The search results below contain listings from our website. To search our library and museum collections catalogs, please visit the Collections page.
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A Beardless Boy of Seventeen Years
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Even before Aristophanes wrote of Lysistrata’s plan to end the Peloponnesian War (431–404 BCE) by convincing the women...
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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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A Life Rediscovered: The Story of Emily Winfree
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![Emily Winfree An oval portrait in black and white of Emily Winfree](/sites/default/files/styles/fp_landscape_768x576/public/2.3.22_Emily-Winfree.jpg.webp?itok=1I7yBJlq)
Emily Winfree, an African American woman who lived through slavery, the Civil War, Reconstruction, and Jim Crow, never...
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Abolitionist Pitcher
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![VHE_UncleTomsCabin_Pitcher_teaser.jpg VHE_UncleTomsCabin_Pitcher_teaser.jpg](/sites/default/files/styles/fp_landscape_768x576/public/VHE_UncleTomsCabin_Pitcher_teaser.jpg.webp?itok=Di90YTDM)
Learn about how this pitcher based on Uncle Tom's Cabin was used as propoganda in the mid-1800s.
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Affidavit, 1693
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This affidavit informs the governor that Frank, a man of African descent enslaved by Henry Gibbs, has been jailed on...
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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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Audubon's The Birds of America
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In the VMHC collections are several rare editions of his work, including a first edition of Viviparous Quadrupeds and...
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Audubon's Viviparous Quadrapeds
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![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...
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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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Bookplates
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The use of bookplates is almost as old as printing itself. They were used to record ownership and to reassure the owner...
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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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Convict Leasing
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For much of the twentieth century, convicts worked on Virginia’s roads. This practice grew out of the convict lease...
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Double Take
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Daguerreotypes are the earliest form of permanent photographic imagery. They are made by capturing an image on a...
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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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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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Freedmen's Schools
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![VHE_Freedmen_Harpers Weekley cropped.jpg VHE_Freedmen_Harpers Weekley cropped.jpg](/sites/default/files/styles/fp_landscape_768x576/public/VHE_Freedmen_Harpers%20Weekley%20cropped.jpg.webp?itok=TmJCMsl0)
In the antebellum South, African Americans were generally prevented from receiving education. After Appomattox...
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Glee Clubs
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The VMHC has several glee club items in its collection. The earliest item, an 1848 broadside entitled “Rally Whigs”...
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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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Indian Tribes of North America
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![E77.M13.RareFolio.Keokuk.jpg E77.M13.RareFolio.Keokuk.jpg](/sites/default/files/styles/fp_landscape_768x576/public/E77.M13.RareFolio.Keokuk.jpg.webp?itok=0Y7v4Q5k)
In the museum's rare book collection, a remarkable compilation of images exists in History of the Indian Tribes of North...