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Pre-1645
The
Occaneechi Trail
, a major trading path for Native American exchange, ended at the Appomattox River. This hub of exchange for Native Americans was the future site of Petersburg.
1645
The English established
Fort Henry
, future site of Petersburg, 60 miles west of the Jamestown colony founded in 1607.
1732
The
first African Americans
settled in what would become Petersburg. John Bolling, the great-grandson of John Rolfe and Pocahontas was a successful tobacco merchant who built a tobacco warehouse on the point of a peninsula that became known as Petersburg’s
Pocahontas Island
neighborhood. The tobacco warehouse was erected with the labor of enslaved workers, and free blacks from the area came to work in the warehouse as sorters, packers, and handlers of local tobacco slated for domestic and foreign markets.
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Madam Elizabeth Keckley
Modiste to Mrs. A. Lincoln
University of North Carolina Collection
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1732
The
first African Americans
settled in what would become Petersburg. John Bolling, the great-grandson of John Rolfe and Pocahontas was a successful tobacco merchant who built a tobacco warehouse on the point of a peninsula that became known as Petersburg’s
Pocahontas Island
neighborhood. The tobacco warehouse was erected with the labor of enslaved workers, and free blacks from the area came to work in the warehouse as sorters, packers, and handlers of local tobacco slated for domestic and foreign markets.
1745
Petersburg was
incorporated
. From now until the end of the eighteenth century, Petersburg was rising as one of the leading tobacco markets of the Atlantic World. This tobacco market depended not only on the agricultural labor of enslaved African Americans, but also on the skilled labor of enslaved and free blacks who worked in the tobacco factories and related industries like transport and shipping.
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1774
African Americans in Petersburg organized the
First Baptist Church
, the oldest black church in the region and among the first in the Atlantic World. A second black church,
Gillfield Baptist Church
, was established in the Petersburg area shortly thereafter. Black churches were also being established in South Carolina, Georgia, the British West Indies, Nova Scotia, and Sierra Leone during this time.
1776
The
American Revolution
began. By this time, Petersburg was exporting 1/3 of the nation’s tobacco. Pension records show that several African Americans from Petersburg served in the war.
1800
Petersburg, in particular its black community of skilled artisans, became a hub of
Gabriel's Conspiracy
based in Richmond.
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Virginia State University, Original Virginia Hall
Petersburg Museums Collection
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1819
A surge of black women entered Petersburg’s tax roles; by 1820 two fifths of
Petersburg’s black landowners
were women, several of whom acquired enslaved loved ones or laborers that year.
1829
Joseph Jenkins Roberts, who had inherited his father’s boat business, moved his family from Pocahontas Island to Liberia, where he operated a profitable
trading firm
with another free black citizen of Petersburg, William Colson. Roberts, Colson, and Company imported and exported merchandise between Monrovia, Philadelphia, and New York City.
1831
The Petersburg-Roanoke
Railroad
was established; it was among the first in the nation and the first of four lines in antebellum Petersburg. Petersburg quickly transformed from a commercial center based on maritime transport into a primary rail hub.
1842
Joseph Jenkins Roberts served as
Liberia’s first black governor
under the aegis of the American Colonization Society.
1848
Joseph Jenkins Roberts was elected the
first president of Liberia
’s independent republic. He achieved international recognition for the new nation through international diplomatic visits. After leaving office Roberts served as the first president of Liberia College until his reelection to the country’s presidency in the 1870s. His brother, John Wright Roberts, a Petersburg native, became Liberia’s first Methodist bishop.
1860
Petersburg's Pocahontas Island, the site of North America's earliest free black settlement was now one of the country's largest.
1861-1865
The
American Civil War
was waged and battles in and around Petersburg often fought by US Colored Troops were crucial to its outcome. Of the sixteen African Americans awarded the Medal of Honor during the Civil War, fourteen received the honor as a result of their actions at New Market Heights during the Siege of Petersburg.
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1868
Former Petersburg resident,
Elizabeth Keckley
, published
: Thirty Years a Slave and Four in the White House
. She was Mary Todd Lincoln's personal seamstress and confidante.
1869
Central State Hospital
was founded. In 1885 the hospital moved to its present location on land which the city of Petersburg donated to the state. This was the first hospital in America dedicated exclusively to African American mental health.
1877
William Mahone, based in Petersburg, founded the
Readjustor Party
, one of the most successful bi-racial political coalitions in US history. The Readjustors and their black and white constituents and politicians dominated Virginia politics until 1883.
1880
Virginia’s first publicly-supported black high school,
Peabody High School
, was chartered.
1882
Petersburg’s black leaders pushed the state government to charter the Virginia Normal and Collegiate Institute (later
Virginia State University
), the first fully state-supported, four-year institution of higher learning for blacks in the United States.
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John Mercer Langston
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1885
After serving eight years as consul-general in Haiti,
John Mercer Langston
became president of Virginia State University.
1888
John Mercer Langston was elected the
first African American Congressman
from Virginia.
1890
After returning from missionary work in West Africa, while serving as the pastor of the Gillfield Baptist Church (1865-1900) Henry Williams established the
Bethany Baptist Sunday School Association
.
1898
. Petersburg native and former slave, Major William Henry John, the highest ranking officer in the 6th Virginia Volunteer Infantry, led American forces in Cuba during the
Spanish-American War
.
1922
Scholar and activist
Luther Porter Jackson
joined Virginia State University’s History Department where he served as a professor and department chairman until 1950. Jackson’s scholarship on Petersburg’s African American history is unparalleled, and his efforts to develop the Association for the Study of Negro Life and History are largely under-recognized. Jackson was among the nation’s most important African American academics and organizers, particularly in the 1930s and 40s.
1957
Ministering to the Gillfield Baptist Church (1953-1960) and working closely with Martin Luther King, Jr.,
Wyatt Tee Walker
founded the Southern Christian Leadership Conference and served as its executive director from 1960 to 1964.
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1960
Students from Peabody High School and Virginia State University initiated
Civil Rights
demonstrations. "Most sit-ins around the South started at lunch counters. In Petersburg, a city with centuries-old dedication to African-American educational excellence, the public library was the first target."
1965
In a speech at Virginia State University, deemed by Coretta Scott King as among his most important, Dr.
Martin Luther King
, Jr. first spoke out against the Vietnam War.
1973
Petersburg elected its first black mayor,
Hermanze Fauntleroy
, who was the
first African American mayor in Virginia history
.
1984
After serving as an officer in the Army, a clinical psychologist at Central State Hospital, and a professor at Virginia State University,
Florence Farley
became the
first black female mayor of a Virginia city
when she was elected mayor of Petersburg.
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Dr. King and the first meeting of SNCC
Standing on the left, Virginius Thorton, was a Virginia State graduate student in 1960. Petersburg residents, Charles Sherrod and Dion Diamond
(not pictured),
were founding members of this national organization.
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