Fincastle Resolutions

250th Anniversary

January 18, 2025

On January 20, 1775, fifteen Virginia frontiersman endorsed the Fincastle Resolutions in response to and in support of the Continental Congress adopting their own association to boycott British goods in protest of the Intolerable Acts. As this revolution of ideas swept across the Commonwealth, the Fincastle Resolutions were the first to verbalize the views of Virginia’s most western counties where “even in (these) remote regions the hand of unlimited and unconstitutional power hath pursued us, to strip us of that liberty and property which God, nature, and the rights of humanity have vested us.”

Out of the Virginia jurisdictions that wrote resolves on the eve of Revolution, Fincastle’s is unique for mentioning the colonists’ interactions with Indigenous Virginians. Many of the signers were veterans of Lord Dunmore’s War, some of the Battle of Point Pleasant. Some were immigrants or first-generation Americans. All were landowners. Together, they penned a resolution in defense of their “inestimable privileges” as rightful British subjects, which they “resolutely determined never to surrender…to any power upon earth, but at the expense of (their) lives.”

Join us on January 18, 2025 for a 250th anniversary commemoration of this important moment in the history of Southwest Virginia.

Click here to learn more about the Fincastle Resolutions with Encyclopedia Virginia.