The search results below contain listings from our website. To search our library and museum collections catalogs, please visit the Collections page.
Article
A House Built of Virginia Stone
Image
Approximately forty miles south of Washington, D.C., the Aquia sandstone quarry on Government Island sits quietly in the...
Article
Arthur Ashe Jr.’s Family Tree: Tracing the Blackwell Family to 1735
Image
See a rare family tree, drawn by hand on canvas, tracing Arthur Ashe, Jr.’s family.
Article
Booker T. Washington
Image
Booker T. Washington (1856–1915) was born enslaved on April 5, 1856, in Franklin County, Virginia. After emancipation...
Article
Bookplates
Image
The use of bookplates is almost as old as printing itself. They were used to record ownership and to reassure the owner...
Article
Christmas Cards
Image
Christmas cards are ephemeral, and this essence is the very reason they can be of interest to researchers. Scholars...
Article
Christmas in the Trenches
Image
Read excerpts from soldiers' letters home about their Christmas meals while stationed away from home.
Article
Clarise Sears Ramsey
Image
Charlotte Clarise Sears Risley Harrold Ramsey (1867–1922), whose parents were Joseph Henry Risley and Mary Elizabeth...
Article
Colored Knights of Pythias Helmet (c. 1890)
Image
Race has been a divisive issue throughout American history, and this impressive helmet tells part of the story.
Article
Convict Leasing
Image
For much of the twentieth century, convicts worked on Virginia’s roads. This practice grew out of the convict lease...
Article
Education in Virginia
Image
The Virginia Constitution of 1869, passed during Reconstruction, established a statewide system of free public schools...
Article
Elizabeth Keckley
Image
Born a slave in Dinwiddie County, Elizabeth Hobbs Keckley (1818–1907) purchased her freedom in 1855 and supported...
Article
Ella Fitzgerald's False Eyelashes
Image
Legendary singer and Virginia native Ella Fitzgerald, dubbed “The First Lady of Song,” exhilarated audiences with her...
Article
Equal Suffrage League of Virginia
Image
Learn about how the Equal Suffrage League of Virginia helped women gain the right to vote.
Article
For the Love of Beauty: The Collections of Lora and Claiborne Robins
Image
Explore nineteenth-century Hudson River School landscape paintings and colonial furniture collected by philanthropists...
Article
Glee Clubs
Image
The VMHC has several glee club items in its collection. The earliest item, an 1848 broadside entitled “Rally Whigs”...
Article
James Jones Archive (1870s-1960s)
Image
With a coat of faded red paint and a crude hand-forged hasp to secure its lid, the simple pine chest – once used to...
Article
Jim Crow to Civil Rights in Virginia
Image
Following the Civil War, black Virginians struggled to assert their independence and make freedom meaningful. In the...
Article
John Carter of Mars
Image
Edgar Rice Burroughs (1875–1950), best known as the creator of the Tarzan books, also wrote a popular science fiction...
Article
John Randolph Dueling Pistols (c. 1820)
Image
The death of former Treasury Secretary Alexander Hamilton — resulting from his famous 1804 duel with Vice President...
Article
Juneteenth
Image
Pop Civ is a series developed by the John Marshall Center for Constitutional History & Civics at the VMHC. By connecting...