Browse Items (25 total)
Portrait of Thomas West, Baron De la Warr
Thomas West (1576–1618), the twelfth Baron De La Warr, was appointed by King James I in 1606 to be part of the royal council that oversaw the Virginia Company of London. He monitored the situation in the Virginia colony from England and may have…
Sir Walter Raleigh, Portrait
Sir Walter Raleigh (ca. 1552–1618) was an English explorer, soldier, writer, and a favorite at the court of Queen Elizabeth I, who granted him a charter to explore North America. Although he sponsored the attempts in the 1580s to colonize Roanoke…
Treaty of Middle Plantation, Signature page, 1677
English expansion into Indigenous territories led to several violent eruptions of conflict in the first decades of settlement in Virginia. A series of wars called the Anglo-Powhatan Wars ended in 1646 with the death of Opechancanough, brother of…
Virginia Health Bulletin: The New Virginia Law To Preserve Racial Integrity, March 1924
In 1924, Virginia's General Assembly passed the Racial Integrity Act, which was designed to stop the “intermixture” of white and Black people. The act banned interracial marriage by requiring marriage applicants to identify their race as "white,"…
Virginia Indian Tribes Pay Tribute Taxes to Governor Baliles, Photograph, 1989
The annual payment of tribute by Virginia's Indians has been a long-standing practice that still occurs today. In 1646, Necotowance, "the King of the Indians" as the English referred to him, signed a treaty to end the third Anglo-Indian War. Annual…