The search results below contain listings from our website. To search our library and museum collections catalogs, please visit the Collections page.
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Colored Knights of Pythias Helmet (c. 1890)
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Race has been a divisive issue throughout American history, and this impressive helmet tells part of the story.
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Convict Leasing
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For much of the twentieth century, convicts worked on Virginia’s roads. This practice grew out of the convict lease...
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Craddock-Terry Records Walk on Over to the Museum
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The Craddock-Terry Shoe Company, once the largest employer in Lynchburg, produced lines of boots and shoes which were...
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Diaries
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Do you remember the first time you swam in the ocean? What about the first movie you watched? Moments like those and...
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Diderot's Encyclopédie
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Housed within the library collections of the museum is a complete thirty-five volume set of Diderot's Encyclopédie.
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Dolley Madison
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Dolley (Payne) Todd Madison (1768–1849) lived through three wars, knew eleven presidents, and was a gracious and...
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Education in Virginia
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The Virginia Constitution of 1869, passed during Reconstruction, established a statewide system of free public schools...
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Elizabeth Keckley
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Born a slave in Dinwiddie County, Elizabeth Hobbs Keckley (1818–1907) purchased her freedom in 1855 and supported...
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Ella Fitzgerald's False Eyelashes
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Legendary singer and Virginia native Ella Fitzgerald, dubbed “The First Lady of Song,” exhilarated audiences with her...
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Ellen Glasgow’s Broken Heart
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Valentine’s Day cards and the celebrations around the holiday began to escalate during the early twentieth century.
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Equal Suffrage League of Virginia
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Learn about how the Equal Suffrage League of Virginia helped women gain the right to vote.
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Flag Day
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Although it is not a national holiday, in 1916 President Woodrow Wilson issued a proclamation that officially...
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For the Love of Beauty: The Collections of Lora and Claiborne Robins
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Explore nineteenth-century Hudson River School landscape paintings and colonial furniture collected by philanthropists...
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Founding Frenemies: Hamilton and The Virginians
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This exhibition examined how critically important relationships between Alexander Hamilton and three Virginians shaped...
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Fraud! Controversy! And neat properties in Virginia: Things you never knew about title insurance
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Did you know that title insurance is almost exclusively an American business? In most industrialized countries...
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George Washington Portrait by Charles Peale Polk
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This depiction of George Washington (1732–1799) as commander of the Continental army was painted in the 1790s by Charles...
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George Washington's Farewell Address
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George Washington’s Farewell Address to the people of the United States appeared in newspapers across the nation; then...
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Glee Clubs
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The VMHC has several glee club items in its collection. The earliest item, an 1848 broadside entitled “Rally Whigs”...
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Henkel Press
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In 1806, two young men, Ambrose Henkel and his brother Solomon, started one of the first German language presses in the...
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Industrialization in Virginia
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The 1920 census revealed that, for the first time, more Americans were living in urban areas than rural ones. However...