The Appalachian Preservation Society
Virginia
The US50 - A guide to the fifty states. The history of America is closely tied to that of Virginia, particularly in the Colonial period. Jamestown, founded in 1607, was the first permanent English settlement in North America and slavery was introduced there in 1619. The surrenders ending both the American Revolution (Yorktown) and the Civil War (Appomattox) occurred in Virginia.
All About Virginia. Officially designated the Commonwealth of Virginia and familiarly known as the "Old Dominion," one of the 13 original states of the United States, being the 10th to ratify the Constitution (1788). It is the southernmost of the Middle Atlantic states, roughly triangular in shape, bounded on the north by West Virginia and Maryland, on the east by the Atlantic Ocean and Chesapeake Bay, on the south by North Carolina and Tennessee, and on the west by Kentucky.
Wildernet - Virginia. The Old Dominion is the Mother of Presidents and the home of more Civil War battles than any other state in the nation. Her geography includes the the oldest mountain range in the country, the Atlantic Ocean and the world's largest estuary. In the northwest the rolling hills of the Blue Ridge Mountains bring over five million visitors every year to the Blue Ridge Parkway and Shenandoah National Park. This area along with that surrounding the Allegheny Mountains, in the southwest, supply visitors with a view of rural Virginia. The Appalachian Trail also leads through this region.
Virginia. It is the southernmost of the Middle Atlantic states, roughly triangular in shape, bounded on the north by West Virginia and Maryland, on the east by the Atlantic Ocean and Chesapeake Bay, on the south by North Carolina and Tennessee, and on the west by Kentucky.
Virginia State Parks. Parks and Natural Areas Descriptions.
Official Commonwealth of Virginia Home Page, an excellent website on the Commonwealth of Virginia, and the Virginia tourism site Virginia Is For Lovers. Discover the perfect vacation spot. Visit Virginia.
The Department of Mines, Minerals and Energy. The Department's mission is to enhance the development and conservation of energy. The Division of Mineral Resources contains the Geology of Virginia. Virginia's wealthy geologic heritage is manifest in a vast assortment of features across the Commonwealth. Virginia contains five physiographic provinces: the Coastal Plain, Piedmont, Blue Ridge, Valley and Ridge, and Appalachian Plateaus. Each province displays a pattern of topographic relief and landforms that are distinct from those of adjacent provinces. Each is distinct in terms of bedrock geologic structure and geomorphic history.
State TopoView Virgina from the National Geophysical Data Center.
Virginia National Forests from the USDA Forest Service web site.
Virginia History on the Internet - The Library of Virginia. A wealth of information on the history of Virginia is accessible on the Internet. This page is a PORTAL bringing together selected relevant historic sites under specific topics, facilitating research. Contains links to a Guide to Historic Virginia; the WPA Guide To the Old Dominion; Virginia Maps; the Geography of Virginia; the Colonial Period; Yorktown; and other web sites.
The Virginia Civil War Home Page, a virtual central repository for information about Virginia in the American Civil War.
Virginia State Information from 50states.com.
Center for Private Conservation. Natural Bridge of Virginia. For over two centuries, this gigantic natural limestone arch spanning a canyon 200 to 300 feet deep and some 100 feet wide, high above the small spring-fed Cedar Creek (a tributary of the James River) in southwestern Virginia, has been referred to as "One of the Seven Natural Wonders of the World."
Virginia Cooperative Extension is a product of cooperation among local, state, and federal governments in partnership with tens of thousands of citizens, who, through local Extension Leadership Councils, help design, implement and evaluate Cooperative Extension's needs-driven programs.
Virginia Department of Conservation & Recreation Homepage. The Natural Heritage Program represents a comprehensive effort to inventory and preserve the animal, plant and natural community resources of the Commonwealth of Virginia.
Native Plants for Conservation, Restoration & Landscaping Project, Invasive Alien Plant Species of Virginia, and the Virginia Cave Board.
The Virginia Native Plant Society (VNPS). The Society's programs emphasize public education, protection of endangered species, habitat preservation, and encouragement of appropriate landscape use of native plants.
Virginia Museum of Natural History is a state museum which is an agency of the Secretary of Natural Resources.
DMME frameset. The Department's mission is to enhance the development and conservation of energy and mineral resources in a safe and environmentally sound manner in order to support a more productive economy in Virginia.
Caves and Springs in Virginia. Water creates the caves in Virginia by dissolving limestone.
DMR - Sinkholes - Brochure. In Virginia the formation and modification of sinkholes (also known as sinks, dolines and dolinas) is a natural process in areas underlain by limestone and other soluble rock.
Geography of Virginia. People, places, natural settings, history, culture, Prehistory, Indian tribes, and the development of Virginia.
Lord Dunmore's War. This presenation of Lord Dunmore's War is Chapter XIII of Archibald Henderson (Ph.D.)'s The Conquest of the Old Southwest, published by the Century Company, New York in 1920.
Lord Dunmore's War (2). INTRODUCTION TO THE HISTORY OF THE COLONY AND ANCIENT DOMINION OF VIRGINIA, APPENDIX.
Cornstalk by Rev. William Henry Foote. Published in the Southern Literary Messenger, Volume 16, Issue 9, pp. 533-540, Richmond, Virginia,1850.
Colonial Virginia by William Broaddus Cridlin, Secrety of the Virginia Historical Pageant Assocaition; Registrar Virginia Society of Sons of the American Revolution. Printed by Williams Printing Company, Richmond, Virginia, 1922
Indian Atrocities. The Following is the unpublished manuscript, Indian Atrocities Along the Clinch, Powell and Holston Rivers of Southwest Virginia, 1773-1794, written by the late Emory L. Hamilton.
Virginia's Southwest Blue Ridge Highlands Home Page. The Blue Ridge Travel Association of Virginia. This site also contains a page with Maps of the Blue Ridge.
Maps of Virginia County Boundary Changes from Colonial Times to the present.
Bad Men of Southwest Virginia. Local outlaws 1865 to the present.
V I K I N G S T H E N O R T H A T L A N T I C S A G A. Did they reach the northern tip of the original land grant for Virginia?
Benjamin Franklin's Autobiography. The Adventures of Colonel Daniel Boone, Formerly A Hunter; Containing a Narrative of the Wars of Kentucky.
The Irish Tract and the Westward Movement. The Shenandoah Valley.
History of Jamestown. In June of 1606, King James I granted a charter to a group of London entrepreneurs, the Virginia Company, to establish a satellite English settlement in the Chesapeake region of North America. By December, 108 settlers sailed from London instructed to settle Virginia, find gold and a water route to the Orient.
historyisfun.org.html. The mission of the Jamestown-Yorktown Foundation is to educate and to promote understanding and awareness of Virginia's role in the creation of the United States of America. The Foundation, accredited by the American Association of Museums, is an educational institution of the Commonwealth of Virginia and administers two living-history museums.
John Smith. Articles and engravings of John Smith and Pocahontas.
Virginia Frontiers. A history of the Virginia frontier with links to other web sites.
The Plymouth Colony Archive Project. Archives and Analysis of Plymouth Colony, 1620-1691
Association for the Preservation of Virginia Antiquities. Virginia's long and historic past is captured in the collections of the Association for the Preservation of Virginia Antiquities (APVA). Stretching from the Eastern Shore to the mountains of Blacksburg, the properties owned and operated by the APVA trace Virginia's history from the settlers' landing at Jamestown to the taming of the western reaches of the colony.
Thomas Hariot's A Briefe and True Report of the New Found Land of Virginia. When Raleigh was ready to attempt the first permanent English colony in the New World, he sent the 25-year-old Hariot along as a historian and surveyor.
Colonial Charters, Grants and Related Documents by the Avalon Project at the Yale Law School. And the Ordinances for Virginia; July 24-August 3, 1621.
Royal Charters between England and Virginia including Bermuda. How the Bermuda islands, now the eldest of all overseas British territories, first became an outpost of North America, not Caribbean.
Virginia Counties Formation dates and parent counties.
Virginia County Formation, 1700-1880: 1700; 1702; 1721; 1732; 1742; 1746; 1754; 1770; 1772; 1777; 1780; 1780; 1790; 1880; 1818; 1824; 1831; 1842; 1843; 1844; 1845; 1848; 1850; 1851; 1856; 1858; 1861; and 1880.
Guidelines For Preserving Your Photographic Heritage. Through modern computer technology your album full of family photographic treasures could be preserved for descendants to enjoy a thousand years from now. With proper care and storage your original black and white prints could last 150 years and the negatives perhaps longer.
Popular Songs in American History. American Folk and Traditional Music with Lyrics, Midi Files, Tune Information and History behind the folksongs and ballads. With folksongs arranged by time period.
10 Big Myths about copyright explained. Note that this is an essay about copyright myths. It assumes you know at least what copyright is -- basically the legal exclusive right of the author of a creative work to control the copying of that work. If you didn't know that, check out my own A brief intro to copyright for more information.
Find the exhange rate rate between the the United States dollar and the British pound, for any year between 1791 and 2000.
U.S. Surname Distribution. Enter a surname (last name) into the form below and you'll get a map of the United States showing the distribution of people with this surname within the 50 United States. This map is often helpful when trying to determine a starting point for genealogy projects.
The Order of Descendants of Ancient Planters. The term "Ancient Planter" is applied to those persons who arrived in Virginia before 1616, remained for a period of three years, paid their passage, and survived the massacre of 1622. They received the first patents of land in the new world as authorized by Sir Thomas Dale in 1618 for their personal adventure.
Headstone Hunter, a site for swapping information about headstones.
TopoZone - The Web's Topographic Map. The TopoZone is the Web's center for recreational and professional topographic map users. We've worked with the USGS to create the Web's first interactive topo map of the entire United States.
How-to do Tombstone Rubbings. Clean the stone with your brush. Remove bird droppings, dirt moss, lichen etc. from the stone. This will insure clear and sharp copy. If you have trouble getting any of these materials off the stone, be sure that you do not damage the stone in your attempt to clean it.
The ROOTS-L Library information on genealogy.
The Gene Pool JTR's Colorful Family History. This list of oral history questions was compiled from a variety of sources.
Land Record Reference contains clear explanations of land transaction records, metes and bounds, and terms you will find in property descriptions.
United States Land and Property Reserch, self-paced set of lessons on the basics of land and property research in the United States
Metes and Bounds Deeds. Land in the original thirteen colonies, plus Maine, Vermont, Tennessee, Kentucky, Texas, West Virginia, and parts of Ohio were surveyed with the Metes and Bounds surveying system.
Citation of Sources. Some people are genealogists, and other people seem to be just collectors of genealogy. A genealogist looks at primary sources -- census records, wills, deeds, military pension files, etc., etc. -- or at least transcriptions and abstracts of primary sources. A collector of genealogy, on the other hand, compiles the names, places, and dates that other people have provided (usually other collectors), and (too often) presents that information as Genealogical Truth. Some of the information provided by a collector of genealogy may be correct, and some of it may not be. Much of it may not be. A lot of the genealogical information on the Web is apparently compiled and provided by collectors of genealogy. It has no references to primary sources, and no one seems to know where the information came from originally.
Internet Genealogy. Before computers there were two kinds of genealogists. The experienced and the beginners. The experienced passed their knowledge to the beginners.
Restoring Ethics to Genealogy. To be a Responsible Genealogist is to be honorable, fair, and truthful, to show respect for your ancestors by presenting a true and complete picture of their existence, to be fair to your fellow genealogists by acknowledging their contributions to your research, and to be relentless in your pursuit of factual data and in the search for the truth.
From Ancestry.com, Family History Made Easy Step by Step.
Virginia Notes by the Library of Virginia about topics of interest to persons doing research in Virginia.
1790 - 1800 County Tax Lists of Virginia. The Virginia Censuses for 1790 and 1800 were destroyed by fire and can never be replaced. But the early tax records of the Virginian counties still survive and list all individuals charged with a tax. They also contain names of young men who were tithable, or taxable, much like a male dependent of a household, and names of recently deceased individuals whose property was still in estate. There are many clues in tax lists that suggest family relationships that can not be found in the early censuses. Therefore these tax lists can be used as an alternative census for the burned Federal Censuses of Virginia for 1790 and 1800.
The Virginia Civil War Home Page, a virtual central repository for information about Virginia in the American Civil War.
Welcome to the APVA and Jamestown Rediscovery. In June of 1606, King James I granted a charter to a group of London entrepreneurs, the Virginia Company, to establish a satellite English settlement in the Chesapeake region of North America. By December, 108 settlers sailed from London instructed to settle Virginia, find gold and a water route to the Orient. Some traditional scholars of early Jamestown history believe that those pioneers could not have been more ill-suited for the task. Because Captain John Smith identified about half of the group as "gentlemen", it was logical, indeed, for historians to assume that these gentry knew nothing of or thought it beneath their station to tame a wilderness. Recent historical and archaeological research at the site of Jamestown suggest that at least some of the gentlemen and certainly many of the artisans, craftsmen, and laborers that accompanied them all made every effort to make the colony succeed. On May 14, 1607, the Virginia Company explorers landed on Jamestown Island, to establish the Virginia English colony on the banks of the James River 60 miles from the mouth of the Chesapeake Bay. By one account, they landed there because the deep water channel let their ships ride close to shore; close enough, to moor them to the trees. The recent discovery of the exact location of the first settlement and its fort indicates that the actual settlement site was in a more secure place, away from the channel, where Spanish ships, could not fire point blank into the Fort. Almost immediately after landing, the colonists were under attack from what amounted to the on-again off-again enemy, the Algonquian natives. As a result, in a little over a months' time, the newcomers managed to "beare and plant palisadoes" enough to build a wooden fort.
Repositories of Primary Sources for the United States and Canada.
The USGenWeb Tombstone Transcription Project: Virginia. The tombstones of our ancestors were always meant to be lasting memorials to the lives of those gone before. Lately, I have been visiting old cemeteries and have been distressed to see how these memorials are suffering the ravages of time and weather. Many of these stones are becoming difficult to read and some have already gotten so faint that deciphering them is next to impossible. Fortunately, many are still legible TODAY. But, of those we can read today, how many will still be legible ten or twenty years from today? WE need to record these tombstone inscriptions now---before they are lost forever to the winds and the rains. Though many cemeteries have already been recorded by various Genealogical Societies, just as many have not.
American Military History from the CENTER OF MILITARY HISTORY UNITED STATES ARMY WASHINGTON, DC 1989.
American Pioneere Held Captive or Killed By Indians. Welcome to the home of the descendants & relatives of
Early American Pioneer Indian Captives!
Home The National Coal Heritage Area strives to preserve, protect, and interpret lands, structures, and communities with unique and significant historic and cultural value associated with the coal mining heritage of West Virginia.
Southeastern Genealogy Online's Virginia contains Virginia History; County Formation Maps; County Census Maps; and the Military History of Virginia.