Talk:History of Virginia

message: Could this be added, Virginia Military District. Newbie222 6 July 2005 02:22 (UTC)
:It makes more sense for the Virginia Military District to be discussed in an article about Ohio, as it had so little part of Virginia's real history.--Parkwells (talk) 21:59, 27 March 2008 (UTC)
thread_title: Military District

message: Would it be appropiate to add an introductory paragraph or two to this article? ~ (The Rebel At) ~ 23:52, 11 October 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Extremely, urgently, and very much so.  The beginning of the article looks horrible, especially given the "TOCleft".  My knowledge of Virginia is miserable, but if it comes to it, I'll cut and paste a chunk out of the main Virginia article for the purpose.  (Better plans very much solicited.)  Alai 17:09, 15 November 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Introduction

message: After all the work done in African American and social history, it's disappointing to see so little recognition here - from the colonial period through the 20th century, there is little notice given of African American contributions to the state, their culture, and why they needed a civil rights movement in the mid-20th century. Much work needs to be done to supplement the article.--Parkwells 21:58, 1 November 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Lack of African American Contributions

message: There appears to be too much in this section; a separate article would be better. --Parkwells (talk) 21:48, 17 February 2008 (UTC
:There are separate articles on Bruton Parish  and Williamsburg- these sections need to be rewritten here from the POV of what is important to the state's history - less detail. --Parkwells (talk) 22:13, 27 March 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: The text in the "Established Church" section should either be pushed onto a separate article or be broadened to relate better to the rest of the article.  There could be a few options for a separate article, such as Established Church in Virginia, History of the Established Church in Virginia, or part of a new broader article such as Christianity in Virginia or even Religion in Virginia.--Patrick «» 19:37, 24 January 2009 (UTC)
thread_title: Bruton Parish Church and Williamsburg

message: This article in its current state is so bad that it scares me. I am terrified at the man power and hours it would take to make this article presentable.  Large swathes are repeated from other articles. Other areas are redundant. There is little organization. A total of 20 poorly formated references for over 90kb of text. The lead is nine paragraphs long. I wish this could be a useful portal to other topics, but right now its just a sink hole for random uncited information. Compare with the History of Minnesota, a featured article. I don't know if it is worth flagging sections, let alone marking phrases that need citation, due to the massive amount of rewriting likely necessary.--Patrick Ѻ 23:27, 11 March 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Article quality 

message: Working on reducing Bruton Parish Church to appropriate role, also on Williamsburg, early church, etc. SLowly.--Parkwells (talk) 12:27, 30 April 2008 (UTC)
thread_title: Working on shortening early sections

message: An anonymous IP recently changed the length of time Native Americans have inhabited the area from 3,000 years to 16,000, but with no citation. I'm not an expert who can determine which number is right, so I've reverted the edit until someone links to a credible source. justinfr (talk) 15:22, 1 July 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Native Americans 

message: I think it would make sense to move the section on "William & Mary". While related to religion in the colony, its significance is broader, and the paragraph seems to more clearly relate to the move of the capital to Williamsburg (see influence of students), and that it could be re-noted in the religion section. Is there any opposition or agreement?  — Preceding unsigned comment added by Morgan Riley (talk • contribs) 12:48, 17 March 2011 (UTC)
thread_title:  William & Mary move to earlier 

message: When I discovered this article page, I found that the early history and social history was rather well covered (save for the Civil Rights movement). However, post-Revolutionary economic and industrial history is greatly lacking, as well as representation of broad trends in the Shenandoah, Appalachia, Southside, and Central Virginia. I am going to attempt to boost that, and general coverage of post-Civil War/Reconstruction/Readjustment history, so parts may appear staccato and sparse for the time being, with several areas marked "expansion needed." There are also significant areas of comments where the changes are being construction. I hope this project does not offend, and that people will be willing to help with or support this. Please let me know if there are any problems.Morgan Riley (talk) 19:28, 17 March 2011 (UTC)
replies: text: the problem with the annexation is that it is not a statewide issue and the state histories don't bother mentioning it. They talk about politics and economics, and topics like education and regional tensions. Rjensen (talk) 02:08, 21 March 2011 (UTC)
replies: text: Perhaps not statewide general histories (I have little in my personal library, and will have to look further), but most urban histories (my specialization) in Virginia do mention it with significance, some to great extent. In particular in the areas of Richmond, Northern Virginia, and Hampton Roads, which therefore being a trend of the largest metro areas would by itself be sufficient for merit, yet it is an issue that has affected all cities (see decision to dissolve into counties). See also CITY OF RICHMOND V. UNITED STATES, 422 U. S. 358 (1975), where the issue of annexation, with regards to racial questions, was heard by the U.S. Supreme Court, and led the way to the annexation moratorium (there exist other court cases at the federal circuit and state levels, e.g. Citizens Committee v. Lynchburg, et. al., 528 F.2d 816 (1975)). Again, I respectfully suggest that when sufficient sources are gathered (I am mid-process), that it be included, though not necessarily at great length, as it is related to state constitutional issues, urbanization, race relations, and municipal politics as controlled at a state level, in a way that is peculiar and relevant to Virginia as a whole, which go to the issues you raised above. Insofar as mere mention is important, a short subsection summarizing the issue (or inclusion in the Civil Rights section), with a "main article" hatnote to Political subdivisions of Virginia might be more appropriate than full treatment. Thoughts?  — Preceding unsigned comment added by Morgan Riley (talk • contribs) 14:56, 21 March 2011 (UTC)
replies: text: Yes, it seemed important enough to be somewhere. Virginia is unusual, the "last large state" from the south and west to have a strong county system, yet with unusual features not found anywhere else. Student7 (talk) 12:56, 23 March 2011 (UTC)
replies: text: yes it belongs somewhere--as in the Richmond & Hampton Roads articles. But we have much more important topics to cover first for this article--eg the economy, politics, society since 1960. Rjensen (talk) 13:00, 23 March 2011 (UTC)
replies: text: How about in the Politics of Virginia or Government of Virginia? (Don't want to confuse things but "Politics.." has a bit of "Elections.." in it. Like many US articles on the topic, not a "clean" article for Politics, per se). Student7 (talk) 13:54, 23 March 2011 (UTC)
replies: text: Student7 is right:  it fits very well in Government of Virginia. (it's a nonpartisan issue so Politics doesn't quite work) Rjensen (talk) 13:56, 23 March 2011 (UTC)

text: Agreed on the annexation moratorium. I also agree on the importance of the building out the coverage of economic history as a priority. Not only post-1960 (for which more citations and something other than NoVa/Hampton Roads are needed, e.g. decline of tobacco as top cash crop, economic diversification), but indeed much of the economic history post-Reconstruction has been weak. So far, I've been adding basic major infrastructural improvements, ideally these will be supplemented by the industries that relied, flourish, and were based on said infra and their effects on the state (e.g. coal mining). I've been trying to contextualized events in Virginia with broader trends in American history. Proposals for some ideas are included in comments in the relevant sections. So that's the plan. Thoughts? Morgan Riley (talk) 14:15, 23 March 2011 (UTC)
thread_title:  General expansion, improvement 

message: If the reader gets through the lead, which is a bit long IMO, s/he is faced with an overly large TOC. Don't think s/he's going to read much past that. Really need to shorten it somehow, which may not be trivial. Two columns? Can't really truncate too much. Fork material/reorganize? Needs something.
::a few people will read all of it but most will be looking for a specific subtopic, and the TOC will be very helpful to them. Rjensen (talk) 15:42, 22 April 2011 (UTC)
replies: text: It might be possible or advisable to spin off the section on religion into a separate article "Religion in Colonial Virginia" or "Religion in 17th and 18th century Virginia", using a condensed summary here and linking to that article. That would reduce it significantly. Thoughts? Morgan Riley (talk) 18:37, 22 April 2011 (UTC)
replies: text: historians argue that religion was central to colonial Virginia. If it's spun off people will not realize that and will be misled. If people are not interested in a section they are allowed to skip it. Rjensen (talk) 18:50, 22 April 2011 (UTC)

text:   Perhaps a possible solution is to reduce the number of subheadings in that section (given as many only have a single paragraph). That said, the level of some detail may be too much for the overview of the entirety of Virginia history, and indeed might obscure its importance (namely, the entire subsection on Bruton Parish). That said, length is an issue that may be legitimately worth discussing, particularly with regards to what is still missing in the article, even if it is found to have no easy solution (see WP:Length). I'll work on reorganizing the headings, but wait on the removal of the Bruton Parish section so that its inclusion can have a chance to be defended/discussed. Morgan Riley (talk) 20:23, 22 April 2011 (UTC)
replies: text: I've cleaned up the section by reducing the number of headings and making the subject matter flow (though have not removed any content); the question remains as to whether to reduce/remove the section of Bruton Parish, for which I am in favor. Reasons are thus: though it was a central parish, such can be conveyed in a single sentence or two-- its inclusion gives an unusual emphasis of geographic narrowness for this article. Morgan Riley (talk) 20:44, 22 April 2011 (UTC)
replies: text: I agree the Bruton Parish section is unnecessary; I trimmed some other minor details too, removing about 550 words. Rjensen (talk) 00:44, 23 April 2011 (UTC)

text: I shrunk the TOC a tad by moving the period-sorted references to one notch lower (thus ignored by the TOC) Morgan Riley (talk) 02:39, 23 April 2011 (UTC)
thread_title: TOC problems

message: One suggestion above was to fork the religious subsections. I'm not sure this is totally a negative. If it is spun off, it can be more easily referenced/linked from other articles. (I don't have candidates). It would have to be summarized here. I think the latter is the main problem. I'm not convinced that its importance would be diminished by forking, or that it is considered "expendable" because it is forked. Student7 (talk) 22:02, 24 April 2011 (UTC)
thread_title: Spinoffs?

message: I have taken the solemn act of removing the maintenance tag for User:Vaoverland, due to the unfortunate news of his passing. Thank you for all your hard work, sir, and may you rest well! Morgan Riley (talk) 05:00, 9 May 2011 (UTC)
replies: text: Agreed, many thanks friend!-- Patrick, oѺ∞ 14:10, 9 May 2011 (UTC)
thread_title: Farewell, Vaoverland

message: The lead (not sure why it has to be in lead BTW) says that slave owners took advantage of slave women, which is true. Household slaves. But it gets much worse than that. Overseers (on larger plantations) were told (I have no reference here) to ensure that "the slave women stayed pregnant", to ensure a large population, some of which might be sold off. Some of the overseers undoubtedly "helped out." Not a nice situation. A lot less "friendly" situation than household slaves, which was probably bad enough. (Mary Chesnut refers to the household slave situation incidentally) Student7 (talk) 23:06, 22 July 2011 (UTC)
replies: text: Have worked on the Lede.  Need references to assertions such as above re: overseers. They took sexual advantage of slave women by their position of power, without economic incentives. Not only domestic slaves suffered sexual harassment and abuse. Virginia's mixed-race slave population is best known by the example of Thomas Jefferson and his nearly 40-year relationship with his mixed-race slave Sally Hemings, a half-sister to his wife by his father-in-law and his slave concubine, and their four surviving children.  They were 7/8 white and qualified as white under VA law of the time, although they were born into slavery. Jefferson freed them all the children when they came of age.Parkwells (talk) 21:40, 6 January 2012 (UTC)
thread_title: Sexual advantage of slaves

message: Needs more neutral tone in Civil War and Reconstruction sections. In addition, given how much has been written about VA, there is an over-reliance on one source for most of the Reconstruction content. More contemporary sources need to be used.Parkwells (talk) 21:42, 6 January 2012 (UTC)
thread_title: Tone of article/needs more sources

message: I reworked the introduction to four paragraphs in an encyclopedic summary style per WP:LEAD. Generally, I tried to preserve each point of previous editors. the biggest change is less detail, more summary phrasing. I tried to give major dates for developments every 50 years or so. We are talking 400 years. TheVirginiaHistorian (talk) 01:01, 8 February 2012 (UTC)
replies: text: Kudos - that really needed doing.--Kubigula (talk) 02:16, 8 February 2012 (UTC)
replies: text: Thank you, thank you! It was longer than many articles! Morgan Riley (talk) 16:45, 8 February 2012 (UTC)
thread_title:  Introduction rewrite 

message: The article states : "The name Virginia came from information gathered by the Raleigh-sponsored English explorations along what is now the North Carolina coast. Philip Amadas and Arthur Barlowe reported that a regional "king" named Wingina ruled a land of Wingandacoa. Queen Elizabeth modified the name to "Virginia". Though the word is latinate, it stands as the oldest English language place-name in the United States." However, elsewhere on this site, under "List of U.S. state name etymologies", we have : ""Country of the Virgin", after Elizabeth I of England, who was known as the "Virgin Queen" because she never married." The latter is, I think, more commonly accepted. Gwladys24 (talk) 13:54, 20 September 2012 (UTC)
replies: text: The former is verifiable based on actual documentation of the historic correspondence between Raleigh, Elizabeth, and other involved parties at the time. The latter is the watered-down, common perception as taught to schoolchildren for years.  I would say "common mis-perception", except that technically, it's not wrong: both stories are correct.  Elizabeth got the report that the native name was  "Wingandoacoa" (which later turned out to be a misunderstanding), and she herself modified it to "Virginia", presumably in honour of herself as the  "Virgin Queen".  There is no contradiction. Til Eulenspiegel (talk) 14:06, 20 September 2012 (UTC)
replies: text: I didn't say there was a contradiction, I pointed out that two differing explanations are given in two different places on wikipedia. If your explanation is more complete & accurate then the other two should also be complete &, of course, consistent. Gwladys24 (talk) 19:26, 20 September 2012 (UTC)
thread_title:  Name origin 

message: I created a new section, 'Virginia history on stamps'. There are three readily available on Wikimedia commons. The 'state flags of the united states' series is not yet uploaded there, which I believe has the image of the Colonial Capitol at Williamsburg on the Virginia stamp. TheVirginiaHistorian (talk) 09:46, 17 January 2014 (UTC)
thread_title:  Virginia history on stamps 

message: I've made some fairly extensive changes, mostly to the early sections of the article.  I trust most are self-explanatory and will be acceptable to others.  I combined two separate subsections concerning conflict between English and Indians.  I changed references to "Native Americans", usually to "natives", because of the political implications of the former.  The New World at the time was indeed broadly referred to by Europeans as "America", and I'm sure its native peoples were occasionally referred to generically as "Americans"; but there was no country known as America, let alone a political entity called by that name.  The term "Native Americans" refers to the conquered remnant of the original population of what is now the United States, and is inextricably tied up with their modern status and condition, especially in the Twentieth Century, when the term was first widely adopted.  As far as the English were concerned, the country was called Virginia, and the indigenes were either "Indians" or Paspaheghs, Monacans, Powhatans, Nansemonds, etc.  The citation of sources in all the sections I revised is quite inadequate in general.  I checked a couple of the references to Web sites and found that the links were dead.  I deleted one and tagged the other.
Similar revisions should be made to the corresponding parts of Colony of Virginia, which I'll do if I get time.
As is true of many, if not most, Wikipedia articles, probably because of the piecemeal way they're usually written and revised, this article lacks internal flow and consistency.  Sections and sub-sections are not parallel, and contents often don't match headings.  Content is often repetitive.  Topics are strangely juxtaposed.  It would be a great service if somebody with more time than I have would reorganize and reconcile the article from stem to stern.  J. D. Crutchfield | Talk 17:39, 25 February 2016 (UTC)
thread_title:  Revisions, 25 February 2016; more needed 

message: has restored (and since revised) a sentence that I had deleted, concerning a claim that there is archaeological evidence of settlement at Pocahontas Island about 6500 B.C.E., which appears to conflict with the statement preceding it, that Rountree and others have established three thousand years of settlement in Tidewater. There need not be an actual conflict, if the two sources were using two different sets of data; and, after all, it's fairly likely that there were human beings in the area more than ten thousand years ago (the Virginia Department of Historic Resources says over 17,000); but the Pocahontas Island claim just doesn't seem to have reliable documentation.  The source given for it is an historical highway marker, which I don't regard as a Reliable Source.  The DHR (http://dhr.virginia.gov/HistoricMarkers/, search "Pocahontas Island") gives the following references for the marker:  "Mary Ellen Bushey and Ann Creighton-Zollar, et al, African Americans in Petersburg (1994). Pocahontas Island Historic District nomination form Preservation Virginia, 'Pocahontas Island Historic District.' Whsv.com (15 May 2014)."
The full citation of the Bushey paper is 
::Bushey, Mary Ellen, Ann Creighton-Zollar, Lucious Edwards, Jr., L. Daniel Mouer and Robin L. Ryder, “African-Americans in Petersburg: Historic Contexts and Resources for Preservation Planning, Research and Interpretation,” (Department of Planning and Community Development, 1994)
which makes me think it's not a peer-reviewed work.  In any case, it's not a likely source for the claim regarding ancient inhabitants.  The historic-district nomination form is on the web at http://www.dhr.virginia.gov/registers/Cities/Petersburg/123-0114_PocahontasHD_2006_NRfinal.pdf, and, while very interesting, and apparently well-documented (extensively documented, at least), is not the source of the 6500 B.C.E. claim.  That leaves "Whsv.com", which is a Harrisonburg, Va., TV station's web site.  It's not archived on the Wayback Machine, and the present site doesn't appear to contain any information on Pocahontas Island.  A web search has not turned up any independent support for the Pocahontas Island claim.
I think it would be best to lose the Pocahontas Island claim, and really the Rountree claim as well (since it doesn't take us very far back), and to replace both with a summary of the DHR's account, assuming it's as reliable as it looks (I haven't read it through or investigated its sources).  The article, Pocahontas Island, Virginia should also be revised accordingly.  (The historic-district nomination form might furnish a good basis for more extensive revision of that article.)  I've already spent more time on this than I could really afford, but maybe MPS or somebody else will have time to follow up on what I've done here.  J. D. Crutchfield | Talk 22:51, 25 February 2016 (UTC)
thread_title:  Prehistory 

message: Hello fellow Wikipedians,
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*Added archive http://web.archive.org/web/20050309195818/http://oncampus.richmond.edu:80/academics/education/projects/webunits/vahistory/tribes.html to http://oncampus.richmond.edu/academics/education/projects/webunits/vahistory/tribes.html
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replies: text: I've checked the archive link, and it works.  I sampled many of the links on the archived page, and they also worked, although most of the graphic images are missing.  J. D. Crutchfield | Talk 19:09, 29 February 2016 (UTC)
thread_title:  External links modified 

message: I'm sorry, I hadn't checked the IP range for a while. Too late to block him although it's tempting to strike all his comments above. Doug Weller talk 13:27, 1 April 2016 (UTC)
thread_title:  IP is an indefinitely blocked editor known for making personal attacks 

message: Substituted at 18:01, 29 April 2016 (UTC)
thread_title: Assessment comment

message: Any interest in creating a Timeline of Virginia article? A few other U.S. states have timelines (see :Category:Timelines of states of the United States). Here are some sources:
* 
* 
* 
* 
* 
* WorldCat
-- M2545 (talk) 06:04, 22 September 2016 (UTC)
thread_title:  Timeline of Virginia 

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thread_title:  External links modified 

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thread_title:  External links modified