The search results below contain listings from our website. To search our library and museum collections catalogs, please visit the Collections page.
Time Period
16,000 BCE to 1622 CE
Image
![indian.jpg indian.jpg](/sites/default/files/styles/fp_landscape_768x576/public/indian.jpg.webp?itok=v1SkiRCq)
At the time of the great northern glaciers, Native Americans followed the game they hunted to Virginia. Ten thousand years later, as the cold of the Ice Age gave way to a warmer, drier climate, they relied also on foraging and farming. After about 900 CE they settled into villages that united into chiefdoms. In 1607, in pursuit of opportunity in a new world, English settlers intruded into an eastern Virginia chiefdom of thirty-two tribes (15,000 to 20,000 people). Its leader then was Wahunsenacawh, whom the new settlers called by his title, Powhatan.
Time Period
1623 to 1763
Image
![byrd.jpg byrd.jpg](/sites/default/files/styles/fp_landscape_768x576/public/byrd.jpg.webp?itok=tpaDoOLl)
The colony prospered. Tobacco—grown by indentured servants and enslaved Africans—sustained the economy. The first popularly elected legislative body in the New World was established. Following the failed Indian uprising in 1622 and on orders from London, the native peoples were “removed” and reduced in number to 3,000 by a “War of Extermination.” During the next hundred years, the remainder of Virginia’s population expanded a hundred fold. Social inequalities, however, and frontier conflicts with the French and with Indians made this distant dominion increasingly difficult to govern from London.
Time Period
1764 to 1824
Image
![StJohnsChurchBell.1900.5.jpg StJohnsChurchBell.1900.5.jpg](/sites/default/files/styles/fp_landscape_768x576/public/StJohnsChurchBell.1900.5.jpg.webp?itok=ijgmT4eZ)
British taxation—introduced to pay for a British military presence in America—was unexpected by the Virginia gentry and resented. Those Americans began to view British policy as a plot against their liberty. They played leading roles in the Continental Congresses that debated independence, in the fighting of the American Revolution, and in the conception and implementation of a new government. Virginia also provided four of the new nation’s first five presidents. Virginia leaders advocated equality for all but they never considered extending it to women and African Americans.
Time Period
1877 to 1924
Image
![Streetcar4.jpg Streetcar4.jpg](/sites/default/files/styles/fp_landscape_768x576/public/Streetcar4.jpg.webp?itok=xsMvxMYv)
After the Civil War, Virginia remained largely rural, but Virginians embraced economic development and the new technologies that were revolutionizing everyday life. At the same time, however, they resisted political and social change––especially racial and gender equality. Living standards improved and income rose, but the political system became less democratic and society was rigidly segregated by race. “The New South” brought economic renewal but little reform. The Virginia legislature rejected a woman’s right to vote in 1919, and it passed a regressive Racial Integrity Act in 1924.
Exhibition
A Better Life for Their Children
Image
![Elroy & Sophia Williams – Sophia Williams’s Grandparents, Former Slaves, Acquired and Donated Land for a Rosenwald School. Photo by Andrew Feiler. Two people hold an ornately frame painted portrait of two people in early 1900s dress](/sites/default/files/styles/fp_landscape_768x576/public/19%20Elroy%20%26%20Sophia%20Williams%20%E2%80%93%20Sophia%20Williams%E2%80%99s%20Grandparents%2C%20Former%20Slaves%2C%20Acquired%20and%20Donated%20Land%20for%20a%20Rosenwald%20School.jpg.webp?itok=njqvitgO)
From 1912-37, the Rosenwald schools program built thousands of schools, shops, and teacher’s homes across 15 Southern...
Exhibition
Agents of Change
Image
![AgentsofChange_HeaderImage.jpg AgentsofChange_HeaderImage.jpg](/sites/default/files/styles/fp_landscape_768x576/public/AgentsofChange_HeaderImage.jpg.webp?itok=g-ZiTR3t)
Organized in conjunction with the statewide Women’s Suffrage Centennial, this exhibition featured artifacts from the...
Exhibition
Determined
Image
![Two Black students protest school closures in Farmville, Virginia Two Black female students protesting school closures by marching with posters](/sites/default/files/styles/fp_landscape_768x576/public/Farmville%2BProtest%20%28002%29_1920x1440.jpg.webp?itok=4gqp-b6Y)
This exhibition examined the long history of black Americans in North America as they have fought for freedom, equal...
Article Set - Intro
Early Images of Virginia Indians: The William W. Cole Collection
Image
![VHE_EarlyImagesAmericanIndians_townofPomeiocc_teaser.jpg VHE_EarlyImagesAmericanIndians_townofPomeiocc_teaser.jpg](/sites/default/files/styles/fp_landscape_768x576/public/VHE_EarlyImagesAmericanIndians_townofPomeiocc_teaser.jpg.webp?itok=OngB_uMv)
Explore engravings and illustration of early Virginia Indians.
Article Set - Intro
Eye of the Storm: The Civil War Drawings of Robert Knox Sneden
Image
![VHE_Sneden_teaser.jpg VHE_Sneden_teaser.jpg](/sites/default/files/styles/fp_landscape_768x576/public/VHE_Sneden_teaser.jpg.webp?itok=m_EaTwQ0)
Through his 5,000-page personal memoir, Robert Knox Sneden takes us to the front lines of the Civil War.
Exhibition
Founding Frenemies
Image
![Exhibition display from Founding Frenemies Manuscripts and a feather pen on a table with an exhibit label showing a Twitter post](/sites/default/files/styles/fp_landscape_768x576/public/768x576-Founding-Frenemies-Preview_013.jpg.webp?itok=y29yaWri)
This exhibition explored Alexander Hamilton’s relationships with the founding generation of Virginians through rare...
Article Set - Intro
Getting the Message Out: Presidential Campaign Memorabilia from the Collection of Allen A. Frey
Image
![](/sites/default/files/styles/fp_landscape_768x576/public/VHE_Campaigns_IL.2012.2.22.2%20%281%29.jpg.webp?itok=1zNZICUe)
Buttons and banners, ribbons and posters, coffee mugs and whiskey flasks, match books and mouse pads. For nearly 200 years, presidential candidates and their supporters have used almost every means available to attract votes.
Article Set - Intro
Great things are expected from the Virginians
Image
![Chilton map.jpg Chilton map.jpg](/sites/default/files/styles/fp_landscape_768x576/public/Chilton%20map.jpg.webp?itok=jhMYU_dJ)
Capt. John Chilton of the 3rd Virginia Infantry described his experiences in New York and New Jersey in 1776–77 in letters home to family and friends. Located in the society's manuscripts collection, Chilton's letters offer a fascinating glimpse of one Virginian's thoughts and experiences during a pivotal time in the Revolutionary War.
Exhibition
Inside Looking Out
Image
![Event-BTS-Stovall-teaser.jpg Event-BTS-Stovall-teaser.jpg](/sites/default/files/styles/fp_landscape_768x576/public/Event-BTS-Stovall-teaser.jpg.webp?itok=x5x6a5CW)
The first exhibition of its kind in that it displays nearly all of artist Queena Stovall’s work in one place, this...
Exhibition
John Marshall
Image
![Portrait of John Marshall Portrait of John Marshall - Marshall has grey hair, glasses positioned on top of his head and wears a black jacket with white necktie](/sites/default/files/styles/fp_landscape_768x576/public/JohnMarshall.1988.8_2_1920x1440.jpg.webp?itok=OLR-MU5t)
Highlighting objects like his Law Commonplace Notebook, spectacles and inkwell, writing desk, and even his hair, this...
Article Set - Intro
Lee and Grant
Image
![0.25 LetUsHavePEace_Grant_Lee.jpg 0.25 LetUsHavePEace_Grant_Lee.jpg](/sites/default/files/styles/fp_landscape_768x576/public/0.25%20LetUsHavePEace_Grant_Lee.jpg.webp?itok=xTzdH4gk)
By the end of the Civil War, most Americans considered either Robert E. Lee or Ulysses S. Grant to be a hero. The time has come for a reassessment of these two men, on whom fell the greatest responsibility for the survival or disintegration of the United States.
Exhibition
Mending Walls RVA
Image
![Mending Walls RVA logo.jpg Mending Walls RVA logo.jpg](/sites/default/files/styles/fp_landscape_768x576/public/Mending%20Walls%20RVA%20logo.jpg.webp?itok=LXP9_lQ1)
This pop-up exhibition and community collaboration featured a diverse group of artists creating public artwork as a tool...
Exhibition
Oh, Shenandoah
Image
![Long Branch Plantation, Clarke County Long Branch Plantation, Clarke County](/sites/default/files/styles/fp_landscape_768x576/public/3-Long-Branch-Plantation-Clarke-County-Millwood_Web.jpg.webp?itok=U-h11ed6)
Exhibition
The Commonwealth and the Great War
Image
![WWI tanks Black & White photo of a row of tanks in front of a building circa 1912-1914](/sites/default/files/styles/fp_landscape_768x576/public/2001.230.1912-1914_1914_v1_1920x1440.jpg.webp?itok=2JmcFkDT)
This exhibition explored the role Virginians played in World War I and highlighted the stories of individual Virginians...
Article Set - Intro
Virginia's Colonial Dynasties
Image
![VHE_Dynasties_MaryWillingByrd.1996.174.1.jpg VHE_Dynasties_MaryWillingByrd.1996.174.1.jpg](/sites/default/files/styles/fp_landscape_768x576/public/VHE_Dynasties_MaryWillingByrd.1996.174.1.jpg.webp?itok=azbFZvpP)
In the colonial period, portraiture proved to be a particularly useful tool in establishing and preserving family status. This exhibit presents twenty-four portraits from the Virginia Historical Society's collection. Early Virginia portraits reveal much about the families that commissioned them, as well as how these Virginians valued how they were perceived by others.