Columbia Encyclopedia

Search results

500 results found

West, Jerry

(Encyclopedia)West, Jerry (Jerome Alan West), 1938–, American basketball player, b. Cheylan, W.Va. One of the game's great shooting guards, he led West Virginia Univ. to the 1959 National Collegiate Athletic Asso...

London Company

(Encyclopedia)London Company, corporation composed of stockholders residing in and about London, which, together with the Plymouth Company (see Virginia Company), was granted (1606) a charter by King James I to fou...

Lee, Jesse

(Encyclopedia)Lee, Jesse, 1758–1816, American Methodist clergyman, b. Virginia. He is known as the apostle of Methodism in New England where, from 1789 to 1798, his labors as an itinerant preacher over a wide are...

De la Warr, Thomas West, 12th Baron

(Encyclopedia)De la Warr, Thomas West, 12th Baron dĕlˈəwər [key], 1577–1618, English colonial governor of Virginia. He saw fighting in the Netherlands and was knighted when serving in Ireland. He succeeded to...

Cumberland Plateau

(Encyclopedia)Cumberland Plateau or Cumberland Mountains, southwestern division of the Appalachian Mt. system, extending northeast to southwest through parts of West Virginia, Virginia, Kentucky, and Tennessee into...

Quids

(Encyclopedia)Quids, in U.S. political history, an extreme states' rights group of Jeffersonian Republicans led by John Randolph of Virginia. Feeling that Thomas Jefferson and James Madison had retreated from the s...

New River

(Encyclopedia)New River, c.320 mi (510 km) long, rising in the Blue Ridge, NW N.C. It flows NE through SW Virginia, then NW into West Virginia where it joins with the Gauley River to form the Kanawha River. It is u...

Strachey, William

(Encyclopedia)Strachey, William, 1572–1621, English colonial historian; educated at Cambridge. In 1609 he sailed to Virginia with Sir Thomas Gates. A storm wrecked his ship in the Bermudas, and the party remained...

Tygart

(Encyclopedia)Tygart tīˈgərt [key], river, c.160 mi (260 km) long, rising in E West Virginia and flowing north to join the West Fork and form the Monongahela at Fairmont. Tygart River Dam (completed 1938), near ...

panhandle

(Encyclopedia)panhandle, in geography, a strip of land projecting from the main body of an area and shaped like the handle of a pan, such as the panhandles of West Virginia, Texas, and Alaska. ...
 

Browse by Subject