Existing comment:
Industrial and Commercial Opportunity in Richmond
A French visitor in 1837 observed that Richmond "aspires to be a metropolis... by the great works which it is executing... canals, railroads, water-works, huge mills, workshops, for which the fall in the river affords an almost unlimited motive power." The agrarian lifestyle, however, was so fundamental in the region that many from old Virginia families preferred to relocate rather than change vocation. |