to arrive at Jamestown, Virginia, in 1607, and was recovered from a well at the site with several other "hugely significant" artefacts. "It was like Christmas in July," said Bly Straube, the curator of the Jamestown Rediscovery museum where the snaphaunce pistol, probably made by a manufacturer in...

RICHMOND, Va. - Sometime around 1610, archaeologists figure, a thirsty colonist in Jamestown set his brass pistol on the side of a well as he pulled up some water and accidentally knocked the weapon in.

VIRGINIA BEACH, Va. - The Witch of Pungo is no longer a witch. Gov. Timothy M. Kaine on Monday exonerated Grace Sherwood, who 300 years ago became Virginia's only woman convicted as a witch tried by water. "I am pleased to officially restore the good name of Grace Sherwood," Kaine wrote in a letter Virginia Beach Mayor Meyera Oberndorf read aloud before a re-enactment of Sherwood's being dropped into the river. "With 300 years of hindsight, we all certainly can agree that trial by water is an injustice," Kaine wrote. "We also can celebrate the fact that a woman's equality...

Obscure graves bury the accomplishments of two Northern Neck brothers who signed the Declaration of Independence __ They were brothers whose signatures on the Declaration of Independence made them American heroes for all time. Now Richard Henry Lee and Francis Lightfoot Lee rest in obscure Northern Neck graveyards visited by few, even on the Fourth of July. "We only come out here when somebody dies," said H. Gwynne Tayloe III. Tayloe stood Sunday beside a brick-walled cemetery where Francis Lightfoot Lee is buried beside Tayloe's ancestors at Mount Airy Farm near Warsaw. The graveyard is a 10-minute walk from the...

Volunteers to dig into Croatan Indian village site again By CATHERINE KOZAK, The Virginian-Pilot © May 28, 2006 The last time the long-dormant Croatan site was investigated, a team of archaeologists unearthed a 16th-century gold ring that may be the most significant archaeological find of early American history. In June, the team, with many of the same members who were there in 1998 when the English nobleman's ring was found, will be back to revive exploration of the ancient capital of the Croatan Indians in Buxton. Organized by The Lost Colony Center for Science and Research , the team of...

The George Mason University basketball team's ascendance to the NCAA Final Four this weekend may well be remembered as the most improbable run in the college basketball tournament's history. Only one other eleventh-seeded team has made the Final Four. And you'd be hard-pressed to find a school with so low a profile and from so small a conference to have made it through the tournament's first two weekends. In addition to the great basketball the team has given us (the Connecticut game was in instant classic), it would also be nice to see the school's success inspire some discussion about...

Results from other recent tests on bone samples confirmed that the Jamestown skeleton was an immigrant to America, showing that he ate a diet rich in wheat as opposed to an American corn diet, researchers said. The quest to identify a nearly intact skeleton found at Jamestown continues. Jamestown officials said this week that without DNA proof, researchers are doing other studies to test their theory that the skeleton discovered in 2002 belongs to Capt. Bartholomew Gosnold, a founder of the first permanent English settlement in North America, established almost 400 years ago. The announcement came after The Church of...

The Story of Gentleman Jim Robinson He was one of the first free African-American landowners here. By Bonnie Hobbs February 16, 2006 The history of Centreville and Manassas is intertwined with the story of the Robinson family — specifically Gentleman Jim Robinson, one of the first free African-American landowners in this area. HE RAISED a family here and successfully sued the federal government for Civil War damages to the home he'd built in the 1840s. And in 1924, that home was sold to the Manassas National Battlefield Park and became a historical landmark.' Robinson was born Oct. 6, 1799 on...

Sixty years ago this Wednesday, Winston Churchill addressed the General Assembly and urged the citizens of the United States and Great Britain to stand together. * snip * .... posthumously make Britain's prime minister during World War II an honorary citizen of Virginia. * snip * Only three other notables hold honorary state citizenship - the Marquis de Lafayette, the Revolutionary War hero; John D. Rockefeller, the oil baron who underwrote the restoration of Colonial Williamsburg; and Margaret Thatcher, another former British prime minister who also once served as chancellor of the College of William and Mary. She joined the...

RICHMOND, Jan. 25 -- It may not actually mention Virginia or even be about Virginia, but "Shenandoah" may soon become the commonwealth's official state song. A Senate panel has voted to designate the melodious folk tune as the state's "interim official state song" -- temporary, that is, in case something better comes along. The commonwealth has gone without a theme since 1997, when lawmakers retired "Carry Me Back to Old Virginia" because its lyrics were deemed offensive to black citizens. Lawmakers labeled the anthem, with its references to "darkies" and "massas," the state's "emeritus song" and appointed a 12-member committee...

SALUDA -- The Middlesex County Board of Supervisors reaffirmed its support for the biggest housing development in the county's history last night and voted to rezone the historic Rosegill Plantation. The 5-0 vote allows Northern Virginia developers to build 700 housing units on the 848-acre Rappahannock River estate that resonates with Colonial history and shelters the neighboring town of Urbanna in a cloak of picturesque farmland. The Rosegill manor house was home to two Colonial Virginia governors and parts of the house date to 1650, making it one of the oldest in the state. Residents on both sides of the...

Leesburg Pulls All Civic Signs; Confederate Flag At Center Of Controversy Molly Novotny Jan 12, 2006 -- A Confederate battle flag is not the symbol town staff wanted greeting visitors and residents entering Leesburg. So to ensure the symbol would not adorn the town’s entrance points, town staff removed all civic organization signs from those gateways. Removing all of the signs, to exclude the Sons of Confederate Veterans’ sign legally, has caused frustration among the civic groups, many which have been advertising their clubs’ meetings for a generation. “I belong to several of the organizations that post their signs there,”...

Commemorating the day Thomas Jefferson declared religious freedom for all Americans, the nation today celebrates Religious Freedom Day as declared by President George Bush. "The right to religious freedom is a foundation of America," said Bush in his proclamation Friday. "Our Founding Fathers knew the importance of freedom of religion to a stable democracy, and our Constitution protects individuals' rights to worship as they choose." In 1786, Jefferson drafted the Virginia Statute on Religious Freedom, protecting the civil rights of people to express their religious beliefs without suffering discrimination. Now, 14 years after the first Religious Freedom Day proclamation by...

http://www.NewsAndOpinion.com | "The New World," a film slated for Christmas day release, tells the romantic story of Pocahontas and John Smith, but ads for the movie tell a more depressing story of political correctness. A glossy magazine layout says that what settlers "named the Jamestown Settlement was already home to a noble civilization." On my radio show, I mocked the idea that the pre-literate, stone-aged Powhatan Indians of Virginia constituted a "noble civilization," and in later version of ads for the movie, the word "noble" disappeared. In its place, however, New Line Cinema included an even more absurd declaration, claiming...

<p>A nation's identity consists of braided memories, which are nourished by diligence at civic commemorations. It is, therefore, disappointing that at this moment of keen interest in the Supreme Court and the office of chief justice, scant attention has been paid to the 250th anniversary of the birth of the nation's greatest jurist, Chief Justice John Marshall. The oldest of the family's 15 children, he was born Sept. 24, 1755, into Virginia rusticity where women pinned their blouses with thorns. Yet he developed the most urbane and subtle mind of that era of remarkable statecraft. He was a member of Virginia's ratifying convention, and in nearly 35 years as chief justice he founded American constitutional law. That kind of legal reasoning by Supreme Court justices is a continuous exegesis of the Constitution and is sometimes not easily distinguished from a continuing writing of the document.</p>

This Day In History | Civil War July 24 1864 Battle of Kernstown, Virginia Confederate General Jubal Early defeats Union troops under General George Crook to keep the Shenandoah Valley clear of Yankees. On June 13, 1864, General Robert E. Lee sent Early north from Petersburg to clear the Shenandoah of Union troops and relieve pressure on his own beleaguered force. Lee's Army of Northern Virginia had been pinned in Petersburg after a bloody six-week campaign with General Ulysses S. Grant's Army of the Potomac. The campaign mimicked that of General Thomas J. "Stonewall" Jackson's in 1862, when the Confederates...

SHELLEY, England -- Archaeologists trying to exhume the remains of the sister of one of the founders of the first permanent English settlement in North America have found what they believe is her 400-year-old burial shaft and hope to find her body soon. They want to use DNA from the remains to find out whether a skeleton unearthed in Virginia is that of Capt. Bartholemew Gosnold, who oversaw an expedition that led to the founding of Jamestown in 1607. British and American researchers began digging Monday beneath the floor of the 12th-century Church of All Saints, where Gosnold's sister, Elizabeth...

Years before the Civil War, a free black washerwoman is believed to have made her living laundering the clothes of University of Virginia students and professors. Little of her story is known, but a new archeological discovery may help unearth her place in history. Archeologists have uncovered evidence of two additional graves on university grounds, a dozen years after archeologists found 12 other grave shafts nearby. The discovery could shed some light on the people who lived - and now rest - on UVa land, said Mary Hughes, university landscape architect. “We don’t know fully what these explorations mean, but...

Thirteen years before the Mayflower's voyage to the New World, Captain Bartholomew Gosnold oversaw an expedition that led to the founding of the first permanent English settlement in North America. Now, Virginia preservationists are travelling to England to determine whether the skeleton they found at the site of the Jamestown colony is his. Excavations were planned next week at two churches to retrieve DNA samples from the remains of Gosnold descendants - a sister and a niece. Radar surveys were conducted at the churches earlier this year, but the process to extract the genetic material still involves uncertainties. "In archaeology,...

Monroe closure defended The fort has little military use and should be closed, the Army tells a base-closure commission. BY DAVID LERMAN I (202) 824-8224 May 19 2005 WASHINGTON -- Army leaders defended their recommendation to close Fort Monroe on Wednesday, saying Hampton's historic fort is a relatively small base for strictly administrative use and has low military value. Army Secretary Francis J. Harvey said the proposed closures of Fort Monroe and two bases in Georgia are part of an effort to consolidate Army forces into larger, multi-use bases that can accommodate greater numbers of troops. Under the Pentagon's plan,...

The Church of England on Wednesday gave permission for archeologists to dig under a church floor and remove DNA from 400-year-old skeletal remains to determine if the Jamestown settlement's founder was buried just outside the 17th century fort. The Church of England said archaeologists can dig under the floor of a church in Suffolk, England, to reach the skeleton of Elizabeth Tilney. She was the sister of Bartholomew Gosnold, a leader of the English expedition that founded Jamestown in 1607. To tell if a skeleton recovered from the site of the original Jamestown fort is Gosnold's, scientists need DNA from...

Nearly 10 years after leading the pioneering dig that unearthed the lost remains of Jamestown, archaeologist William M. Kelso was named 2005 Virginian of the Year by the VPA. With the 400th anniversary of the first permanent English settlement just two years away, the former Williamsburg high school history teacher, who lives on the island, says the full impact of the celebrated excavation has yet to be felt. Q: You first came to Jamestown Island at 21, intent on standing on the exact spot where America began. You returned repeatedly over the next three decades. What's behind this lifelong interest?...

Insurrections have three times thrust upon Williamsburg armies of occupation. In July 1676, when the town was yet called Middle Plantation, it fell into the power of the rebel Nathaniel Bacon and his men. In June 1781, as the war for American independence neared its dénouement, England's Lord Cornwallis and his troops briefly took over the city. After Yorktown, French troops took up winter residence. Eighty years later, the morning of May 6, 1862, in the War for Southern Independence the first of the Yankees marched in. It was the end of the Battle of Williamsburg, a clash along an...

Reading Free Blacks Out of HistoryBy Anita L. WillsHistory News Network | February 28, 2005 "We reside among you and yet are strangers; natives and not citizens; surrounded by the freest people and most Republican Institutions in the world and yet enjoying none of the immunities of freedom though we are not slaves we are not yet free." -- Memorial of the Free People of Color, African Repository, December 1826, Baltimore MDAfrican American History month is a month in which Americans celebrate the history of people of African descent. It is a sharing of a culture long ignored by the...

WASHINGTON -- America has no more than 20 years before the last of the unprotected but critical Civil War battlefields are "preserved or paved over," the president of the Civil War Preservation Trust said Thursday. Revealing a list of the 10 most-endangered battlefields at a news conference with country musician Darryl Worley, trust president O. James Lighthizer called the hallowed acreage "outdoor classrooms" under serious threat of development. Although the trust has had success in preserving more than 18,000 acres of critical battlefields, including parts of Shiloh in Tennessee, Iuka and Corinth in Mississippi and Antietam in Maryland, important tracts...

Wall Street and the surrounding blocks in Richmond were home to several dozen slave dealers and auction houses where tens of millions of dollars changed hands before and during the war, providing the fuel that drove the Southern economy. An experienced field hand could bring $1,500 to $2,000 at auction, or roughly $25,000 in 2003 dollars. If you factor in the average rate of return of 10 percent per slave, multiplied by a busy month's volume of 10,000 or more sold, it is immediately evident that the Richmond slave trade of the early 1860s was a booming enterprise. Total annual...

For education and discussion only. Not for commercial use. "I am lately become a brewer for family use, having had the benefit of instruction to one of my people by an English brewer of the first order." ~ Jefferson to Joseph Coppinger, April 25, 1815 In the spring of 1812, while tensions grew between the United States and Great Britain, Jefferson was enjoying his retirement from public life at Monticello. Construction was under way on the brick garden pavilion, and Jefferson embarked on the scientific pursuit of brewing beer—the kind of experiment that he relished. Using malt purchased from his...