Download or read book Journey on the James written by Earl Swift and published by University of Virginia Press. This book was released on 2014-12-19 with total page 355 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From its beginnings as a trickle of icy water in Virginia's northwest corner to its miles-wide mouth at Hampton Roads, the James River has witnessed more recorded history than any other feature of the American landscape -- as home to the continent's first successful English settlement, highway for Native Americans and early colonists, battleground in the Revolution and the Civil War, and birthplace of America's twentieth-century navy. In 1998, restless in his job as a reporter for the Norfolk Virginian-Pilot, Earl Swift landed an assignment traveling the entire length of the James. He hadn't been in a canoe since his days as a Boy Scout, and he knew that the river boasts whitewater, not to mention man-made obstacles, to challenge even experienced paddlers. But reinforced by Pilot photographer Ian Martin and a lot of freeze-dried food and beer, Swift set out to immerse himself -- he hoped not literally -- in the river and its history. What Swift survived to bring us is this engrossing chronicle of three weeks in a fourteen-foot plastic canoe and four hundred years in the life of Virginia. Fueled by humor and a dauntless curiosity about the land, buildings, and people on the banks, and anchored by his sidekick Martin -- whose photographs accompany the text -- Swift points his bow through the ghosts of a frontier past, past Confederate forts and POW camps, antebellum mills, ruined canals, vanished towns, and effluent-spewing industry. Along the banks, lonely meadowlands alternate with suburbs and power plants, marinas and the gleaming skyscrapers of Richmond's New South downtown. Enduring dunkings, wolf spiders, near-arrest, channel fever, and twenty-knot winds, Swift makes it to the Chesapeake Bay. Readers who accompany him through his Journey on the James will come away with the accumulated pleasure, if not the bruises and mud, of four hundred miles of adventure and history in the life of one of America's great watersheds.

Download or read book Transforming the James River in Richmond written by Ralph Hambrick and published by Arcadia Publishing. This book was released on 2020-04-06 with total page 256 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The James River is the centerpiece of Richmond, but by the mid-twentieth century it had been abused and neglected. Eagles and sturgeon had nearly disappeared, water-powered industry was abandoning it and the river was a sewer. Today, the river draws visitors to its wooded shorelines, restored canal and feisty rapids. At the local level, this transformation was the result of citizen action, public-private partnerships, difficult decisions by governmental leaders and the hard work of thousands of passionate advocates and volunteers. Local author and lifelong river watcher Ralph Hambrick chronicles the events, projects and controversies that brought about the dramatic change and lends a critical eye to the results.

Download or read book Richmond Virginia written by George Washington Engelhardt and published by . This book was released on 1903 with total page 186 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Richmond on the James written by Louis H. Manarin and published by Arcadia Publishing. This book was released on 2001 with total page 132 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: One of the nation's most historic cities, Richmond was first visited by colonists in 1607 and officially established as a town in 1742. Throughout its long and lively history, Richmond's landscape has been dotted with notable monuments and statues, prestigious institutions of higher learning, lush parks, tranquil cemeteries, and thriving commercial and residential communities. Images preserved on early twentieth-century postcards reveal many facets of this remarkable city, from the original State Capitol building designed by Thomas Jefferson to the nineteenth-century Governor's Mansion, which still serves as home to Virginia's chief executive, and from the Edgar Allan Poe Museum located in Richmond's oldest home to the oldest Masonic building in the United States.

Download or read book Richmond on the James written by First and Merchants National Bank, Richmond and published by . This book was released on 1926 with total page 34 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book James Branch Cabell and Richmond In Virginia written by Edgar E. MacDonald and published by . This book was released on 2010-06-23 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: James Branch Cabell and Richmond-in-Virginia by Edgar MacDonald In his prime Vanity Fair nominated James Branch Cabell for "Immortality" on its pages reserved for acclaiming the most select of notable achievers. Favored by the intelligentsia, Cabell was the author of a series of fabulous, well-told fictions that in the 1920s made him a household literary name. Among his many acclaimed books published by 1930 are Jurgen, The Lineage of Lichfield, The Silver Stallion, Something About Eve, The White Robe, and The Works of James Branch Cabell in eighteen volumes. By the time of his death in 1958 the list of his works had become prodigiously long, but he had been in eclipse for almost three decades. This definitive biography serves to restore to Cabell the recognition he deserves. Here he is portrayed as a jesting critic of southern chivalry, an ambivalent artist whose feelings for Richmond required a lifetime to reconcile. He was quintessentially a Virginian. His native Richmond shaped him, and its social milieu indelibly marked him. He matured as a writer in the climate of the postbellum South and excelled in subjecting the rigid graces of "Richmond-in-Virginia" to satire and burlesque. Like his fellow Virginian Ellen Glasgow, he had mixed emotions about home. Not to love Virginia was an act of betrayal, yet to condone its stultifying, Old South idealism was to betray oneself. With the deterioration of Richmond's Edwardian values in the 1920s Cabell emerged as a major literary figure, hailed as an iconoclast and debunker of myths, but by the 1930s his mannered, self-conscious style was out of fashion. Cabell was dogged by scandal. There was the question of homosexuality. It was charged that he murdered the man reputed to be his mother's lover. After a notorious New York trial his most notable book Jurgen was suppressed for violating antiobscenity laws. In this inclusive examination of Cabell's life and milieu a fascinating literary figure is rescued from the literary shadows and acknowledged as a writer of major worth in the canon of American literature. Edgar MacDonald is Cabell Scholar-in-Residence at the James Branch Cabell Library, Virginia Commonwealth University.

Download or read book Tredegar Iron Works Richmond s Foundry on the James written by Nathan Vernon Madison and published by Arcadia Publishing. This book was released on 2015 with total page 1 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: One of the most important industrial landmarks in the nation lies in the heart of historic Richmond. The Tredegar Iron Works was the most prodigious ordnance supplier to the Confederacy during the Civil War, as well as an industrial behemoth in its own right. Named for the hometown of the Welsh engineers who built it, Tredegar remained one of Richmond's chief industrial entities for over a century. It produced ordnance during five wars and helped build the railroads that rapidly spread across the nation during the Gilded Age. Author Nathan Vernon Madison, utilizing a wealth of primary sources and firsthand accounts, chronicles the full history of a Richmond industrial icon.

Download or read book Transforming the James River in Richmond written by Ralph Hambrick and published by Arcadia Publishing. This book was released on 2020 with total page 256 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The James River is the centerpiece of Richmond, but by the mid-twentieth century it had been abused and neglected. Eagles and sturgeon had nearly disappeared, water-powered industry was abandoning it and the river was a sewer. Today, the river draws visitors to its wooded shorelines, restored canal and feisty rapids. At the local level, this transformation was the result of citizen action, public-private partnerships, difficult decisions by governmental leaders and the hard work of thousands of passionate advocates and volunteers. Local author and lifelong river watcher Ralph Hambrick chronicles the events, projects and controversies that brought about the dramatic change and lends a critical eye to the results.

Download or read book James River Recreation and Open Space Plan for the City of Richmond Virginia written by L. Eldon James and published by . This book was released on 1979 with total page 112 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Richmond Virginia The City on the James The Book of Its Chamber of Commerce and Principal Business Interests written by George Washington Engelhardt and published by Franklin Classics Trade Press. This book was released on 2018-11-13 with total page 132 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work is in the public domain in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work. Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. To ensure a quality reading experience, this work has been proofread and republished using a format that seamlessly blends the original graphical elements with text in an easy-to-read typeface. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant.

Download or read book A Photographic Journey Through the James River Park System written by Bill Draper and published by Brandylane Publishers, Incorporated. This book was released on 2021-01-28 with total page 96 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Celebrate one of the most beloved park systems in the nation, the James River Park System.

Download or read book Plantation Homes of the James River written by Bruce Roberts and published by . This book was released on 1990 with total page 136 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Bruce Roberts takes us on a photographic tour of fourteen of the famous colonial Virginia plantation houses nestled along the shores of the Lower James River from Richmond east to Jamestown and Williamsburg. Now carefully restored, often with the original furnishings, these houses are glorious monuments to a bygone era. If you have never visited the James River plantations, this book will inspire you to plan a trip there. If you have, you will find this book a wonderful memento of a special place. Robert's 141 color photographs capture the magnificent exteriors of the houses, as well as their gardens and grounds, and offer rare and intimate glimpses of their interiors and furnishings. The plantations portrayed include Shirley Plantation, one of the oldest in America; Belle Air Plantation, with its unique seventeenth-century frame house containing America's finest Jacobean staircase; and Westover Plantation, site of the elegant Georgian home built by William Byrd II. The text provides histories of the plantations, presenting them as places where real people lived and worked -- and still do, in many cases. While the plantations share some common history, each reflects the individual characteristics of the men, women, and children who lived there. In the dining room at Berkeley Hundred, George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, and eight other presidents enjoyed meals and discussed affairs of state. At Carter's Grove, Roberts photographed the "Refusal Room," where, according to local history, both Washington and Jefferson were refused in marriage by Virginia belles. Today many of the plantation homes have been designated state and national historic sites, and with this book you can visit them and relive four hundred years of history.

Download or read book Richmond on the James written by Richmond on the James, Inc and published by . This book was released on 1983 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book The River Where America Began written by Bob Deans and published by Rowman & Littlefield Publishers. This book was released on 2008-12-16 with total page 336 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From the establishment of the first permanent English colony at Jamestown in 1607 to the fall of Richmond in 1865, the James River has been instrumental in the formation of modern America. It was along the James that British and Native American cultures collided and, in a twisted paradox, the seeds of democracy and slavery were sown side by side. The culture crafted by Virginia's learned aristocrats, merchants, farmers, and frontiersmen gave voice to the cause of the American Revolution and provided a vision for the fledgling independent nation's future. Over the course of the United States' first century, the James River bore witness to the irreconcilable contradiction of a slave-holding nation dedicated to liberty and equality for all. When that intractable conflict ignited civil war, the James River served as a critical backdrop for the bloodiest conflict in U.S. history. As he guides readers through this exciting historical narrative, Deans gives life to a dynamic cast of characters including the familiar Powhatan, John Smith, Patrick Henry, Thomas Jefferson, Benedict Arnold, and Robert E. Lee, as well as those who have largely escaped historical notoriety. The River Where America Began takes readers on a journey along the James River from the earliest days of civilization nearly 15,000 years ago through the troubled English settlement at Jamestown and finishes with Lincoln's tour of the defeated capital of Richmond in 1865. Deans traces the historical course of a river whose contributions to American life are both immeasurable and unique. This innovative history invites us all to look into these restless waters in a way that connects us to our past and reminds us of who we are as Americans.

Download or read book Report to the Council of the City of Richmond in Relation to the Improvement of the Navigation of James River Below this City written by Richmond (Va.). Committee on the James River Improvement and published by . This book was released on 1851* with total page 8 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Nonesuch Place written by T. Tyler Potterfield and published by Arcadia Publishing. This book was released on 2009-06-02 with total page 145 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Intentionally built on the fall line where the Piedmont uplands meet the Tidewater region, Richmond has always been a city defined by the land. From the time settlers built a city on rugged terrain overlooking the James River, the people have changed the land and been changed by it. Few know this better than T. Tyler Potterfield, a planner with the City of Richmond Department of Community Development. Whether considering the many roles of the "romantic, wild and beautiful" James River through the centuries, describing the rationale for the location of the Virginia State Capitol on Shockoe Hill or relating the struggle to reclaim green space as industrialization and urban growth threatened to remove nature from the city, Potterfield weaves a tale as ordered as the gridded streets of Richmond and just as rich in history.

Download or read book Death and Rebirth in a Southern City written by Ryan K. Smith and published by JHU Press. This book was released on 2020-11-17 with total page 329 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This exploration of Richmond's burial landscape over the past 300 years reveals in illuminating detail how racism and the color line have consistently shaped death, burial, and remembrance in this storied Southern capital. Richmond, Virginia, the former capital of the Confederacy, holds one of the most dramatic landscapes of death in the nation. Its burial grounds show the sweep of Southern history on an epic scale, from the earliest English encounters with the Powhatan at the falls of the James River through slavery, the Civil War, and the long reckoning that followed. And while the region's deathways and burial practices have developed in surprising directions over these centuries, one element has remained stubbornly the same: the color line. But something different is happening now. The latest phase of this history points to a quiet revolution taking place in Virginia and beyond. Where white leaders long bolstered their heritage and authority with a disregard for the graves of the disenfranchised, today activist groups have stepped forward to reorganize and reclaim the commemorative landscape for the remains of people of color and religious minorities. In Death and Rebirth in a Southern City, Ryan K. Smith explores more than a dozen of Richmond's most historically and culturally significant cemeteries. He traces the disparities between those grounds which have been well-maintained, preserving the legacies of privileged whites, and those that have been worn away, dug up, and built over, erasing the memories of African Americans and indigenous tribes. Drawing on extensive oral histories and archival research, Smith unearths the heritage of these marginalized communities and explains what the city must do to conserve these gravesites and bring racial equity to these arenas for public memory. He also shows how the ongoing recovery efforts point to a redefinition of Confederate memory and the possibility of a rebirthed community in the symbolic center of the South. The book encompasses, among others, St. John's colonial churchyard; African burial grounds in Shockoe Bottom and on Shockoe Hill; Hebrew Cemetery; Hollywood Cemetery, with its 18,000 Confederate dead; Richmond National Cemetery; and Evergreen Cemetery, home to tens of thousands of black burials from the Jim Crow era. Smith's rich analysis of the surviving grounds documents many of these sites for the first time and is enhanced by an accompanying website, www.richmondcemeteries.org. A brilliant example of public history, Death and Rebirth in a Southern City reveals how cemeteries can frame changes in politics and society across time.