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 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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Advice and Etiquette Books
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![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...
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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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Bookplates
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![Bookplate.2012.1.5.jpg Bookplate.2012.1.5.jpg](/sites/default/files/styles/fp_landscape_768x576/public/Bookplate.2012.1.5.jpg.webp?itok=W4-zqjnX)
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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Diderot's Encyclopédie
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![AE25.E53.Rare_.OS_.vol22.pl1_.Anatomie.jpg AE25.E53.Rare_.OS_.vol22.pl1_.Anatomie.jpg](/sites/default/files/styles/fp_landscape_768x576/public/AE25.E53.Rare_.OS_.vol22.pl1_.Anatomie.jpg.webp?itok=t1zhWSPF)
Housed within the library collections of the museum is a complete thirty-five volume set of Diderot's Encyclopédie.
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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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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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George Washington, Land Surveyor
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![Survey for Richard Barnes for a tract of 400 acres in Culpeper County, George Washington, 1749 Survey for Richard Barnes for a tract of 400 acres in Culpeper County, George Washington, 1749](/sites/default/files/styles/fp_landscape_768x576/public/Mss1.St824a1.GWPlat.jpg.webp?itok=PRfdFkGi)
George Washington’s surveying work spanned fifty years and enabled him to acquire vast tracts of land.
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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...
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Industrialization in Virginia
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![TWP_Industrialization_TomsCreek.2000.186.343.jpg TWP_Industrialization_TomsCreek.2000.186.343.jpg](/sites/default/files/styles/fp_landscape_768x576/public/TWP_Industrialization_TomsCreek.2000.186.343.jpg.webp?itok=DDx6K4cG)
The 1920 census revealed that, for the first time, more Americans were living in urban areas than rural ones. However...
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Jefferson’s Desk
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![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...
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John Marshall Speculates on America’s Second Bank
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![John Marshall letters Two sepia toned handwritten letter pages](/sites/default/files/styles/fp_landscape_768x576/public/John%20Marshall%20letter%20to%20son%20about%20bank.JPG.webp?itok=mi5rOD9Q)
A question on the minds of politicians and voters in 1832 America was whether the Second Bank of the United States, the...
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Let Us Commence: Graduating At A Distance
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![Let Us Commence: Graduating At A Distance Samantha Hukeless’s diploma from Van de Vyver Institute.](/sites/default/files/styles/fp_landscape_768x576/public/LetUsCommence_Screen%20Shot%202020-05-19%20at%2012.53.58%20PM.jpeg.webp?itok=MbIdG0xM)
Learn about the history of commencement ceremonies and traditions in Virginia.
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Letterhead
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![Letterhead engraving, c. 1860, of Richmond, Va., by Louis A. Ramm Letterhead engraving, c. 1860, of Richmond, Va., by Louis A. Ramm](/sites/default/files/styles/fp_landscape_768x576/public/VHE_Letterhead_Mss1.R7243a29.jpg.webp?itok=t1eWtOzZ)
Correspondence between individuals plays an important role in our understanding not only of how people communicated in...