At the time of the English colonization of Virginia, among Native
American people living in what now is Virginia were the largest group
known as the Algonquian who numbered over 10,000 and the Iroquoian
numbering 2,500. 
At the end of the 16th century, when Great Britain began to colonize
North America, Virginia was the name that Queen Elizabeth I of England (
the "Virgin Queen" ) gave to the whole area explored by the 1584
expedition of Sir Walter Raleigh along the coast of North America. The
London Virginia Company became incorporated as a joint stock company by
a proprietary charter drawn up on April 10, 1606. The charter granted
lands stretching from approximately the 34th parallel (North Carolina)
north to approximately the 45th parallel (New York)and from the Atlantic
Ocean westward. It swiftly financed the first permanent English
settlement in the New World, which was at Jamestown, named in honor of
King James I, in the Virginia Colony, in 1607, which settlement was
founded by Captain Christopher Newport and Captain John Smith. Its
Second Charter was officially ratified on May 23, 1609.
Jamestown was the original capital of the Virginia Colony. Then the
colonial capital was moved to nearby Middle Plantation, which was
renamed Williamsburg in honor of William of Orange, King William III.
Virginia was given its nickname, "The Old Dominion", by King Charles II
of England at the time of the Restoration, because it had remained loyal
to the crown during the English Civil War.
In 1780, during the American Revolutionary War, the capital was moved to
Richmond at the urging of then-Governor Thomas Jefferson, who was afraid
that Williamsburg's location made it vulnerable to a British attack. In
the autumn of 1781, American troops trapped the British on the Yorktown
peninsula in the famous Battle of Yorktown. This prompted a British
surrender on October 19, 1781, formally ending the war and securing the
former colonies' independence, even though sporadic fighting continued
for two years.
Patrick Henry served as the first Governor of Virginia, from 1776 to
1779, and again from 1784 to 1786. On June 12, 1776, the Virginia
Convention adopted the Virginia Declaration of Rights, a document that
influenced the Bill of Rights added later to the United States
Constitution. On June 29, 1776, the convention adopted a constitution
that established Virginia as a commonwealth independent of the British
Empire. In 1790 both Virginia and Maryland ceded territory to form the
new District of Columbia, but in an Act of the U.S. Congress dated July
9, 1846, the area south of the Potomac that had been ceded by Virginia
was retroceded to Virginia effective 1847, and is now Arlington County
and part of the City of Alexandria.
Virginia is one of the states that seceded from the Union to become the
Confederacy(on April 17, 1861) during the Civil War. When it did, some
counties were separated as West Virginia, an act which was upheld by the
United States Supreme Court in 1870. More battles were fought on
Virginia soil than anywhere else in America during the Civil War.
Virginia formally rejoined the Union on January 26, 1870, after a period
of post-war military rule.
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