1776

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Events

• January – Thomas Jefferson writes an "alternative" history of the colonies elaborating on what he wrote in 1774 in A Summary View of the Rights of British America. To show that the original English colonists saw themselves as independent of King and Parliament, he draws on Richard Hakluyt's The Principal Navigations Voyages Traffiques & Discoveries Made by Sea or Overland to the Remote & Farthest Distant Quarters of the Earth...., first published in London, 1598-1600. (Series 7, Volume 3, Historical Notes on Virginia).

• May 6, 1776 – the House of Burgesses met for the last time as recorded on this final page of the official journal. The House of Burgesses is recognized not only for having been the first elected representative government in colonial Virginia, but as the place where some of the most notable names of the American Revolution, such as George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Patrick Henry, and Richard Henry Lee, began their political careers.
• June 29 – the Fifth Virginia Convention adopted a new constitution, which established the General Assembly with an elected Senate and elected House of Delegates.

Deaths

• March 31 – Jane Randolph Jefferson died prematurely of a stroke. Thomas Jefferson wrote an entry in his journal: “My mother died about 8 o’clock this morning, in her fifty-seventh year of age.” According to the Jefferson family bible, she was born in Shadwell parish, Tower Hamlets, London.