Petersburg is an independent city in the Commonwealth of Virginia in the United States. As of the 2020 census, the population was 33,458 with a majority black American. The Bureau of Economic Analysis combines Petersburg with Dinwiddie County for statistical purposes. The city is 21 miles (34 km) south of the commonwealth (state) capital city of Richmond.
Colonial Heights is an independent city in the Commonwealth of Virginia. As of the 2020 census, the population was 18,170. The Bureau of Economic Analysis combines the City of Colonial Heights with Dinwiddie County for statistical purposes.
Founded in 1889, the Association for the Preservation of Virginia Antiquities was the United States' first statewide historic preservation group. In 2003 the organization adopted the new name APVA Preservation Virginia to reflect a broader focus on statewide Preservation and in 2009 it shortened its name to Preservation Virginia. Preservation Virginia owns historic sites across Virginia including Historic Jamestowne, located at Jamestown, Virginia, site of the first permanent English settlement in North America, and the Cape Henry Light house, one of the first public works projects of the United States of America.
Appomattox Manor is a former plantation house in Hopewell, Virginia, United States. It is best known as the Union headquarters during the Siege of Petersburg in 1864–65.
Blandford Cemetery is a historic cemetery located in Petersburg, Virginia. Although in recent years it has attained some notoriety for its large collection of more than 30,000 Confederate graves, it contains remains of people of all classes and races as well as veterans of every American war. It holds the largest mass grave of 30,000 Confederates killed in the Siege of Petersburg (1864–65) and other battles during the American Civil War. Although only 3,700 names of the interred are known, it was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1992, in part through the efforts of Charlotte Irving, first president of the Historic Blandford Cemetery Foundation. In addition to this cemetery's historic African American section discussed below, it is located adjacent to the People's Memorial Cemetery, a historic African-American cemetery, and small cemeteries containing additional dead from the lengthy Siege of Petersburg and Battle of the Crater in 1864.
Petersburg National Battlefield is a National Park Service unit preserving sites related to the American Civil War Siege of Petersburg (1864–65). The battlefield is near the city of Petersburg, Virginia, and includes outlying components in Hopewell, Prince George County, and Dinwiddie County. Over 140,000 people visit the park annually.
Varina Farms, also known as Varina Plantation or Varina Farms Plantation or Varina on the James, is a plantation established in the 17th century on the James River about 10 miles (16 km) south of Richmond, Virginia. An 820-acre (330 ha) property was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1977 as "Varina Plantation". At that time it included two contributing buildings and one other contributing site.
Elsing Green Plantation, a National Historic Landmark and wildlife refuge, rests upon nearly 3,000 acres (1,200 ha) along the Pamunkey River in King William County, Virginia, a rural county on the western end of the state's middle peninsula, approximately 33 miles (53 km) northeast of the Richmond. The 18th-century plantation, now owned by the Lafferty family, has been in continuous operation for more than 300 years. In addition to the plantation house, dependency buildings and cultivated land, Elsing Green includes 2,454 acres (993 ha) of surrounding farmland, forest and marsh land. Elsing Green has been on the Virginia Landmarks Register and the National Register of Historic Places since 1969, and received formal National Historic Landmark status in 1971.
Richard Kidder Meade, Jr. was Virginia lawyer, plantation owner and politician who served in the Virginia Senate and in the United States House of Representatives, as well as U.S. minister to Brazil under President James Buchanan before returning to Virginia to work for the Confederate States of America during the American Civil War until his death.
The Petersburg Breakthrough Battlefield is a historic district in Dinwiddie County, near Petersburg, Virginia. It was the location of the Third Battle of Petersburg, in which the Union Army broke through Confederate Army lines protecting Petersburg and Richmond on April 2, 1865, during the American Civil War. The success of the breakthrough led to abandonment of Richmond by General Robert E. Lee, a general retreat, and surrender at Appomattox Court House one week later. Portions of the area were listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2003, and a different portion was designated a National Historic Landmark in 2006. Much of the battlefield area is part of Pamplin Historical Park, a private park open to the public that interprets the battle. The park includes a full-service visitor center, trails, displays, interpretive signs and history programs. The Civil War Trust and its partners have acquired and preserved 407 acres (1.65 km2) of the Breakthrough battlefield in five transactions since 2004.
Pocahontas Island is a peninsula in Petersburg, Virginia, once on the opposite side of the Appomattox River from Petersburg. Since 1915 a new channel for the river separated it from Chesterfield County and the former channel no longer separates it from the city. Once a warehouse and wharf-filled urban landscape initially platted in 1749, the island was devastated by a 1993 tornado before citizen involvement caused creation of the Pocahontas Island Historic District, which in 2006 achieved listing on the National Register of Historic Places (NRHP) as a historic district because of its significance in African-American history and for its prehistoric indigenous archeological assets.
DeWitt is an unincorporated community in Dinwiddie County, Virginia, United States. DeWitt is located on U.S. Route 1 6 miles (9.7 km) northeast of McKenney. It developed in a rural area of the county devoted to plantations worked by enslaved African Americans.
Wales is a historic house and site in Dinwiddie County, Virginia. It was built in 1730 by Captain Howell Briggs of the Virginia Militia on a tract of land a few miles west of Petersburg, Virginia, in what was then Prince George County. Dinwiddie County was formed from Prince George in 1752. Briggs is said to have named his plantation "Wales" after the Prince of Wales.
Eppington is a historic plantation house located near Winterpock, Chesterfield County, Virginia. It was built about 1768, and consists of a three-bay, 2+1⁄2-story, central block with hipped roof, dormers, modillion cornice, and flanking one-story wings in the Georgian style. It has a later two-story rear ell. It features two tall exterior end chimneys which rise from the roof of the wings. It was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1969.
Mansfield is a historic plantation house located near Petersburg, Dinwiddie County, Virginia. It was built in stages starting about 1750, and is a 1+1⁄2-story long and narrow frame dwelling with a hipped roof. It has a hipped roof rear ell connected to the main house by a hyphen. It features an octastyle Colonial Revival porch stretching the full length of the front facade.
Verville is a historic plantation house located near Merry Point, Lancaster County, Virginia. It was built about 1742, and is a 1+1⁄2-story, brick Colonial style dwelling. It has a single-pile, central-passage plan. The gambrel roof and all woodwork was changed to conform with Federal style tastes in the late-18th or early-19th century.
David Green Carr, who settled in Dinwiddie County, Virginia and farmed before the American Civil War, after the war's end became active in the Republican Party and served in the Virginia Constitutional Convention of 1868, in the Virginia Senate and as customs collector in Petersburg.
Dudley Digges (1694–1768) was a Virginia attorney, merchant, planter and politician who served in the House of Burgesses representing the newly created Goochland County (1730–1732). Possibly the least known of three related men of the same name who served in the Virginia legislature during the 18th century, this man was the son of Dudley Digges Sr. who served in both houses of the Virginia legislature and bought the family's historic E.D. plantation in York County from his cousin. Geneologist John Frederick Dorman found that although this Dudley Digges was appointed a justice of the peace in Goochland County in 1735, three years later he bought 600 acres and moved back to James City County.
William Digges was a prominent planter and politician in the Colony of Virginia, who represented Warwick County, Virginia in the House of Burgesses from 1752 until 1771.
