Host Lisa Rowan sits down with local historian Eric Monday to explore western Virginia’s surprising role in the American Revolution. From frontier skirmishes to the communities that shaped the fight for independence, discover how the region’s people and places helped forge a new nation.
Check out our other Cardinal 250 podcasts:
- George Mason University professor Rosemarie Zagarri talks about the pivotal role women played in the “social media” of their time.
- Isle of Wight Museum Director Jennifer England talks about Elizabeth Bennett Young, the wife of an Isle of Wight County deputy clerk, who spirited the county records away and buried them to protect them from the British.
- Cheryl Wilson, executive director of Virginia’s 250 commission, talks about the commission’s work, a year out from the big anniversary.
- Cardinal News founding editor Dwayne Yancey talks about the 250 project.
- Matthew Webster of the Colonial Williamsburg Foundation about the restoration of the Magazine, the Colonial capital’s powder magazine.
- Michael Hudson of Historic Smithfield in Blacksburg talks about Botetourt County spy John Wyatt.
- Stephen Wilson of the St. John’s Church Foundation, about Patrick Henry’s famous “give me liberty or give me death” speech.
- Harvey Bakari, Black history curator at the Jamestown-Yorktown Foundation on Billy Flora, a free Black man who was a hero of the Battle of Great Bridge.
- The age of the Founding Fathers (which was younger than you might think).
- The music of the Revolution.
- The legend of Susanna Bolling, a 16-year-old from modern-day Hopewell who supposedly rode overnight to save Lafayette from being captured
- Historian Garrett Channell on “forgotten founder” Andrew Lewis.
- Tom Vaughan of the Overmountain Men Trail Association.
- Essex County Museum Executive Director Tim Manley about his county’s re-enactment of the historic Essex Resolutions.
- Descendants of Black Virginians who moved to freedom in Nova Scotia after the war (and the Canadian museum dedicated to them).
- Award-winning historian Woody Holton about “the forgotten founders.”
- Retired Virginia Commonwealth University journalism professor Jeff South about the role of the press in Colonial Virginia.
- South also talks about Clementina Rind, the first woman to publish a newspaper in Virginia.
- Cheryl Wilson, executive director of the Virginia American Revolution 250 Commission
