If you’re an American, you probably have a clear mental image of what George Washington looked like. But this was not the case at the beginning of the American Revolution. Few people had ever seen Washington’s likeness. Over the course of his service as commander and chief of the Continental Army and President of the United States, this changed, as George Washington evolved from a member of the Virginia elite and Patriot leader to an American icon. Read more about: Portraits of George
Author: Katy Gehred
Forgeries, Fakes, Oh My!
The featured image in our recent entry about enslaved Patriot naval pilot Cesar Tarrant isn’t a portrait of Tarrant—at least as far as we know. It’s a striking portrait of an unidentified Black sailor, perhaps activist Paul Cuffe, painted around 1800 and held in the collections of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. Read more about: Forgeries, Fakes, Oh My!
Shooting the Shot Tower
One of the advantages of Encyclopedia Virginia being digital is that we can illustrate our entries with interactive media. We use Google technology to create tours of historic locations in Virginia so that our users can virtually step into the places we talk about in our entries. Right now, EV features 90 virtual tours, and that number is constantly growing. Read more about: Shooting the Shot Tower
What Was “Virginia” during the Revolution?
When I started to look for images to illustrate our new entry about the Fincastle Resolutions, I figured that a map was a good place to start. Where was Fincastle County? What part of Virginia did it represent?
It turns out that Fincastle County, as a political entity, wasn’t just a portion of what I, or many of us, think of as “Virginia.” It sprawled into what is now the entire state of Kentucky and a big hunk of West Virginia. Read more about: What Was “Virginia” during the Revolution?
Picturing Urban Renewal
As media editor at EV, my job is to find the images, videos, and other media that bring our entries to life. In some cases, it can be very hard to find even one good image. For example, in our recent entry on Hannah Lee Corbin, I ended up with a picture that could possibly be Corbin, as a baby. Read more about: Picturing Urban Renewal

