Alexander Spotswood
✓ Source-basedstableBritish soldier, explorer, and colonial administrator (1676-1740)
Major-General Alexander Spotswood was a British army officer, explorer and colonial administrator who served as the governor of Virginia from 1710 to 1722. After an unsatisfactory military career, in 1710 he was appointed as Virginia's governor, a post he held for twelve years.
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Martin Maingaud, Portrait of George Douglas-Hamilton, 1st Earl of Orkney, 1724. London, Government Art Collection
c. 1720-1726 portrait of William Byrd II by Hans Hysing
The houses and the blockhouse of the first settlement of Germanna
Engraving depicting Spotswood and his companions crossing the Blue Ridge Mountains
Charles Bridges, Portrait of James Blair, circa 1735, Williamsburg, College of William & Mary
Jean Leon Gerome Ferris, Capture of the Pirate Blackbeard, 1920
The front of the main building of the Governor's Palace, WilliamsburgPoliticians born in the 1670s 6
About this person
Major-General Alexander Spotswood was a British army officer, explorer and colonial administrator who served as the governor of Virginia from 1710 to 1722. After an unsatisfactory military career, in 1710 he was appointed as Virginia's governor, a post he held for twelve years. During that period, Spotswood engaged in the exploration of the territories beyond the western border, of which he was the first to see the economic potentials. In 1716 he organised and led an expedition west of the mountains, known as Knights of the Golden Horseshoe Expedition, with which he established the Crown's dominion over the territory between the Blue Ridge Mountains and the Shenandoah Valley, thus taking a decisive step for the future British expansion to the West.
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