A History of the Maroons of the Great Dismal Swamp
The massive and foreboding Great Dismal Swamp sprawls over 2,000 square miles and spills over parts of Virginia and North Carolina. From the early seventeenth century, the nearly impassable Dismal frustrated settlement. However, what may have been an impediment to the expansion of slave society became an essential sanctuary for many of those who ......
The Soldiers' Struggle for Spotsylvania's Bloody Angle
The struggle over the fortified Confederate position known as Spotsylvania's Mule Shoe was without parallel during the Civil War. A Union assault that began at 4:30 A.M. on May 12, 1864, sparked brutal combat that lasted nearly twenty-four hours. By the time Grant's forces withdrew, some 55,000 men from Union and Confederate armies had been drawn ......
With On to Petersburg, Gordon C. Rhea completes his much-lauded history of the Overland Campaign, a series of Civil War battles fought between Generals Ulysses S. Grant and Robert E. Lee in southeastern Virginia in the spring of 1864. Having previously covered the campaign in his magisterial volumes on The Battle of the Wilderness, The Battles for ......
Slavery and Freedom among the Families of Smithfield Plantation
In 1759, William Preston purchased sixteen enslaved Africans brought to America aboard the True Blue, an English slave ship. Over the next century, the Preston family enslaved more than two hundred individuals and used their labor to establish and operate Smithfield Plantation in Blacksburg, Virginia. Daniel Thorp uncovers the stories of the men ......
Savoring Flavors and Stories from the Eastern Shore of Virginia
Nestled between the Chesapeake Bay and the Atlantic Ocean, and stretching from Hampton Roads to Assateague Island, Virginia's Eastern Shore is a distinctly southern place with an exceptionally southern taste. In this inviting narrative, Bernard L. Herman welcomes readers into the communities, stories, and flavors that season a land where the ......
A Boy's Memoir of Life with the Powhatans and the Patawomecks
A memoir of one of America's first adventurers, a young boy who acted as a link between the Jamestown colonists and the Patawomecks and Powhatans. "Being in displeasure of my friends, and desirous to see other countries, after three months sail we come with prosperous winds in sight of Virginia." So begins the fascinating tale of Henry Spelman, ......
Reveals the little known history of one of history's most famous maps - and its maker Tucked away in a near-forgotten collection, Virginia and Maryland as it is Planted and Inhabited is one of the most extraordinary maps of colonial British America. Created by a colonial merchant, planter, and diplomat named Augustine Herrman, the map pictures ......
