Richmond: History

Richmond: History

Conflicts Prevent Settlement

On May 21, 1607, a week after Captain John Smith and his party landed at Jamestown, a group led by Captain Christopher Newport set out from camp to explore the James River. Within a week, their travels took them to some falls and a small island where on May 27 they set up a cross. This marked the "discovery" of Richmond, though three decades would pass before another Englishman established a permanent post on the site; the area had already long been home to Powhatan tribes.

During their first few years in the New World, the English colonists devoted most of their energies to securing the stockade at Jamestown. Their arrival had displaced many of the Algonquin and other Native Americans in the region and, as a result, the newcomers often found themselves engaged in violent battles with the indigenous tribes. Temporary truces brought occasional respite from the hostilities, but it still proved difficult to entice settlers to homestead outside the stockade. Several attempts to colonize a site near the falls on the James River failed due to repeated conflicts with angry Algonquins.

The Founding of Richmond

In 1637, however, Thomas Stegg set up a trading post at the spot where the river became navigable; he was later granted some additional land around the falls. After a sudden native uprising in 1644, some Jamestown settlers built a fort near Stegg's claim and offered freedom from taxation to anyone willing to establish a home there. Few people took the settlers up on their offer until after 1670 when, upon the death of Stegg's son, the family holdings (which had expanded to include property on both sides of the river) passed to William Byrd I, a nephew. Byrd received certain additional privileges in return for inducing able-bodied men to homestead in the area, and at last the post began to grow, eventually becoming a trading center for furs, tobacco, and other products.

The year 1737 marked the official laying out of the town of Richmond and its founding as the central marketplace for inland Virginia. Despite the fact that it served as host to three historic political conventions in the pre-Revolutionary War years, including the one at which Patrick Henry closed his impassioned speech with the memorable "Give me liberty or give me death," the town grew very slowly throughout most of the rest of the eighteenth century, even after it was named the capital of Virginia in 1779. Following the Revolutionary War, however, Richmond entered an era of rapid growth. In 1782, it was officially incorporated as a city. By 1790, it boasted a population of 3,761 people, up from only 684 people ten years earlier.

City Made Confederate Capital

By the time of the Civil War, Richmond was one of the major commercial and industrial centers of the country. It prospered as a port city. In addition, America's first iron and brick supplies were manufactured in Richmond, and the first-discovered coal veins in America were mined in neighboring Chesterfield County. Tobacco processing and flour milling also emerged as regional industrial powers. Shortly after Virginia seceded from the Union in April 1861, Richmond was made the capital of the Confederacy in acknowledgment of its preeminent economic and political position.

The Civil War left the city in ruins. Besieged for nearly four years by Union troops but never taken in battle, Richmond was very nearly destroyed in April 1865 by Confederate troops who set fire to tobacco and cotton warehouses as they fled the city. After the war, Richmond began the slow task of rebuilding its bankrupt economy. The old industries, tobacco and iron in particular, once again surfaced as the dominant forces, remaining so throughout the early 1900s. Banking also emerged as an important factor on the local scene as Richmond became one of the South's leading financial centers.

A City Divided and Finally United

Both world wars sparked industrial expansion in Richmond, leading to a diversification that has made the area prosperous for many years. Racial tensions surfaced during the 1950s with the development of a strategy of "massive resistance" during which Virginia politicians and leaders were encouraged to prevent desegregation of schools in the wake of the Brown vs. the Board of Education ruling. The NAACP filed numerous suits and the federal government ordered integration of a number of Virginia counties and municipalities; in response, the Virginia governor ordered many schools to close rather than comply. Richmond fought integration until 1970, when a district court judge devised a busing strategy to integrate the schools. Sixteen years later, the same judge approved a neighborhood schools system that effectively ended the city's struggles in regard to segregation.

The 1980s were marked by concerted efforts to foster cooperation and growth to benefit the entire metropolitan area. Those efforts are felt today, as Richmond is not only a manufacturing center of note, but also a hub for research, federal and state government, banking, transportation, trade, and health care. It is a city that is committed to preserving the best of its nearly 400-year past while carefully crafting a future that includes continued economic development. This synthesis is possibly reflected best in the development agency Richmond Renaissance, which acts as a bridge between the corporate, governmental, and African American communities as they work toward a common goal of a vital, thriving city in the "New South."

Historical Information: Library of Virginia, 800 E. Broad Street, Richmond, VA 23219; telephone (804)692-3500. Virginia Historical Society Library and Museum, 428 North Blvd., PO Box 7311, Richmond, VA 23221; telephone (804)358-4901