General Lee that General Grant had broken through the lines at Petersburg and that Richmond must be evacuated. Rosemary Library was given to the city by Thomas Nelson Page in memory of his wife, who died in 1888.
Richmond has many fine monuments and statues of historic interest and artistic merit, the most noteworthy of the former being the Washington Monument, in Capitol Square. In 1850 the commission accepted the model submitted by Thomas Crawford (1814–1857), an American sculptor, the corner-stone of the monument was laid in that year, and the equestrian statue of Washington, with sub-statues of Patrick Henry and Thomas Jefferson, was unveiled on the 22nd of February 1858. Thereafter were added sub-statues of Chief-Justice John Marshall and George Mason (1726–1792) by Crawford, and statues of Andrew Lewis (1730–1781) and Thomas Nelson (1738–1789), and six allegorical subjects, by Randolph Rogers (1825–1892), the monument being completed in 1869, at a cost of about $260,000, of which about $47,000 represented private gifts and the interest thereon. The greatest height of the monument is 60 ft., and the diameter of its base is 86 ft. In Capitol Square are also a marble statue of Henry Clay, by Joel T. Hart (1810–1877), a bronze statue of Stonewall Jackson, by John Henry Foley (1818–1874), an English sculptor, “presented to the city by English gentlemen” (Hon. A. J. Beresford-Hope and others) and unveiled in 1875; a statue of Hunter Holmes McGuire (1835–1900), a famous Virginia surgeon; and a statue of William Smith (1796–1887), governor of Virginia in 1846–49 and in 1864–65. In Monroe Park is a statue by E. V. Valentine of Brig.-General Williams Carter Wickham (1820–1888) of the Confederate army. Another noteworthy monument is the noble equestrian statue of General Robert E. Lee, surmounting a lofty granite pedestal at the head of Franklin Street. This statue, by Marius Jean Antonin Mercié (b. 1845), was unveiled in 1890. Adjacent is an equestrian statue of General J. E. B. Stuart, by Frederick Moynihan, and at the west end of Monument Avenue is the Jefferson Davis Monument, by W. C. Nowland, in front of which is a statue of Jefferson Davis, by E. V. Valentine. On Libby Hill, in the south-eastern part of the city, is a monument to the private soldiers and sailors of the Confederacy.
In Hollywood Cemetery (dedicated in 1849) are the graves of many famous men, including presidents James Monroe and John Tyler; Jefferson Davis, John Randolph of Roanoke, the Confederate generals, A. P. Hill, J. E. B. Stuart and George E. Pickett; Commodore Matthew F. Maury (1806–1873); James A. Seddon (1815–1880), Secretary of War of the Confederate States in 1862–64; and John R. Thompson (1823–1873), widely known in his day as a poet and as the editor of the Southern Literary Messenger in 1847–59. Here, too, are buried about 16,000 Confederate soldiers (to whose memory there is a massive pyramid of undressed granite, 40 ft. sq. at the base and 90 ft. high). In the north-eastern part of the city is Oakwood Cemetery, in which are the graves of about 18,000 Confederate soldiers. Two miles north-east of the city is the National Cemetery, with graves of 6571 Federal soldiers (5700 unknown) most of whom were killed in the actions near Richmond.
Richmond is the seat of Richmond College (opened in 1832; chartered in 1840; and co-educational since 1898), which in 1909–10 had 21 instructors and 341 students, of whom 55 were in the School of Law (established 1870; re-established 1890); the Woman’s College (Baptist; opened in 1854), which in 1909–10 had 20 instructors and) 275 students; the Virginia Mechanics’ Institute (1856), including a Night School of Technology; the Union Theological Seminary in Virginia (Presbyterian; opened in 1824 and removed to Richmond in 1898 from Hampden-Sidney), which in 1909–10 had 7 instructors and 80 students; the Medical College of Virginia, (founded in 1838), which has medical, dental and pharmaceutical departments, and in 1909–10 had 50 teachers and 253 students; the University College of Medicine (1893), which has demartments of medicine, dentistry and pharmacy, and in 1909–10 had 57 teachers and 220 students; the Hartshorn Memorial College (Baptist), for women; and, for negroes, Virginia Union University, founded in 1899.
Many periodicals (including several religious weeklies) are published in Richmond. The principal newspapers are the Times-Dispatch (Democratic; Dispatch, 1850; Times, 1886; consolidated in 1903) and the News-Leader (Democratic, 1899). Among the city’s clubs are the Westmoreland and the Commonwealth.
The city’s charitable institutions include the Memorial (1903), Virginia Sheltering Arms (1889) and St Luke’s hospitals, the Retreat for the Sick (1877), the Eye, Nose, Ear and Throat Infirmary (1880), the Confederate Soldiers’ Home (1884), supported jointly by the state and the city, a Home for Needy Confederate Women (1900), the City Almshouse and Hospital, and several orphanages and homes for the aged.
Richmond is the leading manufacturing city of Virginia, the value of its factory products in 1905 being $28,202,607, an increase of 22·4% since 1900 and nearly 19% of the value of the state’s factory products in this year. The chief industry is the manufacture of tobacco for smoking and chewing, of cigars and cigarettes and of snuff. There are large iron and steel works here, notably the Tredegar Iron Works. Other important manufactures, with their product-values in 1905, are lumber and planing-mill products, $508,953; fancy and paper boxes and wooden packing boxes, $432,522; coffee and spices, $245,689; foundry and machine shop products, $238,576; and saddlery and harness, $235,839. Richmond is the port of entry for the District of Richmond; in 1907 its imports were valued at $913,234 and its exports at $158,275; in 1909, its imports at $693,822 and its exports at $24,390. The city has a large jobbing and retail trade.
Richmond is governed under a charter of 1870 with amendments. The mayor is elected for two years and has the powers and authority in criminal cases of a justice of the peace. The city council is composed of a common council (five members from each ward, elected for two years) and of a board of aldermen (three members from each ward to be elected for four years). Other elective officers are the mayor, city treasurer, city sergeant, commonwealth attorney, city collector, city auditor, sheriff and high constable, elected for four years; and clerks of the various courts elected for eight years. The commissioner of the revenue is appointed for a term of four years by the judge of the corporation court. Three justices of the peace are elected from each ward for a term of two years. The city council appoints an attorney for the corporation, a city engineer, a city clerk, a police justice, a board of fire commissioners and a board of police commissioners, one from each ward, who have control of the fire and police departments, respectively, and a number of other officers. The city owns its gas works, water works and an electric-lighting plant (1910) for municipal lighting. The debt limit is set by the city charter at 18% of the assessed value of the taxable real estate of the city. In 1909 the taxable real estate and personal property was valued at $108,663,716, and the city had no floating debt; on the 1st of February 1910, there were $10,706,318 worth of bonds outstanding, and the sinking fund was $2,011,857.
An exploring party from Jamestown, under command of Captain Christopher Newport (c. 1565–1617), and including Captain John Smith, sailed up the James river in 1607, and on the 3rd of June erected a cross on one of the small islands opposite the site of the present city. The first permanent settlement within the present limits of the city was made in 1609 in the district long known as Rockett’s. Later in the same year Captain Smith bought from the Indians a tract of land on the east bank of the river, about 3 m. below this settlement, and near the site of the present Powhatan. This tract he named “Nonesuch,” and here he attempted to establish a small body of soldiers who had occupied a less favourable site in the vicinity; but they objected to the change and, being attacked by the Indians, sought the protection of Smith, who made prisoners of their leaders, with the result, apparently, that the settlement was abandoned. In 1645 Fort Charles was erected at the falls of the James as a frontier defence. In 1676, during “Bacon’s Rebellion,” a party of Virginians under Bacon’s command killed about 150 Indians who were defending a fort on a hill a short distance east of the site of Richmond in the “Battle of Bloody Run,” so called because the blood of the slain savages is said to have coloured the brook (or “run”) at the base of the hill. Colonel William Byrd,[1] who owned much land along the
- ↑ The Byrds and their ancestors, the Steggs, were conspicuous in the early history of Virginia. The first of the family was Thomas Stegg (or Stegge) (d. 1651), born in England, who became an Indian trader on the James river as early as 1637, and had his home near what is now the village of Westover, Charles City county. He left his estate to his son Thomas (d. 1670), who settled at the falls of the James in 1661, and was auditor-general in 1664–1670. He was succeeded by his nephew, William Byrd (1652–1704), who was born in London, went to Virginia about 1670, became a successful Indian trader, was a member of the House of Burgesses in 1677–1682, was a supporter of Nathaniel Bacon at the beginning of “Bacon’s Rebellion,” was auditor-general of the colony from 1687 until his death, and was a member of the committee which founded the College of William and Mary. His residence, within the limits of the present city of Richmond, was preserved until about 1850. His son William (1674–1744), the founder of Richmond—and above referred to—was educated in England; returned to Virginia in 1696; succeeded his father as auditor-general of the colony, and was receiver-general in 1705–1716. In 1727 he was appointed one of the commission (of which William Fitzwilliams and William Dandridge were the other members) to mark the boundary between North Carolina and Virginia, concerning which undertaking he wrote (probably in 1737) The History of the Dividing Line. This with his other publications, A Journey to the Land of Eden and A Progress to the Mines, was published at Petersburg, Va., in 1841, and again (New York, 1901) as The Writings of Colonel William Byrd of Westover in Virginia, edited by John S. Passett, and including an extended sketch of the Byrd family. Concerning Byrd’s style as a writer, Professor Bassett says: “It would be hard to find before Franklin a better master of the art of writing clear, forceful and charming English.”
