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Norton was born enslaved about 1840 in Williamsburg of mixed-race ancestry. He was a younger brother by about a decade of F. S. Norton, who was also a member of the House of Delegates (1869–1871), and an elder brother of Daniel M. Norton, who was a member of the Convention of 1867–1868 and of the Senate of Virginia (1871–1873, 1877–1887). They may have been sons of an enslaved woman and her owner. The identities of their parents are not known for certain, and Robert Norton provided different names for his mother on each of his two marriage records: Richard and Elizabeth without surnam...

Booker was born on December 5, 1821, in Patrick County, the son of Edward Booker and Elizabeth Anglin Booker. Educated locally, he farmed and taught school before reading law. Booker was admitted to the bar in Henry County on March 8, 1847, and practiced there the remainder of his life. Elected to the county court in 1856, he served as its presiding justice from 1858 until 1864. Booker was a strong Unionist at the time of the secession crisis, but according to his later testimony he voted for the Ordinance of Secession because he feared reprisals from his neighbors. He avoided being conscrip...

SUMMARY Mary-Cooke Branch Munford was an advocate of woman suffrage, interracial cooperation, education, health, and labor reforms. Armed with a pedigree that connected her to some of the wealthiest families of Virginia, she threw herself into such “unfeminine” pursuits as education reform and civil rights. She helped to found the Richmond Education Association, was the first woman to serve on the city’s school board, was a member of the University of Virginia‘s board of visitors, and was the first woman to serve on the College of William and Mary‘s board of visitors. Munford also ...

Allan was born in Birmingham, England, on February 26, 1842, the son of John Allan and Ann Allan. He attended parochial schools and received training as a typesetter in Birmingham. In 1863 he immigrated to the United States, and on June 17, just six weeks after his arrival, enlisted as a private in George Armstrong Custer’s 7th Michigan Cavalry. He was wounded at Shepherdstown on August 24, 1864, and discharged from the army in Washington, D.C., in the summer of 1865. Allan bought a small farm in Prince Edward County, where he studied law by himself. In December 1867 he was admitted to the ...

Before the Civil War none of the states south of the Potomac and Ohio rivers had public school systems. In the 1780s and 1810s the former governor Thomas Jefferson recommended creating a statewide school system, and the governors David Campbell and James McDowell made similar recommendations in the 1830s and 1840s. But the Constitutional Convention of 1829–1830 refused even to debate a proposal that the state take responsibility to educate its children. White Virginians who could afford it hired tutors or sent their children to private schools. By the middle of the nineteenth century numero...