The Washington and Lee University Library has initiated a subscription to the online database People of the Founding Era, a scholarly reference work that provides biographical information on over 65,000 people born between 1713 (the end of Queen Anne’s War) and 1815 (the end of the Napoleonic War). Most of the biographical excerpts are drawn from the digitized papers of the Founding Fathers and other documentary editions of the Founding Era, including The Geography of Slavery, augmented by further research by the University of Virginia Press.
This resource is not only biographical, but also prosopographical, allowing collective biographical research by such categories as locations, slaves, occupations, and gender. For example, one can view 76 entries on individuals born in or living in Rockbridge County. (Scan down the page for the list of individuals.)
For much more detail on this ongoing project, we can recommend the site’s Introduction .