Best Little Stories from Virginia

by C. Brian Kelly

Overview

When it comes to history, few states can rival Virginia, home of eight presidents and the cradle of the American Revolution. Best Little Stories from Virginia is a collection of more than 100 stories from the four centuries since Jamestown was founded in 1607. A journalistic history, it focuses on the "feature story" angle by approaching history through the eyes of the people who lived it.

Virginia contained the first English colony in America as well as being the first place where slavery was introduced. It was both the leader of the Confederacy and a battleground of the civil rights struggles of the twentieth century. Its historic back-of-the-bus ruling in 1948 prohibited discriminatory practices on interstate buses long before the Rosa Parks case in Montgomery, Alabama, which involved city buses.

Some of the stories included are:

• Don Luis de Velasco, the Indian boy who was taken away by the Spanish in 1561 and later became chief of the Algonquin tribe.
• Young George Washington, who served in English Maj. Gen. Edward Braddock's army during the French and Indian War alongside Lt. Col. Thomas Gage, who later commanded British troops during the American Revolution.
• George Rogers Clark, whose army of 175 bedraggled, half-starved frontiersmen single handedly captured an important fort from much larger British forces.
• Charles Crozet, the French engineer who designed and completed the Blue Ridge Tunnel in 1856, long before the discovery of dynamite, nitroglycerine, or pneumatic drills.
• The building of the Pentagon, once known as "Somervell's Folly" after Brig. Gen. Brehon Somervell, who conceived it one weekend in mid-1941 as a way to gather scattered War Department personnel under one roof.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781581823585
Publisher:	Sourcebooks
Publication date:	11/01/2003
Series:	Best Little Stories
Pages:	456
Sales rank:	1,051,817
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 1.14(d)

About the Author

C. BRIAN KELLY, a prize-winning journalist, is cofounder of Montpelier Publishing and a former editor for Military History magazine. He is also a lecturer in newswriting at the University of Virginia. Kelly's articles have appeared in Reader's Digest, Friends, Yankee, Rod Serling's Twilight Zone, and other magazines. He is the author of several books on American history and resides in Charlottesville, Virginia.

Table of Contents

	Introduction and Acknowledgments	xi
	Prologue
	1526: Came, Saw ... and Left	5
	1561: His Name was Don Luis	6
	1570-1600: Hidden Empire Developing	13
Part 1	Seventeenth Century
	1606: Supplies Eaten Up	17
	1607: Already a Formidable Resume	18
	1609: "Bowling in the Streets"	20
	1623: Plea for Help	25
	1624: Nailed by the Ears	29
	1676: Turmoil in Jamestown	33
	1676: "Soldier, Statesman Saint"	39
	Jamestown Highlights	44
Part 2	Eighteenth Century
	1755: Major Washington's Steadfastness	53
	1755: The Gang's All Here	56
	1755: Incredible Wilderness Trek	61
	1777: Tragic End for Cornstalk	71
	1779: That Other Famous Clark	77
	1781: The Nadir of His Fortunes	80
	1781: Bulldog Seen at Yorktown	86
	1787: Start of a Hemings Family Saga	90
	1788: Patrick Henry Smelt a Rat	97
	1794: Medical Marvel Kept Secret	102
	1796: "The Man Himself"	103
	1799: An Avoidable Death?	105
	1799-1836: Moments of National Grief	108
Part 3	Nineteenth Century
	1800: Gabriel's Insurrection	115
	1801: President at Last!	121
	1803: Traveling East to Go West	127
	1805: Two Girls on a Horse	133
	1806: Murder of "Virginia Socrates"	140
	1812: High Praise for a Sortie	143
	1813: Nation's Oldest Governor's Mansion	149
	1814: Parting with His Books	152
	1839: Birth of an Island	155
	1842: First Glimpses of Cadet Jackson	162
	1849: "Nevermore, Quoth the Raven"	165
	1853: Forgotten Explorer	170
	1854: "You Cannot Exclude Me from Heaven"	179
	1855: Painful Days for Norfolk	181
	1856: A Christmas Day Celebration	187
	1858: Job for a Thousand Men and Boys	192
	1862: Final Days for Virginia's "White House"	197
	1862: So, Who Captured Norfolk?	200
	1862: Daily Concerns While at War	206
	1862: The World Around Him	210
	1863: Term As Governor Unrecognized	215
	1863: Ever Infamous in Norfolk	218
	1864: Meeting "Bobby" Lee	222
	1865: "Awed Stillness" at Appomattox	225
	1859-70: Robert E. Lee: A Collage	226
	1869: Waterproof Carpetbags for Sale	233
	1873: Confederate Veterans to the Fore	237
	1890: Dinner Party for "Such a Rebel"	240
	1899: Century of Sorrows	243
Part 4	Twentieth Century
	1907: Babes in Incubators	251
	1909: Challenging Presidential Foray	255
	1909: Unwitting Catalyst for Reform	262
	1912: Surviving the Titanic	267
	1912: Boomtown Days for Hopewell	273
	1917: Pulled Out of the Fishbowl	277
	1921: School That "Bad Sam" Built	280
	1925: "Watch Out, She's a-Coming In!"	283
	1932: Reunion to End Reunions	287
	1934: Explorer in Trouble	290
	1939: Start of a National Treasure	294
	1943: No "Folly" After All	302
	1944: Grim Tidings for Bedford	306
	1944: Rosa Parks Preempted	310
	1952: Start on a Foxhole Promise	312
	1958: Massive Resistance at Work	315
	1967: Lessons for a South African Visitor	318
	1968: Life with a New Heart	320
	1969: Night the Mountains Fell In	325
	1972: Day on the Job at Dulles	329
	1975: Pesticide in Their Veins	333
	1976: Gaffe by a Queen	337
	1976: The New "Byrd Machine"	340
	1978: Love Affair with Virginia	343
	1978: Tantamount Politics No More	347
	1993: Passing of a "World Citizen"	351
Part 5	Twenty-First Century
	2000: Father on Lee's Staff	359
	2003: Paean to Little Route 5	360
	The Women Who Counted	367
	Epilogue: Past, Present, and Future	409
	1607-2003: Missing Persons	415
	A Short Chronology of Virginia History	421
	Selected Bibliography	425
	Index	429