Encyclopedia VA

It’s that time of year, and whether you’re sharpening your pencils and gathering your notebooks or a lifelong learner, Encyclopedia Virginia is here to support all your educational endeavors. It’s the place where anyone curious about Virginia’s past can access trustworthy history—free of charge.

This back-to-school season, we’re asking you to support EV at a particularly important moment. Read more about: Back to School with EV

The post Back to School with EV appeared first on Encyclopedia Virginia.

In a tumultuous season of revolutionary fervor, a Virginian took up a quill and parchment and committed words to paper that would echo across the thirteen North American British colonies and down through time, becoming one of the most imitated constitutional documents in American history. But that man wasn’t Thomas Jefferson. And the document wasn’t the Declaration of Independence.

The American Revolution evokes many images—tricorne hats and fife-and-drum corps, famous battles like Saratoga and Yorktown, the Declaration of Independence and its contradictions. One thing that doesn’t spring to mind so readily is simmering class conflict. However, as our new entry on Tenant Revolts in Virginia during the American Revolution makes clear, critical battles were being fought off the battlefield, forcing us to rethink the parameters of the Revolution.  Read more about: The Class Tensions Simmering Beneath the Revolution

The post The Class Tensions Simmering Beneath the Revolution appeared first on Encyclopedia Virginia.

One of the best aspects of working on our new section on the American Revolution in Virginia is the opportunity to learn about lesser-known events that reflect the complexity of freedom stories in the Commonwealth during the Revolutionary period. One of these overlooked stories is the Great Willoughby Slave Escape, as detailed in our new entry by Ervin L. Read more about: The Great Willoughby Slave Escape

The post The Great Willoughby Slave Escape appeared first on Encyclopedia Virginia.

If you’re an American, you probably have a clear mental image of what George Washington looked like. But this was not the case at the beginning of the American Revolution. Few people had ever seen Washington’s likeness. Over the course of his service as commander and chief of the Continental Army and President of the United States, this changed, as George Washington evolved from a member of the Virginia elite and Patriot leader to an American icon. Read more about: Portraits of George

The post Portraits of George appeared first on Encyclopedia Virginia.