In May 2022, I wrote an article on my 6th great grandfather, Benjamin Temple of King William County, Virginia. He was a veteran of the French and Indian War, having served with George Washington and, later, was a lieutenant-colonel in the 1st and 4th Continental Light Dragoons during the Revolutionary War. Post war, Benjamin Temple […]
An act concerning servants and slaves: Virginia’s Slave Codes of 1705 With the establishing of Virginia as a slave society through laws that eliminated enslaved peoples rights, colonial officials next sought to condense these laws spread out across the 17th century, into one comprehensive set of laws that would govern the enslaved chattel of Colonial […]
In the lead up to Ken Burns’ new documentary, The American Revolution, I have continuously been seeing advertisements for the premier this coming weekend. Inspired by the advertisement that quotes Benjamin Franklin from his letter to Samuel Cooper on May 1, 1777, in which Franklin says, “our Cause is the Cause of all Mankind”, it […]
About the latter end of August [1619], A Dutch man of Warr of the burden of a 160 tunnes arrived at Point-Comfort, the Comandors name Capt. Jope, his Pilott for the West Indies one Mr Marmaduke an Englishman. They mett with the Treasurer [an English vessel that routinely sailed between London and Virginia] in […]
Disclaimer: The thoughts and opinions of myself, the author, are my own and do not represent Patrick Henry’s Red Hill. We are living in a time when historic interpretation, preservation, and stewardship are facing threats from without and within. Executive orders coming from the President of the United States are forcing some museums and institutions, […]
Slavery has it roots in the earliest days of the colonial history of Virginia. Slavery was first introduced into the colony in 1619, when a captured slave ship arrived at Jamestown that “brought not any thing but 20. and odd Negroes”. The slaves dropped off at Jamestown came from Angola. African slavery in this first […]
It was Spring of 2003, my senior year in high school. For my English class that year, we had to do a family history type of project. So, I went to my dad to ask him about the family history. He did not know too terribly much. But he did pull out an old mailing […]
Henry Skyren was born about 1729 in Whitehaven, England. Not much is known about his upbringing, home, or family life. It is likely that he grew up in a strongly religious household as he became an Anglican minister. On June 2, 1760, Skyren was appointed by John Lincoln, the Lord Bishop of London, the office […]
In the colonial era, documents mentioning enslaved persons are hard to come by, and even rarer are documents with details about the slaves themselves. Newspaper advertisements for runaway enslaved persons would often mention slaves by name and brief descriptions and what they may have last been wearing; this was the exception because at that time […]
On 6 August 1694, Richard Kennon of Conjurer’s Neck (what was then Henrico County, in present-day Colonial Heights, Virginia), either wrote or dictated to another his will. Around this time, the bridge between the 17th and 18th centuries, the way wills in colonial Virginia were executed went through a change. In the 17th century, wills […]