Portal:Virginia

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Virginia, officially the Commonwealth of Virginia, is a state in the Southeastern and Mid-Atlantic regions of the United States between the Atlantic Coast and the Appalachian Mountains. The state's capital is Richmond and its most populous city is Virginia Beach, though its most populous subdivision is Fairfax County, part of Northern Virginia, where slightly over a third of Virginia's population of 8.7 million live.

Eastern Virginia is part of the Atlantic Plain, and the Middle Peninsula forms the mouth of the Chesapeake Bay. Central Virginia lies predominantly in the Piedmont, the foothill region of the Blue Ridge Mountains, which cross the western and southwestern parts of the state. The fertile Shenandoah Valley fosters the state's most productive agricultural counties, while the economy in Northern Virginia is driven by technology companies and U.S. federal government agencies, including the U.S. Department of Defense and Central Intelligence Agency. Hampton Roads is also the site of the region's main seaport and Naval Station Norfolk, the world's largest naval base. (Full article...)

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The Great Dismal Swamp maroons were freed and escaped slaves who inhabited the marshlands of the Great Dismal Swamp, an area of southeastern Virginia and northeastern North Carolina.

At the beginning of the 18th century, maroons came to live in the swamp, most settling on mesic islands, the high and dry parts of the swamp. Inhabitants included slaves who had purchased their freedom, as well as escaped slaves. Other escaped slaves used the swamp as a route on the Underground Railroad as they made their way further north. Nearby whites often left enslaved maroons alone so long as they paid a quota in logs or shingles, and businesses may have ignored the fugitive nature of escaped slaves who provided work in exchange for trade goods.

Although conditions were harsh, research suggests that thousands lived there between about 1700 and the 1860s. While the precise number of maroons who lived in the swamp at that time is unknown, it is believed to have been one of the largest maroon colonies in the United States. Harriett Beecher Stowe told the maroon people's story in her 1856 novel Dred: A Tale of the Great Dismal Swamp.

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Angus McDonald (1727 – August 19, 1778) was a prominent Scottish American military officer, frontiersman, sheriff and landowner in Virginia.

During the Jacobite rising of 1745, McDonald fought as a lieutenant under the command of Charles Edward Stuart in the Battle of Culloden, after which, he was "attainted of treason." He fled Scotland, departing from Inverness for the Colony of Virginia in 1746 at the age of 18.

McDonald moved west into Virginia's interior and entered the military service of the colonial government under Lieutenant Governor Robert Dinwiddie, receiving the rank of captain. McDonald served in the French and Indian War under General John Forbes in which he was in command of a company of Scottish Highlanders. Following the war, McDonald retired with the rank of captain in 1763.

In 1765, McDonald returned to military service when he was commissioned by Thomas Fairfax, 6th Lord Fairfax of Cameron as a major in command of the Frederick County militia. Lord Fairfax also appointed McDonald as an attorney and land agent for his Northern Neck Proprietary.

Governor John Murray, 4th Earl of Dunmore commissioned McDonald in 1774 as a ranking military officer of an expedition (known as "McDonald's Expedition") to promptly organize and recruit settlers west of the Allegheny Mountains to defend settlements from Native American attacks. McDonald completed the expedition, which met its goal of temporarily relieving western Virginia frontier settlements from attack.

McDonald received a personal letter from General George Washington in 1777 appointing him a lieutenant colonel in a battalion of Thruston's Additional Continental Regiment under the command of Colonel Charles Mynn Thruston. Despite his loyalty to the American Revolutionary cause, McDonald refused Washington's appointment. McDonald was later appointed by Washington to serve as a lieutenant colonel in command of Virginia revolutionary militia forces during the American Revolutionary War. He also served on various revolutionary committees throughout the war.

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This month in Virginia history

painting of men along a line of artillery — Artillery at the Battle of First Manassas

July 18, 1774: The Fairfax Resolves are adopted in the lead up to the American Revolution.
July 21, 1861: The Battle of First Manassas (pictured), is fought in Northern Virginia, becoming the first major land battle of the American Civil War.
July 30, 1619: The Virginia House of Burgesses (predecessor of the Virginia General Assembly) first meets in Jamestown, marking the beginning of representative government in the future United States.
July 30, 1864: The Battle of the Crater results from an attempt to break the Confederate trenches near Petersburg using an explosives-filled tunnel.

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P-51 Mustang flying above Langley Field in Hampton, which has been in operation as a military airfield since 1916.

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... that a neighborhood in Virginia lost its public park because its city government did not build a fence?
... that there is a Loch Ness Monster in Williamsburg, Virginia?
... that five peregrine falcon chicks were released from the roof of an office building in Virginia in an unsuccessful attempt to combat an overpopulation of pigeons?
... that a Virginia TV station had to take out title loans to pay its staff?
... that professor Ruth Ann Davis made the largest-ever single contribution to Potomac State College of West Virginia University to support nursing scholarships in memory of her mother?
... that land for a library built for African Americans in Virginia was donated by Pope Pius XII?