The search results below contain listings from our website. To search our library and museum collections catalogs, please visit the Collections page.
Article
Arming the Commonwealth
Image
From providing protection from enemy combatants to finding dinner for a family, weapons have played a significant role...
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
Christmas in the Trenches
Image
Read excerpts from soldiers' letters home about their Christmas meals while stationed away from home.
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
Dugout Canoe
Image
The dugout canoe was an Indian concept but one so well suited to the Virginia rivers that Europeans and Africans also...
Article
Education in Virginia
Image
The Virginia Constitution of 1869, passed during Reconstruction, established a statewide system of free public schools...
Article
Elizabeth I
Image
Elizabeth I (1533–1603), queen of England, never married and was known as the virgin queen. The first English attempts...
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
Ellen Glasgow’s Broken Heart
Image
Valentine’s Day cards and the celebrations around the holiday began to escalate during the early twentieth century.
Article
Equal Suffrage League of Virginia
Image
Learn about how the Equal Suffrage League of Virginia helped women gain the right to vote.
Article
Fore-edge Painting
Image
Rarely are books prized as objects of art; often the content of the text, or the plates accompanying the text, are...
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
Industrialization in Virginia
Image
The 1920 census revealed that, for the first time, more Americans were living in urban areas than rural ones. However...