Randy Walker

The founding of Hampden-Sydney College during a revolution was partly a coincidence, but the founders were also anti-royalist — so much so that they named the school after two Englishmen who lost their lives as enemies of the crown.

He turned up as an orphan of 4 or 5 on the dock of what is today Hopewell. He grew into a giant of a man who struck terror into the British. When he died, Virginia gave him a state funeral. Now a filmmaker wants to turn his story into a miniseries.

When Thomas Jefferson’s term expired without a successor being chosen, this doctor from the Roanoke Valley took charge for eight eventful days.

The doctor who served as acting governor during a crucial period of the Revolution is buried in Roanoke.

This Founding Father preferred simplicity, “not like these other guys.”

Draft resistance in the Northern Neck led to one man being charged with murder, but an uprising blocked his trial.

Jack Jouett is the Paul Revere of Virginia but Revere is not the Jouett of Massachusetts.

Andrew Lawler contends that Thomas Jefferson wanted to destroy urban, multiracial, capitalist Norfolk partly because it didn’t fit his vision of an agrarian slaveocracy, that Black slave ownership wasn’t the same as white slave ownership and that Patrick Henry manipulated white farmers into supporting the Patriot cause.

Most of the key participants in the American Revolution were surprisingly young.