Virginia

The Cactus Hill archaeological site in Sussex County indicates that Indigenous people were present in what is now Virginia around 18,000–16,000 BC. In the early 1600s the region’s Native peoples belonged to three language groups: Algonquian speakers in the Tidewater, Iroquoian speakers along the fall line and in the far southeast and southwest, and Siouan speakers, including the Monacan confederation, in the Piedmont west of the fall line.⁠[1]

Tsenacomoco was a political alliance of Algonquian-speaking Virginia Indians that stretched roughly from the south bank of the James River to the south bank of the Potomac River, bounded by the fall line on the west and the Chesapeake Bay on the east. By 1607 some 28 to 32 groups, each with its own chief, paid tribute to the paramount chief Powhatan (Wahunsonacock); estimates of its population range from about 8,000 to just over 22,000. Powhatan’s seat, Werowocomoco, lay on the York River.⁠[2]

On April 10, 1606, King James I chartered the Virginia Company of London, a joint-stock company, together with the Virginia Company of Plymouth, granting the London company the coast between 34 and 40 degrees north latitude. A second charter of May 23, 1609, had investors elect a treasurer and council, and a third charter of March 12, 1612, extended Virginia’s boundaries to include Bermuda.⁠[3]

Some 104 colonists sailed from London on December 20, 1606, anchored at the mouth of the Chesapeake Bay on April 26, 1607, and chose the Jamestown site on May 13. The state describes Jamestown as the first permanent English settlement in America.⁠[4][5]

From November 1609 to early May 1610 the colony endured the famine known as the “Starving Time”; the First Anglo-Powhatan War lasted from 1609 to 1614. John Rolfe introduced a West Indies variety of tobacco that transformed the colony’s economy, and on or about April 5, 1614, he married Pocahontas.⁠[4][2]

The Virginia Company’s instructions of November 18, 1618, to Governor George Yeardley, known as the “Great Charter,” provided for a representative General Assembly and introduced the “headright” system, which granted 50 acres for each person whose passage a settler paid. The General Assembly first convened on July 30, 1619, with 22 burgesses. The state describes it as the first representative legislature in America.⁠[3][6][5]

In late August 1619 the English ship White Lion reached Point Comfort, where its captain traded “20. and odd Negroes” for food; some were later sold at Jamestown and Flowerdew Hundred. Three or four days later the Treasurer arrived with about 28 to 30 Africans. They had been taken from the São João Bautista, a Portuguese slave ship bound for Mexico, and most likely came from the Ndongo region of present-day Angola. The 1620 census counted 32 Africans in Virginia.⁠[7]

The Second Anglo-Powhatan War lasted from 1622 to 1632 and the Third from 1644 to 1646. The paramount chiefdom of Tsenacomoco came to an end with the death of Opechancanough in 1646.⁠[2]

The Privy Council began an inquiry into the Virginia Company in May 1623, and a royal commission reached Virginia in March 1624. On May 24, 1624, the Crown revoked the company’s charter and took direct control of the colony.⁠[3]

After Parliament executed King Charles I in 1649, Virginia proclaimed his exiled son king; in 1652 Parliament sent a force that compelled the colony to submit.⁠[8]

In 1676–1677 Nathaniel Bacon led a rebellion against Governor William Berkeley, who suppressed it and hanged several of its leaders.⁠[6]

In the 1670s white indentured servants outnumbered enslaved Africans in the colony by about four to one; by the early 1690s enslaved Africans outnumbered white servants by about four to one. In October 1705 the General Assembly passed “An Act Concerning Servants and Slaves,” which made slavery central to Virginia society.⁠[6]

In 1693 James Blair co-founded the College of William and Mary.⁠[6]

Jamestown remained the colonial capital until 1698; in 1699 Williamsburg was designated the capital.⁠[4]

On May 15, 1776, the Fifth Virginia Convention instructed Virginia’s delegates in the Continental Congress to propose independence and appointed a committee to draft a declaration of rights and a plan of government. On June 12 the convention unanimously adopted the Virginia Declaration of Rights, and on June 29 it adopted Virginia’s first written constitution, four days before the Declaration of Independence.⁠[9][10]

Thomas Jefferson wrote the constitution’s preamble and George Mason drafted its main provisions. It created an elected Senate, weakened the governor and denied him a veto, and kept the franchise limited to free adult white men who met property qualifications; it had no amendment provision and was not submitted to voters. On July 6, 1776, Patrick Henry took office as governor and the new government began to operate.⁠[10][11]

The state says the capital moved from Williamsburg to Richmond in 1779. On August 30 of that year the Court of Appeals, created by acts of the assembly passed in 1778 and 1779, met for the first time.⁠[5][12]

In early January 1781 Benedict Arnold led British forces up the James River to raid Richmond, burning warehouses and other buildings there on January 6. The Siege of Yorktown lasted from September 28 to October 19, 1781, when the British commander Cornwallis surrendered.⁠[9]

The cornerstone of the Virginia State Capitol was laid on August 18, 1785, and the building was completed in 1792. Thomas Jefferson designed its central section, including an interior dome not visible from outside, modeling it on the Maison Carrée at Nîmes, France. The state describes it as the first public building in the United States in the Classical Revival style and the second-oldest working capitol in the country, in continuous use since 1788. Wings were added in 1906 to house the Senate and the House of Delegates, and a 2007 restoration, renovation and expansion timed for the 400th anniversary of Jamestown added a visitor center.⁠[5]

The instrument by which the Virginia convention ratified the U.S. Constitution is dated June 26, 1788.⁠[13]

In 1830 a new constitution replaced that of 1776 and renamed the Court of Appeals the Supreme Court of Appeals. Since the Constitution of 1851, governors have been elected by voters to four-year terms and may not be elected to an immediately succeeding term.⁠[10][12][11]

On February 13, 1861, the Virginia Convention, whose 152 delegates were mostly Unionists, met at the Mechanics Institute in Richmond; on April 4 a motion for secession failed, 45 to 90. On April 17 the convention adopted an ordinance of secession by 88 to 55, and on April 27 Virginia offered to join the Confederate States, proposing Richmond as the capital. A statewide referendum on May 23 approved secession by 125,950 to 20,373, although many votes from western Virginia were discarded.⁠[14]

Western delegates who opposed secession then launched a movement for a new state. The Second Wheeling Convention opened on June 11, 1861, adopted an ordinance reorganizing the state government on June 14, and on June 20 elected Francis H. Pierpont governor of the Unionist Restored government. President Abraham LincolnAbraham LincolnAbraham Lincoln (February 12, 1809 – April 15, 1865) was the 16th president of the United States (1861–1865). Born to a frontier farming family in Kentucky, he had less than a year of formal schooling, taught himself law, and served in the Illinois legislature and the U.S. House of Representatives before winning the presidency as the Republican candidate in 1860. During the Civil War he preserved the Union, issued the Emancipation Proclamation in 1863 and pushed the Thirteenth Amendment abolishing slavery through Congress. He was shot by John Wilkes Booth at Ford’s Theatre in Washington on April 14, 1865, and died the next day.Open the full entry signed the statehood bill on December 31, 1862, and on June 20, 1863, West VirginiaWest VirginiaWest Virginia is a U.S. state formed from the western counties of Virginia during the Civil War; its capital and largest city is Charleston. It became the 35th state on June 20, 1863. Its population was 1,793,716 in the 2020 census (April 1, 2020).Open the full entry became the 35th state.⁠[15]

During the Civil War, Richmond was the capital of the Confederacy. The First Battle of Manassas was fought on July 21, 1861. The Siege of Petersburg ended on April 2, 1865, after which Petersburg and Richmond fell, and the surrender at Appomattox Court House took place on April 9, 1865.⁠[16]

On March 2, 1867, Congress passed the First Reconstruction Act, dividing the former Confederate states except TennesseeTennesseeTennessee is a U.S. state in the southeast-central United States, with its capital at Nashville. It was admitted to the Union on June 1, 1796, as the 16th state, and the 2020 census (April 1, 2020) counted 6,910,840 residents.Open the full entry into five military districts, with Virginia as the First Military District. In the October 1867 election of delegates to a state constitutional convention, Black men could vote and run for office.⁠[17]

On July 6, 1869, voters ratified a new state constitution while rejecting clauses that would have disfranchised former Confederates, and on October 8 the General Assembly ratified the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments. On January 26, 1870, an act of Congress readmitted Virginia to the Union, ending Reconstruction and military rule.⁠[17]

On March 20, 1924, Virginia passed the Act to Preserve Racial Integrity, which banned interracial marriage and narrowed who could legally be classified as white.⁠[18]

Richard Loving and Mildred Jeter married in Washington, D.C., on June 2, 1958, returned to Virginia and were arrested that July; on January 6, 1959, they pleaded guilty, and the judge suspended their sentences on condition that they leave Virginia for 25 years. On June 12, 1967, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled unanimously that Virginia’s ban on interracial marriage violated the equal protection and due process guarantees of the Fourteenth Amendment.⁠[18]

The current Constitution of Virginia took effect on July 1, 1971.⁠[19]

The Pamunkey tribe received federal recognition on July 2, 2015, and on January 29, 2018, under the Thomasina E. Jordan Act, six more tribes were recognized: the Chickahominy, Eastern Chickahominy, Monacan, Nansemond, Rappahannock and Upper Mattaponi, bringing the number of federally recognized tribes in Virginia to seven. Eleven tribes are recognized by the state.⁠[1]

Under the apportionment based on the 2020 census, Virginia has 11 seats in the U.S. House of Representatives, an average of 786,777 people per seat, and 13 electoral votes in the 2024 and 2028 presidential elections.⁠[20][21]

As of November 2026 the governor is Abigail Spanberger, who took office on January 17, 2026, as Virginia’s 75th governor and its first woman governor. She previously served as a federal law enforcement officer and a Central Intelligence Agency case officer, and served three terms as U.S. Representative for Virginia’s 7th Congressional District.⁠[11][22][23]

The General Assembly consists of a Senate and a House of Delegates. The Senate of Virginia currently has 40 members elected to four-year terms, within a constitutional range of 33 to 40; the House of Delegates has 100 members serving two-year terms.⁠[24][19]

The state’s highest court is the Supreme Court of Virginia, a name given by the Constitution of 1971. It has seven justices, chosen by the General Assembly for twelve-year terms; the chief justice is Samuel Bernard Goodwyn, who has served since January 1, 2022.⁠[12]

Census Bureau measurements based on state boundaries as of January 1, 2010, give Virginia a total area of 42,775 square miles (110,787 km²), including 39,490 square miles (102,279 km²) of land and 3,285 square miles (8,508 km²) of water, comprising 1,282 square miles of inland water, 1,565 square miles of coastal water and 438 square miles of territorial water.⁠[25]

The Census Bureau estimated Virginia’s population at 8,880,107 on July 1, 2025, up 60,465 from 8,819,642 on July 1, 2024, the ninth-largest numeric gain among the states, and 2.9% above the April 1, 2020, estimates base of 8,631,419.⁠[26][27]

Based on a 2020 land area of 39,482.11 square miles, the 2020 population density was 218.6 people per square mile. American Community Survey data for 2020–2024 show that 13.1% of residents were foreign-born and 42.2% of people aged 25 and over held a bachelor’s degree or higher.⁠[27]

Preliminary estimates released by the Bureau of Economic Analysis on March 28, 2025, put Virginia’s 2024 nominal GDP at $764,475 million (about $764.5 billion), with real growth of 3.1% over 2023, ranking 16th among the states. American Community Survey data for 2020–2024 put median household income at $93,170 in 2024 dollars.⁠[28][27]

The Virginia Economic Development Partnership lists advanced materials manufacturing, aerospace and defense, business and financial services, cloud and AI infrastructure, the energy supply chain, food and beverage manufacturing, life sciences, supply chain management, and tech and cyber as the leading industries driving the state’s economy.⁠[29]

The state’s name honors Queen Elizabeth I of England. The state notes that Virginia is one of four states officially styled “Commonwealth,” together with KentuckyKentuckyKentucky is a U.S. state bordered by Illinois, Indiana and Ohio to the north, West Virginia and Virginia to the east, Tennessee to the south and Missouri to the west; its capital is Frankfort and its largest city is Louisville. It entered the Union on June 1, 1792, as the 15th state and the first state west of the Appalachian Mountains, and had a population of 4,505,836 in the 2020 census (April 1, 2020).Open the full entry, MassachusettsMassachusettsMassachusetts (officially the Commonwealth of Massachusetts) is a state in the New England region of the northeastern United States; its capital and largest city is Boston. One of the original 13 states, it ratified the U.S. Constitution on February 6, 1788, the sixth state to do so. Its population in the 2020 census (April 1, 2020) was 7,029,917.Open the full entry and PennsylvaniaPennsylvaniaPennsylvania (officially the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania) is a Middle Atlantic state of the United States; its capital is Harrisburg, and Philadelphia and Pittsburgh are its two great metropolitan areas. One of the original 13 states, it ratified the U.S. Constitution on December 12, 1787, the second state to do so. Its population in the 2020 census (April 1, 2020) was 13,002,700.Open the full entry.⁠[5]

Virginia’s nickname is the “Old Dominion.” The state says King Charles II bestowed it in gratitude for Virginia’s loyalty during the English Civil War of the mid-1600s. Other scholarship finds no documentary proof of that story and suggests the name more likely reflects Virginia’s status as the oldest overseas dominion of the English monarchs; colonial seals of 1607–1624 and 1625–1707 bore the words “En Dat Virginia Quintam,” describing Virginia as the Crown’s fifth realm.⁠[5][8]

Because eight U.S. presidents were born there—George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, James Monroe, William Henry Harrison, John Tyler, Zachary Taylor and Woodrow Wilson—Virginia is also called the “Mother of Presidents”; it is called the “Mother of States” because all or part of IllinoisIllinoisIllinois is a state of the United States that borders Lake Michigan and the states of Wisconsin, Indiana, Kentucky, Missouri and Iowa; its capital is Springfield and its largest city is Chicago. It was admitted to the Union on December 3, 1818, as the 21st state, and its population in the 2020 census (April 1, 2020) was 12,812,508.Open the full entry, IndianaIndianaIndiana is a state in the Midwestern United States; its capital and largest city is Indianapolis. It was admitted to the Union on December 11, 1816, as the 19th state, and its population in the 2020 census (April 1, 2020) was 6,785,528.Open the full entry, Kentucky, MichiganMichiganMichigan is a state of the United States nearly surrounded by the Great Lakes and made up of the Upper and Lower peninsulas; its capital is Lansing and its largest city is Detroit. It was admitted to the Union on January 26, 1837, as the 26th state, and its population in the 2020 census (April 1, 2020) was 10,077,331.Open the full entry, MinnesotaMinnesotaMinnesota is a state in the north-central United States and the most northerly of the 48 contiguous states; its capital is St. Paul and its largest city is Minneapolis. It was admitted to the Union on May 11, 1858, as the 32nd state, and its population in the 2020 census (April 1, 2020) was 5,706,494.Open the full entry, OhioOhioOhio is a state in the Midwestern United States; its capital is Columbus. It joined the Union in 1803 as the 17th state, the first carved from the Northwest Territory, and its population in the 2020 census (April 1, 2020) was 11,799,448.Open the full entry, West Virginia and WisconsinWisconsinWisconsin is a state in the north-central United States; its capital is Madison and its largest city is Milwaukee. Wisconsin was admitted to the Union on May 29, 1848, as the 30th state, and the 2020 census (April 1, 2020) counted 5,893,718 residents.Open the full entry were formed from its former western territory.⁠[5]

The Great Seal was designed by a committee led by George Wythe, working in the library of the College of William and Mary, and was adopted by the Virginia Convention on July 5, 1776. The obverse shows Virtus, the Roman goddess of virtue, standing over the fallen figure of Tyranny, with “Virginia” above and the motto “Sic Semper Tyrannis” (thus always to tyrants) below; the reverse shows three goddesses representing liberty, eternity and plenty beneath the word “Perseverando,” which in 1779 replaced the original inscription “Deus nobis haec otia fecit.”⁠[30]

The state flag has a deep blue field with a white circle bearing the obverse of the Great Seal, and may have a white fringe (Code of Virginia § 1-506).⁠[31]

Under Code of Virginia § 1-510 the state bird is the Northern Cardinal, the state flower and state tree are both the American Dogwood, and the state dog is the American Foxhound; the state songs are the popular song “Sweet Virginia Breeze” by Robbin Thompson and Steve Bassett and the traditional song “Our Great Virginia,” with lyrics by Mike Greenly and arrangement by Jim Papoulis. Under § 1-511, enacted in 1996, English is the official language of the Commonwealth.⁠[32][33]

Commonwealth of Virginia: Official website: https://www.virginia.gov/ (opens in a new window).⁠[34]

Governor of Virginia: Official website: https://www.governor.virginia.gov/ (opens in a new window).⁠[23]

Virginia General Assembly: Official website: https://vga.virginia.gov/ (opens in a new window).⁠[24]

Secretary of the Commonwealth: Official website: https://www.commonwealth.virginia.gov/ (opens in a new window).⁠[30]

Code of Virginia: Official website: https://law.lis.virginia.gov/ (opens in a new window).⁠[32]