The search results below contain listings from our website. To search our library and museum collections catalogs, please visit the Collections page.
Article
A Life Rediscovered: The Story of Emily Winfree
Image
Emily Winfree, an African American woman who lived through slavery, the Civil War, Reconstruction, and Jim Crow, never...
Article
Abolitionist Pitcher
Image
Learn about how this pitcher based on Uncle Tom's Cabin was used as propoganda in the mid-1800s.
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
Before We Went Underground and Wireless…
Image
Edwin Fisher Conger loved trees—especially chestnuts, those tall, majestic perennials from which he would eventually...
Article
Booker T. Washington
Image
Booker T. Washington (1856–1915) was born enslaved on April 5, 1856, in Franklin County, Virginia. After emancipation...
Article
Care Beyond National and Color Lines: Filipino Nurses in Virginia Across the 20th Century
Image
As of Winter 2021, Virginia remains among the top ten states for largest Filipino American populations, and by no...
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
Craddock-Terry Records Walk on Over to the Museum
Image
The Craddock-Terry Shoe Company, once the largest employer in Lynchburg, produced lines of boots and shoes which were...
Article
Dolley Madison
Image
Dolley (Payne) Todd Madison (1768–1849) lived through three wars, knew eleven presidents, and was a gracious and...
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
Fraud! Controversy! And neat properties in Virginia: Things you never knew about title insurance
Image
Did you know that title insurance is almost exclusively an American business? In most industrialized countries...
Article
Freedmen's Schools
Image
In the antebellum South, African Americans were generally prevented from receiving education. After Appomattox...
Article
Glee Clubs
Image
The VMHC has several glee club items in its collection. The earliest item, an 1848 broadside entitled “Rally Whigs”...
Article
Industrialization in Virginia
Image
The 1920 census revealed that, for the first time, more Americans were living in urban areas than rural ones. However...