The first African American president was from Petersburg

The big picture: Roberts was born in Norfolk in 1809 a free man, and soon after, moved with his family to Petersburg where he spent his childhood.

• There, he worked at his stepfather's boating business, which shipped goods up and down the James, and apprenticed as a barber before emigrating with his wife to Liberia when he was 21.
• Roberts was one of only a few thousand African Americans who left the U.S. to help build a new colony in West Africa in Liberia.

Zoom in: Roberts seemed to flourish in Liberia. Four years after arriving he became high sheriff, then vice governor, governor and finally in 1848 he was elected the first ever president of Liberia after its independence.

• And he was elected again in 1872 as the seventh president.
• In between, men from Maryland and Ohio also served, as did James Spriggs Payne, a former Richmonder who became Liberia's fourth and eighth president.

The bottom line: Virginia truly owns its moniker as the "Mother of Presidents."