While in London in 1705, Robert Beverley wrote and published The History and Present State of Virginia, one of the earliest printed English-language histories about North America by an author born there. Like his brother-in-law William Byrd II, Beverley was a scion of Virginia's planter elite, personally ambitious and at odds with royal governors in the colony. As a native-born American--most famously claiming "I am an Indian--he provided English readers with the first thoroughgoing account of the province's past, natural history, Indians, and current politics and society. In this new edition, Susan Scott Parrish situates Beverley and his History in the context of the metropolitan-provincial political and cultural issues of his day and explores the many contradictions embedded in his narrative. Parrish's introduction and the accompanying annotation, along with a fresh transcription of the 1705 publication and a more comprehensive comparison of emendations in the 1722 edition, will open Beverley's History to new, twenty-first-century readings by students of transatlantic history, colonialism, natural science, literature, and ethnohistory.
This is the first volume of a five-volume work consisting of Virginia genealogies that appeared in the "Virginia Magazine of History and Biography," a notable periodical that contained a large number of genealogies that will be of help to the researcher. This volume contains articles about the following main families in the alphabetical sequence Adams-Chiles: Adams, Anthony-Cooper, Ball, Barret, Bassett-Stith, Battaile, Baylor, Berkeley, Bernard, Beverley, Bickley, Blackwell (with Miskell), Booker, Boyd, Bradley-Harrison, Branch, Brent, Brockenbrough, Brodnax, Brooke, Bruce, Buchanan, Buckner, Burwell, Carr (with Broadhead, Winston, Barrett), Carter, Cary, Champe (with Pope, Barradall, Beckwith, Thornton, Taliaferro, Markham), Chancellor, Chappell, Chew, and Chiles.
This volume includes 295 family names with detailed descriptions of their family arms, often their family crest and sometimes their family motto. Entries also include the county (in Virginia) associated with the family, the name of their immigrant ancesto
Lists about 2500 books found in major libraries throughout the U. S. containing genealogies of families from Virginia and West Virginia. The books listed deal with families of Virginia origins but often follow their descendants far and wide across the continent. Each book is listed under the surname of the primary Virginia family covered in it. Many of the titles listed deal with several families, not all of which may have Virginia roots. Citations to all these allied families are listed in a cross-reference table, regardless of the geographic focus of the family, making this bibliography of use to researchers with interests outside Virginia also.