The search results below contain listings from our website. To search our library and museum collections catalogs, please visit the Collections page.
Article
A Beardless Boy of Seventeen Years
Image
![](/sites/default/files/styles/fp_landscape_768x576/public/BeardlessBoy_burial-of-latane-blog-copy.jpeg.webp?itok=8TLjolKr)
Even before Aristophanes wrote of Lysistrata’s plan to end the Peloponnesian War (431–404 BCE) by convincing the women...
Article
A House Built of Virginia Stone
Image
![A House Built of Virginia Stone Photograph of the Government Island Quarry](/sites/default/files/styles/fp_landscape_768x576/public/AHouseBuiltOfVirginiaStone_Government%20Island%20Quarry.jpeg.webp?itok=aheORpaA)
Approximately forty miles south of Washington, D.C., the Aquia sandstone quarry on Government Island sits quietly in the...
Article
A Spoon That Got Around...
Image
![Silver Tablespoon with Custis Crest A silver spoon propped on a plastic block](/sites/default/files/styles/fp_landscape_768x576/public/Spoon_2005.235.A-B_A_v1.jpg.webp?itok=y49Hm9he)
This silver serving spoon, labeled as “A Spoon That Got Around," was on view in The Story of Virginia exhibition in the...
Article
Advice and Etiquette Books
Image
![BJ1838.O8.Cover_.jpg BJ1838.O8.Cover_.jpg](/sites/default/files/styles/fp_landscape_768x576/public/BJ1838.O8.Cover_.jpg.webp?itok=z6Xl4K7b)
Studying etiquette books offers researchers a glimpse of how people interacted and how they adapted to their changing...
Article
Audubon's The Birds of America
Image
![](/sites/default/files/styles/fp_landscape_768x576/public/Audubon_2013-9-18-audubon_05e.jpg.webp?itok=S9aL5mJj)
In the VMHC collections are several rare editions of his work, including a first edition of Viviparous Quadrupeds and...
Article
Audubon's Viviparous Quadrapeds
Image
![QL715.A916.1845.RareFolio.Deer_.jpg QL715.A916.1845.RareFolio.Deer_.jpg](/sites/default/files/styles/fp_landscape_768x576/public/QL715.A916.1845.RareFolio.Deer_.jpg.webp?itok=TlOTK0Dk)
Following the success of his Birds of America, John James Audubon began to gather material for an equally ambitious...
Article
Children's Manuscripts
Image
![VHE_Children_gilkersondiary.jpg VHE_Children_gilkersondiary.jpg](/sites/default/files/styles/fp_landscape_768x576/public/VHE_Children_gilkersondiary.jpg.webp?itok=3R1VyWG8)
Prominent Virginians are well represented in the many manuscripts housed at the VMHC. However, documents by individuals...
Article
Clarise Sears Ramsey
Image
![](/sites/default/files/styles/fp_landscape_768x576/public/Plantation_clarisesearsramsey-1992-117-10_0.jpeg.webp?itok=939GFhww)
Charlotte Clarise Sears Risley Harrold Ramsey (1867–1922), whose parents were Joseph Henry Risley and Mary Elizabeth...
Article
Colonial Cookbooks
Image
![TX705.F5.1750.Rare_frontispiece.jpg TX705.F5.1750.Rare_frontispiece.jpg](/sites/default/files/styles/fp_landscape_768x576/public/TX705.F5.1750.Rare_frontispiece.jpg.webp?itok=I6BVm633)
Food and dining were integral to social life in the eighteenth century, particularly among the upper class. The gentry...
Article
Diary of William Gwathmey, 1859
Image
![](/sites/default/files/styles/fp_landscape_768x576/public/Abolitionists_mss1-g9957c-fa2_diary_1859-12-2.jpeg.webp?itok=O_SBeMh0)
On October 16, 1859, John Brown led eighteen followers in a raid on the federal arsenal and armory at Harpers Ferry...
Article
Fore-edge Painting
Image
![The poems of Winthrop Mackworth Praed / with a memoir by the Rev. Derwent Coleridge. Pages ruffled farther apart show a painted landscape and city](/sites/default/files/styles/fp_landscape_768x576/public/Foreedge%20Painting_Rare%20Books%20ND%202370%20.P8_v1_DSC3145_0.jpg.webp?itok=ARBwm3xq)
Rarely are books prized as objects of art; often the content of the text, or the plates accompanying the text, are...
Article
Glee Clubs
Image
![](/sites/default/files/styles/fp_landscape_768x576/public/Gleek_broadside-1848-19-rallywhigs.jpeg.webp?itok=YPtAkXdH)
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
![](/sites/default/files/styles/fp_landscape_768x576/public/James%20Jones_2010.0074_v1.jpg.webp?itok=d7JK34dK)
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
Jefferson’s Desk
Image
![Jefferson's Writing Desk A rectangular wooden desk, with writing surface propped at an angle and drawer opened](/sites/default/files/styles/fp_landscape_768x576/public/Desk.1956.1_Open_SLIDE.jpg.webp?itok=TN1yHIPN)
There are many reproductions of the desk on which Thomas Jefferson wrote the Declaration of Independence. Some have even...
Article
Love and War
Image
![](/sites/default/files/styles/fp_landscape_768x576/public/LoveAndWar_mss1-n3381a34_front.jpeg.webp?itok=1qwfgOv_)
Though it has torn many asunder, war has also brought people together.
Article
Murals Inspired by the Story of Virginia
Image
![Still Relevant by Ed Trask Ed Trask paints a mural of flowers](/sites/default/files/styles/fp_landscape_768x576/public/FreshPaint_StillRelevant_DSC0887_e1%20copy.jpg.webp?itok=vx9S_GnP)
Richmond is now home to more than 100 outdoor murals, and this popular form of artwork reflects the city’s modernity and...
Article
On Dueling
Image
![](/sites/default/files/styles/fp_landscape_768x576/public/Dueling_duelpleasantsritchie-2001-230-17311.jpeg.webp?itok=4k3CvTib)
In the United States and elsewhere, traditional and patriarchal conceptions of honor prescribed that men could respond...
Article
Opiate Addiction in the Civil War's Aftermath
Image
![Opiate Addiction in the Civil War's Aftermath Stereocard,“Hospital at Fredericksburg, Va., May, 1864”](/sites/default/files/styles/fp_landscape_768x576/public/OpiateAddictionintheCivilWar_HospitalFredericksburg.2002.460.123.jpeg.webp?itok=nnwIOLLE)
In the Civil War’s wake, thousands of veterans became addicted to morphine and opium, medicines used to treat painful...
Article
Oysters in Virginia
Image
![VHE_Oysters_OysterCan_Teaser.jpg VHE_Oysters_OysterCan_Teaser.jpg](/sites/default/files/styles/fp_landscape_768x576/public/VHE_Oysters_OysterCan_Teaser.jpg.webp?itok=2BC7sR7V)
Learn about the history of oyster in Virginia's food culture, tourism, and economy.
Article
Robert E. Lee after the War
Image
![RELLastPhoto_sm.jpg RELLastPhoto_sm.jpg](/sites/default/files/styles/fp_landscape_768x576/public/RELLastPhoto_sm.jpg.webp?itok=ZoeXnpSH)
After the Civil War, Robert E. Lee left his life in the military and accepted the position of president of Washington...