But as the Virginia colony grew, issues such as defense, paper money and transportation became too complex for local entities. The general assembly – then known as the House of Burgesses – gained more power and influence. Today, the Virginia General Assembly consists of 100 representatives elected to the House of Delegates and 40 to the Senate. Each delegate represents about 71,000 people and each senator, about 176,000. Laws do not result from a citizen’s simple petition to his representative as they did four centuries ago, but go through a complex process that includes first, second and third readings, consideration by committees and finally approval by the governor.

The state’s – and the nation’s – oldest family business also dates from the Jamestown era. The Shirley Plantation in Charles City is Virginia’s first plantation, established in 1613. At the time, tobacco plantations were the economic engines of the commonwealth. Shirley is still privately owned and operated by descendants of Edward Hill, whose family has worked the plantation for 11 generations. The plantation has survived Indian uprisings, Bacon’s Rebellion (this e-journal’s namesake), the Revolutionary War, the Civil War and the Great Depression.

Charles Carter, who ran the plantation before the Revolutionary War, gave up tobacco to grow wheat and other cash crops. Tobacco required more slaves and had to be sold through British merchants. Wheat and the other crops could be sold directly to the colonists. The next owner, Robert Carter, gave up farming because of his dislike of slavery and became a doctor. Robert E. Lee’s mother, Anne Lee Carter, was born at the Shirley Plantation in 1793 and married Light Horse Harry Lee in the mansion’s parlor.

By the 1970s, the plantation’s agricultural business was no longer viable. Owner Charles Hill Carter II, started a sand and gravel mine behind the mansion. By 2001, Charles Hill Carter III was working with scientists from Virginia Tech to fill the mine with mud dredged from the Woodrow Wilson Bridge project to restore fertile farm land. In addition to revenue from farming and other businesses, the family has opened the plantation to tourists since the 1950s. (“Save Shirley Plantation,” Human Events, January 2001).

Founded much later than either the General Assembly or Shirley Plantation is the Abingdon Virginian. Established in 1841, the journal boasts that it is one of the last private, family-owned small newspapers in Virginia. “The Abingdon Virginian is the quirky home of the small man’s feelings in a world grown largely by greed,” writes editor Robert Weisfeld on the paper’s website. A weekly, the idiosyncratic paper features such sections as “Read My Mind,” “Where It’s At,” “Birdland,” “Among My Souvenirs” and of course “Letters to the Editor.”

Even though law is among the world’s oldest professions, it is unlikely that there were early practitioners at Jamestown. After all, Shakespeare’s famous line, “the first thing we do, let’s kill all the lawyers,” was uttered in his play, “Henry VI” (Part II), in 1592. That’s only 15 years before the first Jamestown settlers arrived on our shores. Lawyers tended to come from the upper classes and colonists tended to be uneducated, unemployed males who distrusted the elite classes. In 1645, Virginia even passed a law prohibiting lawyers from courts.

One hundred years later, as the population grew through immigration, things changed and lawyers’ reputations improved. It was those trained in law, such as Thomas Jefferson, who were leaders in the American Revolution and signers of the Declaration of Independence. Jefferson even founded the commonwealth’s first law school at the University of Virginia in 1819. One of the commonwealth’s oldest law firms, McGuireWoods, LLP, traces its origins to 1834 when an attorney named Egbert R. Watson hung out his shingle in Charlottesville. Through a series of mergers, the names McGuire, Woods, and others were added to the mix. Now headquartered in Richmond, the firm has 750 lawyers in 15 offices across the globe.

Banks date from colonial times in Virginia as well. In the early years of the nation, those who established banks often needed permission from state governments to operate. Bankers typically made only short-term loans – 60 to 90 days – to make sure they had funds when depositors demanded them. In rural areas, though, farmers could sometimes get longer loans to buy land, equipment and finance the shipment of crops. In the early days of the country, each bank issued its own distinctive currency.

By 1860, there were 10,000 different types of bank notes circulating. Counterfeiting was rampant and many banks failed. In 1863, the U.S. Congress passed the National Currency Act to bring some order to the situation. That Act and a revised National Bank Law in 1864 created a system of national banks and an agency to oversee them (A Brief History of U.S. Banking).

Today, the Burke & Herbert Bank & Trust Company, headquartered in Alexandria, may be Virginia’s oldest bank still in operation. It was founded in 1852 by John Woolfolk Burke and Arthur Herbert. At the time Alexandria was prospering; three other banks already existed in the city. In its early years, the bank’s services ranged from the sale of stocks and real estate to the purchase of land warrants for tracts to the west. Personal accounts and online banking would come much later. The bank now has 16 offices in northern Virginia and assets totaling about one billion dollars. It’s a Virginia institution with a long pedigree.

Whether they can trace their origins to Jamestown or a more modest 19th–century beginning, some institutions have deep roots in the history of the Old Dominion. Four hundred years may not be such a long time, after all!