Alma is an

unincorporated community An unincorporated area is a parcel of land that is not governed by a local general-purpose municipal corporation. (At p. 178.) They may be governed or serviced by an encompassing unit (such as a county) or another branch of the state (such as th ...

in Page County, in the

U.S. state In the United States, a state is a constituent political entity, of which there are 50. Bound together in a political union, each state holds governmental jurisdiction over a separate and defined geographic territory where it shares its so ...

Virginia Virginia, officially the Commonwealth of Virginia, is a U.S. state, state in the Southeastern United States, Southeastern and Mid-Atlantic (United States), Mid-Atlantic regions of the United States between the East Coast of the United States ...

. The community is said to have been named, in the mid-1850s, by local doctor James Lee Gillespie. The doctor, who relocated to Page County around 1851 is said to have been a follower of events of the

Crimean War The Crimean War was fought between the Russian Empire and an alliance of the Ottoman Empire, the Second French Empire, the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, and the Kingdom of Sardinia (1720–1861), Kingdom of Sardinia-Piedmont fro ...

, and is believed to have named the little village either for the

Battle of Alma The Battle of the Alma (short for Battle of the Alma River) took place during the Crimean War between an allied expeditionary force (made up of French, British, and Ottoman forces) and Russian forces defending the Crimean Peninsula on 20Septe ...

or the Alma River, in

Ukraine Ukraine is a country in Eastern Europe. It is the List of European countries by area, second-largest country in Europe after Russia, which Russia–Ukraine border, borders it to the east and northeast. Ukraine also borders Belarus to the nor ...

. From that, it is believed that the word is the Crimean Tatar word for apple.

Notable people

* Charles D. Price (died 1974), farmer and member of the Virginia House of Delegates

References

*
James Lee Gillespie, by Robert H. Moore, II, at Southern Unionists Chronicles
Unincorporated communities in Page County, Virginia {{PageCountyVA-geo-stub