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Petersburg is an independent city in the U.S. state of Virginia. As of the 2010 census, the population was 32,420.〔(【引用サイトリンク】url=http://quickfacts.census.gov/qfd/states/51/51730.html )〕 The Bureau of Economic Analysis combines Petersburg (along with the city of Colonial Heights) with Dinwiddie County for statistical purposes. It is located on the Appomattox River and south of the state capital of Richmond. The city's unique industrial past and its location as a transportation hub combined to create wealth for Virginia and the region. The location on the Appomattox River at the fall line (the head of navigation of rivers on the U.S. east coast) early in the history of the Colony of Virginia caused Petersburg to become a strategic place for transportation and commercial activities, as well as the site of Fort Henry. As railroads emerged beginning in the 1830s, it became a major transfer point for both north-south and east-west competitors. The Petersburg Railroad was one of the earliest predecessors of the modern-day CSX Transportation system. Several of the earliest predecessors of the area's other major Class 1 railroad, Norfolk Southern, also met at Petersburg. During the American Civil War, because of the railroad network, Petersburg was key to Union plans to capture the Confederate capital at Richmond. The city saw nine months of trench warfare during the 1864-65 Siege of Petersburg. Battlefield sites are throughout the city and surrounding areas, partly preserved as Petersburg National Battlefield. The city is also significant for its role in African-American history. Petersburg had one of the oldest free black settlements in the state at Pocahontas Island. Two Baptist churches in the city, whose congregations were founded in the late 18th century, are among the oldest black congregations and churches in the nation.〔(Albert J. Raboteau, ''Slave Religion: The 'Invisible Institution' in the Antebellum South'' ), New York: Oxford University Press, 2004, p. 137, accessed 27 December 2008〕 In the 20th century, these and other black churches were leaders in the national Civil Rights Movement. In the post-bellum period, a historically black college which later became Virginia State University was established nearby in Ettrick in Chesterfield County. Richard Bland College, now a junior college, was originally established as a branch of Williamsburg's College of William and Mary. Petersburg remains a transportation hub, with the network of area highways including Interstate Highways 85, 95, and 295, and U.S. highways 1, 301, and 460. Both CSX and NS rail systems maintain transportation centers at Petersburg. Amtrak serves the city with daily Northeast Corridor trains to Norfolk, and long-distance routes from states to the south.〔(【引用サイトリンク】url=http://www.amtrak.com/servlet/ContentServer?pagename=am/am2Station/Station_Page&code=PTB )〕 In the early 21st century, Petersburg leaders were highlighting the historical attractions for heritage tourism, and the industrial sites reachable by the transportation infrastructure. Military activity has expanded at nearby Fort Lee, home of the United States Army's Sustainment Center of Excellence, and the Army's Logistics Branch, Ordnance, Quartermaster, and Transportation Corps. ==History== (詳細はPocahontas Island have found evidence of a prehistoric Native American settlement dated to 6500 B.C. This is in the early third of the Archaic Period (8000 to 1000 BC). Varying cultures of indigenous peoples lived in the area for thousands of years. When the English arrived in Virginia in 1607, the region was occupied by the ''Appamatuck'', a significant tribe of the Powhatan Confederacy. They were governed by a ''weroance'', King ''Coquonosum'', and by his sister, Queen ''Oppussoquionuske''. This Algonquian-speaking people later had a town at Rohoic Creek (formerly ''Rohowick'' or Indian Towne Run), on the western edge of present-day Petersburg. Petersburg was founded and settled by English colonists. By 1635 they had patented land along the south bank of the Appomattox River as far west as present-day Sycamore Street, and about inland. In 1646, the Virginia Colony established Fort Henry a short distance from the Appamatuck town, near the falls. Col. Abraham Wood sent several famous expeditions out from here in the following years to explore points to the west, as far as the Appalachian Mountains. Some time around 1675, Wood's son-in-law, Peter Jones, who then commanded the fort and traded with the Indians, opened a trading post nearby, known as Peter's Point. The Bolling family, prominent tobacco planters and traders, also lived in the area from the early 18th century. In 1733, Col. William Byrd II (who founded Richmond at the same time) conceived plans for a city at Peter's Point, to be renamed Petersburgh. The Virginia General Assembly formally incorporated both Petersburg and adjacent Blandford on December 17, 1748. Wittontown, north of the river, was settled in 1749, and became incorporated as Pocahontas in 1752. Petersburg was enlarged slightly in 1762, adding to "Old Town".〔James H. Bailey, ''Old Petersburg'', p. 16.〕 During the American Revolutionary War, the British drive to regain control erupted in the Battle of Blanford in 1781, which started just east of Petersburg. As the Americans retreated north across the Appomattox River, they took up the planks of the Pocahontas bridge to delay the enemy. Although the British drove the Americans from Blanford and Petersburg, they did not regain a strategic advantage in the war. Cornwallis' forces surrendered at Yorktown soon after this battle. After the war, in 1784 Petersburg annexed the adjacent towns of Blandford (also called Blanford) and Pocahontas and the suburb of Ravenscroft, which became neighborhoods of the city. An area known as Gillfield was annexed in 1798.〔James H. Bailey, ''Old Petersburg'', p. 17.〕 Residents' devotion to the cause during the War of 1812 led to the formation of the Petersburg Volunteers—who distinguished themselves in action at the Siege of Fort Meigs on May 5, 1813. President James Madison called Petersburg "Cockade of the Union" (or "Cockade City"), in honor of the cockades which Volunteers wore on their caps.〔James H. Bailey, ''Old Petersburg'', p. 18-19.〕 Because of the availability of jobs in Petersburg, many free people of color in Virginia migrated to the growing urban community. They established First Baptist (1774) and Gillfield Baptist Church (1797), the first and second oldest black congregations in the city and two of the oldest in the nation.〔("Gillfield Baptist Church, Petersburg, VA" ), Virginia Commonwealth University Library, 2008, accessed 22 December 2008〕〔("First Baptist Church, Petersburg" ), African American Heritage, accessed 22 December 2008〕 The black churches were the first Baptist churches established in Petersburg.〔(Albert J. Raboteau, ''Slave Religion: The 'Invisible Institution' in the Antebellum South'' ), Oxford University Press, p. 137, accessed 27 December 2008〕 For years the center of the free black residential area was Pocahontas Island, a peninsula on the north shore of the Appomattox River. With access to waterways and a sympathetic population, this neighborhood was an important site on the Underground Railroad. The Port of Petersburg became renowned as a commercial center for processing cotton, tobacco and metal, then shipping products out of the region. The city became an important industrial center in a mostly agricultural state with few major cities. Flourishing businesses helped the city make improvements. Starting in 1813, the city paved its streets. A development company created a canal to bypass the Appomattox Falls. Next came railroad lines to link the city to all points of the compass. As travel technology developed in the mid-19th century, Petersburg became established as a railroad center, with lines completed to Richmond to the north, Farmville and Lynchburg to the west, and Weldon, North Carolina to the south. The last major line was completed in 1858 to the east, with the Norfolk and Petersburg Railroad connecting to an ocean port. In 1851 the city introduced gaslights and by 1857 installed a new municipal water system. All these civic improvements helped attract and hold a substantial business community, based on manufacture of tobacco products, but also including cotton and flour mills, and banking. At the time of the American Civil War, Petersburg was the second largest city in Virginia, and the seventh-largest city in the Confederacy. Petersburg's population had the highest percentage of free African Americans of any city in the Confederacy and the largest number of free blacks in the Mid-Atlantic.〔, ''Petersburg Express'', accessed 22 December 2008〕 In 1864, Petersburg became a target during the Overland Campaign of Union General Ulysses S. Grant. The numerous railroads made Petersburg a lifeline for Richmond, the Confederate capital. After his defeat at the Battle of Cold Harbor, Grant remained east of Richmond and moved south to Petersburg. Grant intended to cut the rail lines into Petersburg, stopping Richmond's supplies. On June 9, troops led by William F. "Baldy" Smith of the 18th Corps, attacked the Dimmock Line, a series of defensive breastworks constructed to protect Petersburg. Lee arrived with the fabled Army of Northern Virginia, and the 292-day Siege of Petersburg began. Due to botched Union leadership and arrival of Confederate General William Mahone, the Union forces suffered a disastrous defeat at the Battle of the Crater, suffering over 4,000 casualties.In early April 1865, Union troops finally managed to push their left flank to the railroad to Weldon, North Carolina and the Southside Railroad. With the loss of Petersburg's crucial lifelines, the Confederate forces had to retreat, ending the siege in a victory for the Union Army. The fall of Petersburg meant that Richmond could no longer be defended, Lee attempted to lead his men south to join up with Confederate forces in North Carolina. Hopelessly outnumbered, he was surrounded and forced to surrender at Appomattox Court House, Virginia, on April 9, 1865. In the years after the Civil War, many freedmen migrated to Petersburg, founding numerous churches, businesses and institutions. The Freedmen's Bureau established new facilities for freedmen, including a mental health hospital in December 1869, at Howard's Grove Hospital, a former Confederate unit. In 1870 the General Assembly incorporated the Central Lunatic Asylum as an organized state institution, as part of an effort by the Reconstruction-era legislature to increase public institutions for general welfare. Also in 1882, the state legislature authorized moving the asylum facility to the Mayfield Farm and developing a new campus there. This is the site of the present-day Central State Hospital, which provides a variety of mental health services. The legislature also founded the state's first system of free public education. During the 1880s, a coalition of black Republicans and white Populists held power for several years in the state legislature. This resulted in two major public institutions in Petersburg, as the legislature invested for education and welfare. In 1882, the legislature founded Virginia State University in nearby Ettrick as Virginia Normal and Collegiate Institute. It was one of the first public (fully state-supported) four-year historically black colleges and universities (HBCU) in the Mid-Atlantic. This was part of a drive to improve public education that started with the Reconstruction legislature.〔("Civil War history lesson: Petersburg, Va., embraces and expands its past" ), Boston.com, 9 March 2005, accessed 22 December 2008〕 In 1888, its first president, John Mercer Langston, was elected to the US Congress on the Republican ticket, the first African American to be elected to Congress from Virginia. The limitations of Petersburg's small geographic area and proximity to Richmond were structural problems which hampered it in adapting to major economic changes in the 20th century. Other forces in the mid-20th century acted to pull people and jobs from the city. It suffered from competition with nearby Richmond, which grew to dominate the region in a changing economy as industries restructured. World wars led to major federal institutions being constructed at Petersburg, which created local jobs. Soon after World War I started, the US Army established Camp Lee for training draftees. The facility was used again during World War II. In 1950 the camp was designated Fort Lee, and additional buildings were constructed to house the U.S. Army Quartermaster Corps Center and School. In the 1950s, Petersburg became the southern terminus of the Richmond-Petersburg Turnpike, predating the U.S. Interstate Highway System. In the late 19th and early 20th century, Virginia's conservative white Democratic Party–dominated legislature instituted Jim Crow laws, including imposing racial segregation. It also approved constitutional changes that effectively disfranchised most blacks and many poor whites. Those disfranchised suffered major losses in the ability to exercise their rights as citizens. With many African Americans having served the nation and cause of freedom in WWII, in the postwar years they pressed for social justice, an end to segregation and restoration of voting power. Even after the Great Migration of blacks to northern jobs and cities, Petersburg was 40 percent black in 1960. Those citizens were barred from free use of public spaces and facilities.〔(''Freedom Riders: 1961 and the Struggle for Racial Justice'' ) Raymond Arsenault, New York: Oxford University Press, 2006, p.115〕 Major black churches, such as First Baptist and Gillfield Baptist, formed the moral center of the Civil Rights Movement in Petersburg, which gained strength in mid-century and was a major center of action. Dr. Wyatt Tee Walker, the pastor of Gillfield Baptist Church, had become friends with Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. in the early 1950s when they were both in divinity school. In 1957 they co-founded the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), an important force for leadership of the movement in the South. Walker also founded the Petersburg Improvement Association (PIA), modeled on the Montgomery Improvement Association in Alabama.〔("Inventory of the Wyatt Tee Walker Papers, 1963-1982, n.d." ), Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, New York Public Library, 2000, accessed 31 December 2008〕 According to Walker and other close associates of King, Petersburg had played an important role, a kind of blueprint for the national civil rights. African Americans in Petersburg struggled, with federal government support, to desegregate public schools and facilities. Through sit-ins in the bus terminal in 1960, the PIA gained agreement by the president of the Bus Terminal Restaurants to desegregate lunch counters in Petersburg and several other cities.〔(Raymond Arsenault, ''Freedom Riders: 1961 and the Struggle for Racial Justice'' ), New York: Oxford University Press, 2006, p. 115〕 Virginia officials at the top levels resisted school integration and initiated the program of Massive Resistance. For instance, rather than integrate, the school board of neighboring Prince Edward County closed public schools for five years, starting in 1959. Retail and industry prospered until about the early 1980s. De-industrialization and structural economic changes cost many jobs in the city, as happened in numerous older industrial cities across the North and Midwest. The postwar national movement of highway construction and suburbanization added to problems. Due to racial integration of schools in the 1960s, many middle-class families moved to newer housing in the predominantly white suburbs, and to the Richmond metro area where the economy was expanding with jobs in fields of financial and retail services. Some companies moved industrial jobs to states further south, where wages were lower, or out of the country altogether. The declining economy increased the pressure of competition and racial tensions. These flared from 1968 to 1980. Following the assassination of King in 1968, Petersburg was the first city to designate his birthday as a holiday, an observance that is now a national holiday.〔( Henry Chase, "Proud, free and black: Petersburg - visiting the Virginia location of the largest number of 19th century free slaves" ), ''American Visions'', Jun-Jul 1994, accessed 27 December 2008〕 Projected industrial development of large tracts of vacant land in the annexed areas did not materialize. In the late 1980s, Numerous remaining retail merchants relocated to the new Southpark Mall area in adjacent, and predominately white, Colonial Heights. In a typical postwar US pattern, suburban development through the late 20th century drew off retail from the former downtown area. In the early 21st century, Petersburg leaders are highlighting its attractive historical and industrial sites, with associated access to an exceptionally wide transportation network. As of 2007, Petersburg continued to evolve as a small city, even as the nature of its commercial activities changed. Downtown Petersburg, known as Old Towne, began experiencing a rebirth. The Army has substantially expanded activities at nearby Fort Lee, home of the United States Army's Sustainment Center of Excellence, as well as the Army's Logistics Branch, Ordnance, Quartermaster, and Transportation Corps. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Petersburg, Virginia」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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