Charlottesville, VA news and local guide

Charlottesville was established in 1762 by an act of the assembly for Albemarle County, with Thomas Walker as its first trustee. It lay on the Three Notched Road, now U.S. Route 250, a trade route from Richmond to the Shenandoah Valley, and was named for Queen Charlotte of Mecklenburg-Strelitz. During the Revolution, Congress held the British Convention Army prisoner at the Albemarle Barracks near town from 1779 to 1781. On June 4, 1781, Jack Jouett warned the Virginia legislators at Monticello of a raid by Colonel Banastre Tarleton, and they narrowly escaped. Thomas Jefferson and James Monroe both lived in Albemarle County and traveled the Three Notch'd Road to Richmond as governors, and Jefferson founded the University of Virginia on the city's southwestern edge. Charlottesville escaped most of the Civil War. Its only battle was the skirmish at Rio Hill, where George Armstrong Custer briefly fought Confederate home guards before pulling back. During General Philip Sheridan's raid in 1865, the mayor surrendered the town to Custer and Sheridan to save it from burning, but the Charlottesville Factory, which had made woolen uniforms for the Confederacy, burned by accident when coals carried by Union troops to destroy a railroad bridge fell on its floor. It was rebuilt at once and ran as the Woolen Mills until 1962. Sources Wikipedia: Charlottesville, Virginia