Colony of Virginia

An English and later British colony in North America, established at Jamestown in 1607. It became the Commonwealth of Virginia in 1776.

Jamestown: An English settlement founded in Virginia in 1607, the first permanent English colony in North America. The settlement established the colony and served as its capital for much of the seventeenth century.
House of Burgesses: A representative assembly established in Virginia in 1619, among the earliest elected legislatures in English America. It gave eligible colonists a local role in making laws under royal authority.
Wahunsenacawh: The paramount chief of the Powhatan Confederacy when the English founded Jamestown; English colonists called him Powhatan. His diplomacy and resistance shaped the colony’s earliest relations with Indigenous peoples.
Treaty of Albany (1722): An agreement between Virginia, other colonies, and the Haudenosaunee that addressed borders and relations with Indigenous nations. It helped define colonial diplomacy and claims to territory west of Virginia’s settled districts.
Virginia Company of London: An English joint-stock company chartered to establish colonies along the Atlantic coast of North America. It financed Jamestown and governed Virginia before the Crown took control in 1624.
Headright system: A land-grant policy that awarded acreage to people who paid for passage to an English colony, or paid another’s fare. It encouraged migration and concentrated landholding in seventeenth-century Virginia.
Pocahontas: A Powhatan woman whose relationships with English colonists became central to early accounts of Virginia. Her marriage to John Rolfe helped establish a period of peace between the English and Powhatan Confederacy.
French and Indian War: The North American theater of the Seven Years’ War, fought from 1754 to 1763 between Britain and France and their allies. Virginia’s western claims and militia were central to the conflict that reshaped British North America.
John Smith: An English soldier and colonial leader who helped sustain the Jamestown settlement in its early years. His leadership and account of the colony shaped early English understandings of Virginia.
Tobacco in colonial Virginia: A cash crop that became the principal export and economic foundation of colonial Virginia. Tobacco profits drove settlement along rivers and increased demand for labor.

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