Consultant: Nicholas Harris

History of Virginia

Before 16th Century
Native American peoples of the Iroquoian (including Nottoway and Meherrin), Algonquian (including Nanticoke, Piscataway, Powhatan and Chowanoke) and Eastern Siouan groups inhabit today’s Virginia at the time the first Europeans arrive

1584
Queen Elizabeth I of England grants Walter Raleigh a charter to found a colony north of Spanish Florida. He sends an expedition to the Atlantic coast of North America. Raleigh’s colony, on Roanoke Island (in Outer Banks, North Carolina), established in 1585, along with another one set up in 1587 (the “Lost Colony”), are both abandoned

1607
The London Company (later, the Virginia Company) establishes the Colony of Virginia as the first permanent New World English colony. Named after King James I, Jamestown, the first permanent English settlement in the "New World", is founded by Christopher Newport

1609–10
Starving Time: only a handful of settlers survive the terrible winter

1612
Tobacco becomes the main cash crop in the colony; taking over more land to grow tobacco leads to the destruction of forests and encroachment on Native American hunting grounds

1610–46
Anglo-Powhatan Wars: three wars fought between the settlers of the Virginia Colony and Native Americans of the Powhatan Confederacy

1614
Settlers and natives conclude a peace at the end of the first Anglo-Powhatan War; it is sealed by the marriage of Pocahontas, daughter of chief Powhatan, to the colonist John Rolfe

1619
The Virginia House of Burgesses is established by the Virginia Company; it is first legislative assembly of elected representatives in North America

1622
Indian Massacre: Powhatan's younger brother and successor Opechancanough leads the Powhatan Confederacy in a surprise attack on the colony, killing 350 settlers (about one third of the total community). After a series of battles, peace is finally concluded in 1632

1624
The Virginia Company's charter is cancelled and the colony is transferred to royal authority as a crown colony

1646
Following the assassination of Opechancanough (1645), the Powhatan Confederacy disintegrates. A boundary between the Virginia Colony and Tributary Indian tribes is established by treaty

1632
The fortified settlement of Middle Plantation is founded

1662
A law makes slavery hereditary based on the mother's status

1676
Bacon's Rebellion: Virginian settlers led by Nathaniel Bacon rebel against the rule of Governor William Berkeley and capture Jamestown; Bacon dies and the uprising is ruthlessly put down

1677
Treaty of Middle Plantation signed by King Charles II of England and representatives from various Virginia Native American tribes: the native peoples are guaranteed their homeland territories so long as they are obedient to the English Crown

late 17th century
Tens of thousands of slaves from Africa are brought by Dutch and English slave ships to the Virginia Colony, where they are forced to work on tobacco plantations

1699
Colonial capital is moved from Jamestown to Middle Plantation, now renamed Williamsburg, in honour of King William III of England

early 1700s
English and Germans immigrants, along with French Huguenots, settle areas of Virginia farther west and south; German Lutherans, English Quakers, Scotch-Irish Presbyterians and Welsh Baptists from Pennsylvania settle in the Shenandoah valley after 1730

1747
A group of Virginians form the Ohio Company, with the backing of the British crown, which encourages settlement and trade in the Ohio Country west of the Appalachian Mountains; this brings conflict with France, which claims the area as part of their colony of New France, triggering the French and Indian War (1756–1763)

1776
Virginia’s leaders declare independence from the British Empire

1781
Combined American patriot and French land forces led by George Washington and Comte de Rochambeau trap the British army on the Virginia Peninsula, and defeat them at the Siege of Yorktown. The British surrender leads to peace negotiations in Paris and American independence

1784
Virginia gives up its claim to the Northwest Territory (which it seized from the British in 1779) to the US federal government

1790
Virginia cedes a portion of its lands to the United States for the creation of the District of Columbia (which is given back, or retroceded, in 1846)

1792
Kentucky, a Virginia county since 1776, is admitted to the Union as a separate state

1831
Nat Turner's slave rebellion is suppressed

1861
Virginia votes to secede (break away) from the Union and joins the Confederate States, which choose Richmond as their capital. After the Wheeling Convention, 48 counties in northwest Virginia break away from the rest of Virginia to form the new state of West Virginia, which remains loyal to the Union

1861–65
Virginia is the chief battleground of the Civil War, with major conflicts at Bull Run and Fredericksburg (1862) and Chancellorsville (1863)

1870
After the Virginia assembly ratifies (signs up to) the 14th and 15th amendments to the Constitution, the state is readmitted to the Union

1902
Segregationists in the Democratic Party rewrite the state constitution to include voter registration measures that effectively disenfranchise most African Americans and many poor whites

1944
African American Irene Morgan refuses to give up her seat on an interstate bus and is arrested in Middlesex County, Virginia. She wins her case in the Supreme Court, but Virginia continues to enforce interstate bus segregation. In 1947, activists organize the Journey of Reconciliation through Virginia and neighbouring states in an act of civil disobedience.

1989
Douglas Wilder becomes the first African American to be elected as governor in the US

2001
The Pentagon, built during World War II in Arlington County, Virginia, across the Potomac River from Washington, D.C, as the headquarters for the Department of Defense, is one of the targets of the 9/11 attacks; 189 people die at the site when a jet passenger plane is deliberately crashed into the building

2016
Major blizzard in January produces the state's highest recorded snowfall of 36.6 inches (93 cm) near Bluemont

2017
White supremacist James Alex Fields, Jr. deliberately drives his car into a crowd of people peacefully protesting the Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, murdering one person and injuring 35. Fields' action is declared by many to be an act of domestic terrorism.