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A House Built of Virginia Stone
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![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...
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Arthur Ashe Jr.’s Family Tree: Tracing the Blackwell Family to 1735
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![VHE_BlackwellFamilyTree_AsheDetail.jpg VHE_BlackwellFamilyTree_AsheDetail.jpg](/sites/default/files/styles/fp_landscape_768x576/public/VHE_BlackwellFamilyTree_AsheDetail.jpg.webp?itok=L_TH1RBs)
See a rare family tree, drawn by hand on canvas, tracing Arthur Ashe, Jr.’s family.
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Booker T. Washington
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![VHE_BookerTWashington_teaser.jpg VHE_BookerTWashington_teaser.jpg](/sites/default/files/styles/fp_landscape_768x576/public/VHE_BookerTWashington_teaser.jpg.webp?itok=mUm-Rb3Q)
Booker T. Washington (1856–1915) was born enslaved on April 5, 1856, in Franklin County, Virginia. After emancipation...
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Christmas Cards
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![Mss1.W2296b.6645_6647.GoodWishes.jpg Mss1.W2296b.6645_6647.GoodWishes.jpg](/sites/default/files/styles/fp_landscape_768x576/public/Mss1.W2296b.6645_6647.GoodWishes.jpg.webp?itok=IJRLlSRZ)
Christmas cards are ephemeral, and this essence is the very reason they can be of interest to researchers. Scholars...
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Christmas in the Trenches
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Read excerpts from soldiers' letters home about their Christmas meals while stationed away from home.
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Clarise Sears Ramsey
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Charlotte Clarise Sears Risley Harrold Ramsey (1867–1922), whose parents were Joseph Henry Risley and Mary Elizabeth...
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Clementina Rind
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![Rind letter.jpg Rind letter.jpg](/sites/default/files/styles/fp_landscape_768x576/public/Rind%20letter.jpg.webp?itok=EZH_y0Zb)
Clementina Rind was Virginia’s first female printer and newspaper publisher, publishing important official documents for...
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Colonial Cookbooks
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![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...
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Colored Knights of Pythias Helmet (c. 1890)
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![Colored Knights of Pythias Helmet Colored Knights of Pythias Helmet.2013.67.A-B.jpg](/sites/default/files/styles/fp_landscape_768x576/public/Colored%20Knights%20of%20Pythias%20Helmet.2013.67.A-B.jpg.webp?itok=QwseuFor)
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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![](/sites/default/files/styles/fp_landscape_768x576/public/CreatedEqual_bo-blog-mss1-b3483a_combo.jpeg.webp?itok=qJW4RIo_)
For much of the twentieth century, convicts worked on Virginia’s roads. This practice grew out of the convict lease...
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Dolley Madison
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![VHE_DolleyMadison_teaser.jpg VHE_DolleyMadison_teaser.jpg](/sites/default/files/styles/fp_landscape_768x576/public/VHE_DolleyMadison_teaser.jpg.webp?itok=xaCfI-nH)
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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![VHE_Education_PossumHollowSchoolhouse.2001.230.308.jpg VHE_Education_PossumHollowSchoolhouse.2001.230.308.jpg](/sites/default/files/styles/fp_landscape_768x576/public/VHE_Education_PossumHollowSchoolhouse.2001.230.308.jpg.webp?itok=DO8SpKJr)
The Virginia Constitution of 1869, passed during Reconstruction, established a statewide system of free public schools...
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Elizabeth I
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![VHE_QueenElizabethI_Teaser.jpg VHE_QueenElizabethI_Teaser.jpg](/sites/default/files/styles/fp_landscape_768x576/public/VHE_QueenElizabethI_Teaser.jpg.webp?itok=iRmUMeIb)
Elizabeth I (1533–1603), queen of England, never married and was known as the virgin queen. The first English attempts...
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Elizabeth Keckley
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![Engraving of Elizabeth Keckley Engraving of Elizabeth Keckley](/sites/default/files/styles/fp_landscape_768x576/public/ElizabethKeckley_E457.15.K26.frontispiece_cropped_0_medium.jpg.webp?itok=OtJS2wQL)
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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![Ella Fitzgerald's Eyelashes](/sites/default/files/styles/fp_landscape_768x576/public/Ella%20Fitzgeralds%20Eyelashes_1997.82.3_v1.jpg.webp?itok=8WbRCt82)
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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![](/sites/default/files/styles/fp_landscape_768x576/public/Glasgow_ellenglasgow-1946-30.jpeg.webp?itok=t3uj_8R-)
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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![VHE_EqualSuffrageLeague_Broadside-1916-2_Teaser.jpg VHE_EqualSuffrageLeague_Broadside-1916-2_Teaser.jpg](/sites/default/files/styles/fp_landscape_768x576/public/VHE_EqualSuffrageLeague_Broadside-1916-2_Teaser.jpg.webp?itok=n8MNY1wY)
Learn about how the Equal Suffrage League of Virginia helped women gain the right to vote.
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Fore-edge Painting
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![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...
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Henkel Press
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![BV267.H4.1829.Rare_.jpg BV267.H4.1829.Rare_.jpg](/sites/default/files/styles/fp_landscape_768x576/public/BV267.H4.1829.Rare_.jpg.webp?itok=00xoBgRT)
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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James Jones Archive (1870s-1960s)
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With a coat of faded red paint and a crude hand-forged hasp to secure its lid, the simple pine chest – once used to...