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Results from other recent tests on bone samples confirmed that the Jamestown skeleton was an immigrant to America, showing that he ate a diet rich in wheat as opposed to an American corn diet, researchers said. The quest to identify a nearly intact skeleton found at Jamestown continues. Jamestown officials said this week that without DNA proof, researchers are doing other studies to test their theory that the skeleton discovered in 2002 belongs to Capt. Bartholomew Gosnold, a founder of the first permanent English settlement in North America, established almost 400 years ago. The announcement came after The Church of...

The Story of Gentleman Jim Robinson He was one of the first free African-American landowners here. By Bonnie Hobbs February 16, 2006 The history of Centreville and Manassas is intertwined with the story of the Robinson family — specifically Gentleman Jim Robinson, one of the first free African-American landowners in this area. HE RAISED a family here and successfully sued the federal government for Civil War damages to the home he'd built in the 1840s. And in 1924, that home was sold to the Manassas National Battlefield Park and became a historical landmark.' Robinson was born Oct. 6, 1799 on...

Sixty years ago this Wednesday, Winston Churchill addressed the General Assembly and urged the citizens of the United States and Great Britain to stand together. * snip * .... posthumously make Britain's prime minister during World War II an honorary citizen of Virginia. * snip * Only three other notables hold honorary state citizenship - the Marquis de Lafayette, the Revolutionary War hero; John D. Rockefeller, the oil baron who underwrote the restoration of Colonial Williamsburg; and Margaret Thatcher, another former British prime minister who also once served as chancellor of the College of William and Mary. She joined the...

RICHMOND, Jan. 25 -- It may not actually mention Virginia or even be about Virginia, but "Shenandoah" may soon become the commonwealth's official state song. A Senate panel has voted to designate the melodious folk tune as the state's "interim official state song" -- temporary, that is, in case something better comes along. The commonwealth has gone without a theme since 1997, when lawmakers retired "Carry Me Back to Old Virginia" because its lyrics were deemed offensive to black citizens. Lawmakers labeled the anthem, with its references to "darkies" and "massas," the state's "emeritus song" and appointed a 12-member committee...

SALUDA -- The Middlesex County Board of Supervisors reaffirmed its support for the biggest housing development in the county's history last night and voted to rezone the historic Rosegill Plantation. The 5-0 vote allows Northern Virginia developers to build 700 housing units on the 848-acre Rappahannock River estate that resonates with Colonial history and shelters the neighboring town of Urbanna in a cloak of picturesque farmland. The Rosegill manor house was home to two Colonial Virginia governors and parts of the house date to 1650, making it one of the oldest in the state. Residents on both sides of the...

Leesburg Pulls All Civic Signs; Confederate Flag At Center Of Controversy Molly Novotny Jan 12, 2006 -- A Confederate battle flag is not the symbol town staff wanted greeting visitors and residents entering Leesburg. So to ensure the symbol would not adorn the town’s entrance points, town staff removed all civic organization signs from those gateways. Removing all of the signs, to exclude the Sons of Confederate Veterans’ sign legally, has caused frustration among the civic groups, many which have been advertising their clubs’ meetings for a generation. “I belong to several of the organizations that post their signs there,”...

Commemorating the day Thomas Jefferson declared religious freedom for all Americans, the nation today celebrates Religious Freedom Day as declared by President George Bush. "The right to religious freedom is a foundation of America," said Bush in his proclamation Friday. "Our Founding Fathers knew the importance of freedom of religion to a stable democracy, and our Constitution protects individuals' rights to worship as they choose." In 1786, Jefferson drafted the Virginia Statute on Religious Freedom, protecting the civil rights of people to express their religious beliefs without suffering discrimination. Now, 14 years after the first Religious Freedom Day proclamation by...

http://www.NewsAndOpinion.com | "The New World," a film slated for Christmas day release, tells the romantic story of Pocahontas and John Smith, but ads for the movie tell a more depressing story of political correctness. A glossy magazine layout says that what settlers "named the Jamestown Settlement was already home to a noble civilization." On my radio show, I mocked the idea that the pre-literate, stone-aged Powhatan Indians of Virginia constituted a "noble civilization," and in later version of ads for the movie, the word "noble" disappeared. In its place, however, New Line Cinema included an even more absurd declaration, claiming...

<p>A nation's identity consists of braided memories, which are nourished by diligence at civic commemorations. It is, therefore, disappointing that at this moment of keen interest in the Supreme Court and the office of chief justice, scant attention has been paid to the 250th anniversary of the birth of the nation's greatest jurist, Chief Justice John Marshall. The oldest of the family's 15 children, he was born Sept. 24, 1755, into Virginia rusticity where women pinned their blouses with thorns. Yet he developed the most urbane and subtle mind of that era of remarkable statecraft. He was a member of Virginia's ratifying convention, and in nearly 35 years as chief justice he founded American constitutional law. That kind of legal reasoning by Supreme Court justices is a continuous exegesis of the Constitution and is sometimes not easily distinguished from a continuing writing of the document.</p>

This Day In History | Civil War July 24 1864 Battle of Kernstown, Virginia Confederate General Jubal Early defeats Union troops under General George Crook to keep the Shenandoah Valley clear of Yankees. On June 13, 1864, General Robert E. Lee sent Early north from Petersburg to clear the Shenandoah of Union troops and relieve pressure on his own beleaguered force. Lee's Army of Northern Virginia had been pinned in Petersburg after a bloody six-week campaign with General Ulysses S. Grant's Army of the Potomac. The campaign mimicked that of General Thomas J. "Stonewall" Jackson's in 1862, when the Confederates...

SHELLEY, England -- Archaeologists trying to exhume the remains of the sister of one of the founders of the first permanent English settlement in North America have found what they believe is her 400-year-old burial shaft and hope to find her body soon. They want to use DNA from the remains to find out whether a skeleton unearthed in Virginia is that of Capt. Bartholemew Gosnold, who oversaw an expedition that led to the founding of Jamestown in 1607. British and American researchers began digging Monday beneath the floor of the 12th-century Church of All Saints, where Gosnold's sister, Elizabeth...

Years before the Civil War, a free black washerwoman is believed to have made her living laundering the clothes of University of Virginia students and professors. Little of her story is known, but a new archeological discovery may help unearth her place in history. Archeologists have uncovered evidence of two additional graves on university grounds, a dozen years after archeologists found 12 other grave shafts nearby. The discovery could shed some light on the people who lived - and now rest - on UVa land, said Mary Hughes, university landscape architect. “We don’t know fully what these explorations mean, but...

Thirteen years before the Mayflower's voyage to the New World, Captain Bartholomew Gosnold oversaw an expedition that led to the founding of the first permanent English settlement in North America. Now, Virginia preservationists are travelling to England to determine whether the skeleton they found at the site of the Jamestown colony is his. Excavations were planned next week at two churches to retrieve DNA samples from the remains of Gosnold descendants - a sister and a niece. Radar surveys were conducted at the churches earlier this year, but the process to extract the genetic material still involves uncertainties. "In archaeology,...

Monroe closure defended The fort has little military use and should be closed, the Army tells a base-closure commission. BY DAVID LERMAN I (202) 824-8224 May 19 2005 WASHINGTON -- Army leaders defended their recommendation to close Fort Monroe on Wednesday, saying Hampton's historic fort is a relatively small base for strictly administrative use and has low military value. Army Secretary Francis J. Harvey said the proposed closures of Fort Monroe and two bases in Georgia are part of an effort to consolidate Army forces into larger, multi-use bases that can accommodate greater numbers of troops. Under the Pentagon's plan,...

The Church of England on Wednesday gave permission for archeologists to dig under a church floor and remove DNA from 400-year-old skeletal remains to determine if the Jamestown settlement's founder was buried just outside the 17th century fort. The Church of England said archaeologists can dig under the floor of a church in Suffolk, England, to reach the skeleton of Elizabeth Tilney. She was the sister of Bartholomew Gosnold, a leader of the English expedition that founded Jamestown in 1607. To tell if a skeleton recovered from the site of the original Jamestown fort is Gosnold's, scientists need DNA from...

Nearly 10 years after leading the pioneering dig that unearthed the lost remains of Jamestown, archaeologist William M. Kelso was named 2005 Virginian of the Year by the VPA. With the 400th anniversary of the first permanent English settlement just two years away, the former Williamsburg high school history teacher, who lives on the island, says the full impact of the celebrated excavation has yet to be felt. Q: You first came to Jamestown Island at 21, intent on standing on the exact spot where America began. You returned repeatedly over the next three decades. What's behind this lifelong interest?...

Insurrections have three times thrust upon Williamsburg armies of occupation. In July 1676, when the town was yet called Middle Plantation, it fell into the power of the rebel Nathaniel Bacon and his men. In June 1781, as the war for American independence neared its dénouement, England's Lord Cornwallis and his troops briefly took over the city. After Yorktown, French troops took up winter residence. Eighty years later, the morning of May 6, 1862, in the War for Southern Independence the first of the Yankees marched in. It was the end of the Battle of Williamsburg, a clash along an...

Reading Free Blacks Out of HistoryBy Anita L. WillsHistory News Network | February 28, 2005 "We reside among you and yet are strangers; natives and not citizens; surrounded by the freest people and most Republican Institutions in the world and yet enjoying none of the immunities of freedom though we are not slaves we are not yet free." -- Memorial of the Free People of Color, African Repository, December 1826, Baltimore MDAfrican American History month is a month in which Americans celebrate the history of people of African descent. It is a sharing of a culture long ignored by the...

WASHINGTON -- America has no more than 20 years before the last of the unprotected but critical Civil War battlefields are "preserved or paved over," the president of the Civil War Preservation Trust said Thursday. Revealing a list of the 10 most-endangered battlefields at a news conference with country musician Darryl Worley, trust president O. James Lighthizer called the hallowed acreage "outdoor classrooms" under serious threat of development. Although the trust has had success in preserving more than 18,000 acres of critical battlefields, including parts of Shiloh in Tennessee, Iuka and Corinth in Mississippi and Antietam in Maryland, important tracts...

Wall Street and the surrounding blocks in Richmond were home to several dozen slave dealers and auction houses where tens of millions of dollars changed hands before and during the war, providing the fuel that drove the Southern economy. An experienced field hand could bring $1,500 to $2,000 at auction, or roughly $25,000 in 2003 dollars. If you factor in the average rate of return of 10 percent per slave, multiplied by a busy month's volume of 10,000 or more sold, it is immediately evident that the Richmond slave trade of the early 1860s was a booming enterprise. Total annual...