Blog on Richmond History

Check out a "new" blog on Richmond history:

The Shockoe Examiner: Blogging the History of Richmond-in-Virginia:

http://theshockoeexaminer.blogspot.com/

Includes interesting essays and lots of images on all aspects of Richmond history. Visit the site and let me know what you think.

Hatton Ferry

Hatton Ferry apparently made the Today Show this morning! I didn't see it, but there's now a charming video clip up on MSNBC:

http://today.msnbc.msn.com/id/26184891/vp/33055797#33055797

We cannot let the icons of our past disappear like this, else we will have no past to bequeath to future generations.
For more information on the fate of the Hatton Ferry, contact:
Steven Meeks, President
Albemarle/Charlottesville Historical Society
(434) 296-1492
president@albemarlehistory.org

If you’d like to make a donation to save the Hatton Ferry, mail it to:
The Hatton Ferry Fund
c/o Old Dominion National Bank
P.O. Box 321
Scottsville, VA 24590

The Hemingses of Monticello: An American Family

New York Law School Professor Wins $25,000 Frederick Douglass Book Prize
New Haven, Conn — Annette Gordon-Reed, Professor of Law at New York Law School, Professor of History at Rutgers University-Newark, and Visiting Professor of Law at Harvard University, has been selected as the winner of the 2009 Frederick Douglass Book Prize, awarded for the best book written in English on slavery or abolition. Gordon-Reed won for her book, The Hemingses of Monticello: An American Family (W.W. Norton and Company). The prize is awarded by Yale University's Gilder Lehrman Center for the Study of Slavery, Resistance, and Abolition, sponsored by the Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History. In addition to Gordon-Reed, the other finalists for the prize were Thavolia Glymph for Out of the House of Bondage: The Transformation of the Plantation Household (Cambridge University Press) and Jacqueline Jones for Saving Savannah: The City and the Civil War (Alfred A. Knopf Publishers). The $25,000 annual award is the most generous history prize in the field. The prize will be presented to Gordon-Reed at a dinner in New York City in February 2010. This year's finalists were selected from a field of over fifty entries by a jury of scholars that included Robert Bonner (Dartmouth College), Rita Roberts (Scripps College), and Pier Larson (Johns Hopkins University). The winner was selected by a review committee of representatives from the Gilder Lehrman Center for the Study of Slavery, Resistance and Abolition, the Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History, and Yale University. "In Annette Gordon Reed's The Hemingses of Monticello, an enslaved Virginia family is delivered — but not disassociated — from Thomas Jefferson's well-known sexual liaison with Sally Hemings," says Bonner, the 2009 Douglass Prize Jury Chair and Associate Professor of History at Dartmouth College. "The book judiciously blends the best of recent slavery scholarship with shrewd commentary on the legal structure of Chesapeake society before and after the American Revolution. Its meticulous account of the mid-eighteenth century intertwining of the black Hemingses and white Wayles families sheds new light on Jefferson's subsequent conjoining with a young female slave who was already his kin by marriage. By exploring those dynamic commitments and evasions that shaped Monticello routines, the path-breaking book provides a testament to the complexity of human relationships within slave societies and to the haphazard possibilities for both intimacy and betrayal." The Frederick Douglass Book Prize was established in 1999 to stimulate scholarship in the field of slavery and abolition by honoring outstanding books. Previous winners were Ira Berlin and Philip D. Morgan in 1999; David Eltis, 2000; David Blight, 2001; Robert Harms and John Stauffer, 2002; James F. Brooks and Seymour Drescher, 2003; Jean Fagan Yellin, 2004; Laurent Dubois, 2005; Rebecca J. Scott, 2006; Christopher Leslie Brown, 2007; and Stephanie E. Smallwood, 2008. The award is named for Frederick Douglass (1818-1895), the slave who escaped bondage to emerge as one of the great American abolitionists, reformers, writers, and orators of the 19th century. The Gilder Lehrman Center for the Study of Slavery, Resistance and Abolition, a part of The Whitney and Betty MacMillan Center for International and Area Studies at Yale University, was established in November 1998 through a generous donation by Richard Gilder and Lewis Lehrman and the Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History. Its mission is to promote the study of all aspects of slavery, especially the chattel slave system and its destruction. The Center seeks to foster an improved understanding of the role of slavery, slave resistance, and abolition in the founding of the modern world by promoting interaction and exchange between scholars, teachers, and public historians through publications, educational outreach, and other programs and events. Founded in 1994, the Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History promotes the study and love of American history. The Institute serves teachers, students, scholars, and the general public. It helps create history-centered schools, organizes seminars and programs for educators, produces print and electronic publications and traveling exhibitions, sponsors lectures by eminent historians, and administers a History Teacher of the Year Award in every state through its partnership with Preserve America. The Institute also conducts awards including the Lincoln, Frederick Douglass, and George Washington Book Prizes, and offers fellowships for scholars to work in the Gilder Lehrman Collection. The Institute maintains two websites, www.gilderlehrman.org and the quarterly online journal www.historynow.org. For further information on Gilder Lehrman Center events and programming, contact the center by phone (203) 432-3339, fax (203) 432-6943, or e-mail gilder.lehrman.center@yale.edu.

Argall Towne

http://www.vagazette.com/articles/2009/09/16/news/doc4ab0384a03385778594361.txt

JAMES CITY — Local archaeologists have discovered Argall Towne, a short-lived village that was the first suburb of nearby Jamestown. The village was started in 1617 by Capt. Samuel Argall, then a colorful lieutenant governor of the colony. It thrived for three years, but his impetuous behavior led many of the settlers to move away to Martin’s Hundred near Carter’s Grove Plantation. Alain Outlaw of Williamsburg-based Archaeological & Cultural Solutions has been searching for the site since 1975. “It’s been a slow process,” said Outlaw, who is also an adjunct professor at Christopher Newport University. For two years, since he got access to the land, his students and volunteers have researched the site. Outlaw won’t pinpoint the locale for fear of relic hunters. The find is important because it represents the first major settlement in James City outside Jamestown, and it provides a key link to how settlers expanded outward from Jamestown. Argall Towne was built on strategically high land that was easily defended, and from that point small farmsteads spread inland. Posted on Friday, September 18, 2009

http://www.fmfada.com/pdf/FtAlger_Conf.pdf

From October 16 to 18, a celebration and conference commemorating the 400th anniversary of Anglo-America's first coastal fortification -- "Fort Algernoune, 1609: Colonial Virginia's Maritime Rim" -- will take place at Old Point Comfort, the national historic landmark site of present-day Fort Monroe. "Algernoune Fort" was constructed at what's now called Old Point Comfort to guard approaches to Jamestown colony and the Chesapeake Bay. The October event is said to be planned "to consider how the maritime rim of colonial Virginia developed an egalitarian and culturally diverse society different from its Jamestown neighbor." Participants include James Whittenburg, William R. Pullen Chair, Department of History, College of William & Mary; William M. Kelso, Director of Archaeology, Historic Jamestowne Rediscovery Archaeological Project, Preservation Virginia; Ivor Noël Hume, OBE , Research Associate (hon.) Smithsonian Institution; Camilla Townsend, Professor of History, Rutgers University; David Harris Sacks, Richard F. Scholz Professor of History, Reed College; James Horn, Vice President of Research and Historical Interpretation, Colonial Williamsburg Foundation; and Karen Ordahl Kupperman, Silver Professor of History, New York University. For more information, please see the links on the left side of the home page at the Web site of the Fort Monroe Authority (officially, that's the "Fort Monroe Federal Area Development Authority"), http://www.fmfada.com/.

Registration Form: http://www.fmfada.com/pdf/RegistrationForm.pdf

Below is information about the American Revolution Round Table of Richmond's tour of the 1781 Battle of Petersburg on October 17. Their web site is at http://arrt-richmond.org/, with meeting details at http://arrt-richmond.org/3.html. Please contact Bill Welsch with any questions. wmwelsch@comcast.net
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THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION ROUND TABLE OF RICHMOND invites you on a bus tour of The 1781 Battle of Petersburg led and narrated by Dr. James H. Ryan, LTC, USA - Ret. Saturday, October 17, 2009 from 8:30 AM - 4 PM
As the American Revolution drew to a close, Petersburg's strategic location made it the focus of one of the last major battles leading up to the British surrender at Yorktown. We will travel to the British landing site at Hopewell and then follow their advance into Petersburg. We will trace their movements, as well as American counter maneuvers, visiting the locations of the various battlefield actions. After lunch at Eley's BBQ, we will visit Old Blandford Church, where British General William Phillips is buried, and the historic 1768 Battersea House. To reserve a seat, please send the completed attached sheet and a check for $45 per person, payable to ARRT-R to: Woody Childs, 13730 Bradley Bridge Rd, Chesterfield, VA 23838. Direct questions to president@arrt-richmond.org or 804-755-1809. Seating is limited. You may board the bus in either Richmond or Petersburg. A BBQ lunch at Eley's is included, as well as a copy of Robert P. Davis' booklet "The Battle of Petersburg." The trip goes regardless of weather. Please join us for this unique day.
The 1781 Battle of Petersburg Tour Reservation Form

NAME: ____________________________

ADDRESS: __________________________

PHONE: ___________________________

EMAIL: ____________________________

I WILL BOARD THE BUS AT: RICHMOND: ___ PETERSBURG: ___ Upon receipt, confirmation, boarding locations, and specific details will be emailed to you.

Alexander Campbell

Thomas Campbell (July 27, 1777 - June 15, 1844) was a Scottish poet chiefly remembered for his sentimental poetry dealing specially with human affairs. He was also one of the initiators of a plan to found what became the University of London. In 1799, he wrote 'The Pleasures of Hope' a traditional 18th century survey in heroic couplets. He also produced several stirring patriotic war songs- Ye Mariners of England, The Soldier's Dream, Hohenlinden and in 1801, The Battle of Baltic.

A rare 1837 full leather copy of The Poetical Works of Thomas Campbell, including Theodric, and many other poems not contained in any former edition. Published in Philadelphia by J. Crissy, 1837. Bound in full leather with gilt titles, a marbled page block, 182 pages, plus 38 pages of notes. 7 and a half by 4 and a half inches, with marbled endpapers.

Born in Glasgow, Thomas Campbell was the youngest son of Alexander Campbell, of the Campbells of Kirnan, Argyll. His father belonged to a Glasgow firm trading in Petersburg, Virginia, and lost his money in consequence of the American Revolutionary War. Campbell, who was educated at the Glasgow High School and University of Glasgow, won prizes for classics and for verse-writing. He spent the holidays as a tutor in the western Highlands. His poem Glenara and the ballad of Lord Ullin's Daughter owe their origin to a visit to Mull. In May 1797 he went to Edinburgh to attend lectures on law. He supported himself by private teaching and by writing, towards which he was helped by Dr. Robert Anderson, the editor of the British Poets. Among his contemporaries in Edinburgh were Sir Walter Scott, Henry Brougham, Francis Jeffrey, Dr. Thomas Brown, John Leyden and James Grahame. These early days in Edinburgh influenced such works as The Wounded Hussar, The Dirge of Wallace and the Epistle to Three Ladies.

In 1799, six months after the publication of the Lyrical Ballads of Wordsworth and Coleridge, The Pleasures of Hope was published. It is a rhetorical and didactic poem in the taste of his time, and owed much to the fact that it dealt with topics near to men's hearts, with the French Revolution, the partition of Poland and with negro slavery. Its success was instantaneous, but Campbell was deficient in energy and perseverance and did not follow it up. He went abroad in June 1800 without any very definite aim, visited Gottlieb Friedrich Klopstock at Hamburg, and made his way to Regensburg, which was taken by the French three days after his arrival. He found refuge in a Scottish monastery. Some of his best lyrics, Hohenlinden, Ye Mariners of England and The Soldier's Dream, belong to his German tour. He spent the winter in Altona, where he met an Irish exile, Anthony McCann, whose history suggested The Exile of Erin.

He had at that time the intention of writing an epic on Edinburgh to be entitled The Queen of the North. On the outbreak of war between Denmark and England he hurried home, the Battle of the Baltic being drafted soon after. At Edinburgh he was introduced to the first Lord Minto, who took him in the next year to London as occasional secretary. In June 1803 appeared a new edition of the Pleasures of Hope, to which some lyrics were added.

In 1803 Campbell married his second cousin, Matilda Sinclair, and settled in London. He was well received in Whig society, especially at Holland House. His prospects, however, were slight when in 1805 he received a government pension of £200. In that year the Campbells removed to Sydenham. Campbell was at this time regularly employed on the Star newspaper, for which he translated the foreign news. In 1809 he published a narrative poem in the Spenserian stanza, Gertrude of Wyoming -- referring to the Wyoming Valley of Pennsylvania and the Wyoming Valley Massacre -- with which were printed some of his best lyrics. He was slow and fastidious in composition, and the poem suffered from overelaboration. Francis Jeffrey wrote to the author:
"Your timidity or fastidiousness, or some other knavish quality, will not let you give your conceptions glowing, and bold, and powerful, as they present themselves; but you must chasten, and refine, and soften them, forsooth, till half their nature and grandeur is chiselled away from them. Believe me, the world will never know how truly you are a great and original poet till you venture to cast before it some of the rough pearls of your fancy."
In 1812 he delivered a series of lectures on poetry in London at the Royal Institution; and he was urged by Sir Walter Scott to become a candidate for the chair of literature at Edinburgh University. In 1814 he went to Paris, making there the acquaintance of the elder Schlegel, of Baron Cuvier and others. His pecuniary anxieties were relieved in 1815 by a legacy of £4000. He continued to occupy himself with his Specimens of the British Poets, the design of which had been projected years before. The work was published in 1819. It contains on the whole an admirable selection with short lives of the poets, and prefixed to it an essay on poetry containing much valuable criticism. In 1820 he accepted the editorship of the New Monthly Magazine, and in the same year made another tour in Germany.

Four years later appeared his Theodric, a not very successful poem of domestic life. He took an active share in the foundation of the University of London, visiting Berlin to inquire into the German system of education, and making recommendations which were adopted by Lord Brougham. He was elected Lord Rector of Glasgow University (1826-1829) in competition against Sir Walter Scott. Campbell retired from the editorship of the New Monthly Magazine in 1830, and a year later made an unsuccessful venture with The Metropolitan Magazine. He had championed the cause of the Poles in The Pleasures of Hope, and the news of the capture of Warsaw by the Russians in 1831 affected him as if it had been the deepest of personal calamities. "Poland preys on my heart night and day," he wrote in one of his letters, and his sympathy found a practical expression in the foundation in London of the Literary Association of the Friends of Poland. In 1834 he travelled to Paris and Algiers, where he wrote his Letters from the South (printed 1837). The small production of Campbell may be partly explained by his domestic calamities. His wife died in 1828. Of his two sons, one died in infancy and the other became insane. His own health suffered, and he gradually withdrew from public life. He died at Boulogne in 1844 and was buried in Westminster Abbey.

Campbell's other works include a Life of Mrs Siddons (1842), and a narrative poem, The Pilgrim of Glencoe (1842). See The Life and Letters of Thomas Campbell (3 vols., 1849), edited by William Beattie, M.D.; Literary Reminiscences and Memoirs of Thomas Campbell (1860), by Cyrus Redding; The Complete Poetical Works Of Thomas Campbell (1869); The Poetical Works of Thomas Campbell (1875), in the Aldine Edition of the British Poets, edited by the Rev. V. Alfred Hill, with a sketch of the poet's life by William Allingham; and the Oxford Edition of the Complete Works of Thomas Campbell (1908), edited by J. Logie Robertson. See also Thomas Campbell in the Unfamous Scots Series, by J.C. Madden, and a selection by Lewis Campbell (1904) for the Golden Treasury Series.

Jordan's Point

Breast plate recovered from this site.

The sites associated with the early 17th-century settlement known as Jordan’s Journey were located at Jordan’s Point near the confluence of the James and Appomatox rivers in Prince George’s County, Virginia. The property was initially occupied by Weyanoke Indians, one of the groups that formed the Powhatan chiefdom. About 1620, Samuel Jordan, his wife, Cecily, her two daughters, and their adult male servants took up residence at Jordan’s Point; this occupation is probably archaeological site 44PG302. Samuel Jordan died in 1623, and his widow married William Farrar, who moved to Jordan’s Journey. 44PG302 appears to have been abandoned by 1635.

Antiquarians and archaeologists have long maintained an interest in the sites located at Jordan’s Point, especially the Native American occupations. The sites described here concern the early 17th-century European component at Jordan’s Point.