People, places and things

She's from here? That's right here? They make those here? Yes, yes, and yes. From Ella Fitzgerald to Williamsburg to Peace Frogs, we've got people, places and things worth talking about.

PEOPLE

Princess Pocahontas, Capt. John Smith and Chief Powhatan were all in Jamestown and environs in 1607.

Nathaniel Bacon led a revolt against Virginia's royal governor in 1676.

The pirate Blackbeard's head was put on a pole in Hampton after he was killed in 1718.

Thomas Jefferson attended the College of William and Mary in Williamsburg before founding the University of Virginia in Charlottesville.

Patrick Henry, George Wythe and John Marshall all took part in political debate in Williamsburg, the Colonial capital of Virginia.

George Washington's victory at Yorktown cemented him as the man who would go on to become our first president.

William Henry Harrison and John Tyler - known as Tippecanoe and Tyler Too - became presidents. Both hailed from Charles City County.

Ben Butler, the Federal commander here early in the Civil War, declared that runaway slaves could be kept as "contraband of war" (and, presumably, then be freed). His decision led the Union on its way to emancipation.

Confederate President Jefferson Davis was jailed at Fort Monroe after the Civil War.

Booker T. Washington studied and later taught at Hampton Institute (now Hampton University) before going on to lead Tuskegee Institute (now Tuskegee University).

Robert R. Moton, who followed Booker T. Washington as head of Tuskegee, retired to a home on the banks of the York River in Gloucester, where his wife was reared.

Walter Reed, an army physician from Gloucester, discovered that yellow fever was transmitted by mosquitoes.

Ella Fitzgerald, right, and Pearl Bailey, both world-renowned entertainers, were born in Newport News in 1918.

Gen. Douglas MacArthur is entombed in a Norfolk memorial and Lt. Gen. Lewis B. "Chesty" Puller is buried in Middlesex.

William Styron, a Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist, grew up in Newport News and used the area for some of his books' locales.

Satchel Paige pitched two innings for the Peninsula Grays at War Memorial Stadium in Hampton in 1966 at the age of 59.

Irene Morgan, a Gloucester African-American, was arrested in Saluda for refusing to move to the back of a bus for a white couple in 1944, 11 years before Rosa Parks' similar action. The case led to the first Supreme Court decision overturning a segregation law involving transportation.

Glenn Close, theater and movie star, attended the College of William and Mary and starred in several productions there in the 1970s.

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