Episcopal Church at Richmond, Virginia, Bacon and Berkeley 1676, circa 1850

This is an original antique steel engraving, uncolored, lettered below the view "EPISCOPAL CHURCH AT RICHMOND, VIRGINIA." The view shows a stone church built around a low dome with a lantern, with a tall tower and spire of several stages at left, a small columned porch at the front, and at right a block with a columned recess and a sculptured group on its parapet. Trees stand at either side, a small house at far right, and two figures by the entrance, under a stormy sky.

Above the view, the emblem vignette shows flowering tobacco plants with a clay pipe at their foot. The border is a frame of trailing vines. Two small scenes are set into the lower corners: at left Africans, held captive and partly unclothed, being handed over beside a ship to colonists in seventeenth century dress, captioned "FIRST IMPORTATION OF NEGROES IN VIRGINIA. 1619."; at right a man in a plumed hat, leaning on a cane, standing before officials seated at a table, with armed men behind, captioned "BACON DEMANDING THE COMMISSION FROM SIR WILLIAM BERKELEY. 1676." No artist or engraver is credited under the view. The imprint at the foot reads "J. & F. TALLIS; LONDON & NEW YORK."

The plate comes from History of the United States of America, edited by John Howard Hinton (1791 to 1873), the English Baptist minister and author, and published by J. and F. Tallis about 1850. J. and F. Tallis were London publishers of illustrated works sold in parts around the middle of the nineteenth century. The plates of this edition set a central steel engraved view inside an engraved ornamental border with small lettered vignettes of episodes from American history, as here. In 1676 Nathaniel Bacon led an armed rising in Virginia against the colonial governor, Sir William Berkeley.

The plate pairs a Richmond building with two episodes of early Virginia history.

This is an original antique print, not a modern reproduction. This item is sold unframed.