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"That part of America, now called Virginia"
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![Map.F221.1590.1.jpg Map.F221.1590.1.jpg](/sites/default/files/styles/fp_landscape_768x576/public/Map.F221.1590.1.jpg.webp?itok=BG-CLSSJ)
In 1590, John White published the first separate map of “Virginia” and the first printed record of Sir Walter Raleigh’s...
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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 Ninety Day War?
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![A Ninety Day War Forage Cap, Sash, and Spurs of Lt. Col. Noah Farnham](/sites/default/files/styles/fp_landscape_768x576/public/ANinetyDayWar_VHE_ATP_farnhamitems.jpeg.webp?itok=PCdovM8J)
The small United States Army could be enlarged quickly only by appealing to the states to activate local militia troops...
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A Spoon That Got Around...
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![Silver Tablespoon with Custis Crest A silver spoon propped on a plastic block](/sites/default/files/styles/fp_landscape_768x576/public/Spoon_2005.235.A-B_A_v1.jpg.webp?itok=y49Hm9he)
This silver serving spoon, labeled as “A Spoon That Got Around," was on view in The Story of Virginia exhibition 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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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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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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Camp Greble: A Union encampment near Norfolk, Virginia
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This poignant, detailed plan was drafted in February 1862 by Private Frank Maynicke of the 99th New York State...
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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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Confederate Imprints
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![CI.4066.003.jpg CI.4066.003.jpg](/sites/default/files/styles/fp_landscape_768x576/public/CI.4066.003.jpg.webp?itok=6qzZYucL)
Before secession, most of the established publishers of booking, broadsides, and sheet music were located in such large...
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Confederate Love Poems
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![Mss2-F2462-b-14-(CMLS)-_1 CROP.jpg Mss2-F2462-b-14-(CMLS)-_1 CROP.jpg](/sites/default/files/styles/fp_landscape_768x576/public/Mss2-F2462-b-14-%28CMLS%29-_1%20CROP.jpg.webp?itok=jHqndxP8)
The most prominent Civil War poetry is poetry of the battlefield.
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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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How Did Civilians Suffer?
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![How Did Civilians Suffer? A drawing of the flight of the refugees](/sites/default/files/styles/fp_landscape_768x576/public/HowDidCiviliansSuffer_VHE_ATP_FamilyofVirginians.2000.165.3.jpeg.webp?itok=SDtHN186)
White women and children were left to fend for themselves, and many became widows and orphans when one in five...
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How Did Enslaved People Support the Confederacy?
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![How Did Slaves Support the Confederacy? The Burial of Latane by A.G. Campbell](/sites/default/files/styles/fp_landscape_768x576/public/HowDidSlavesSupportTheConfederacy_VHE_ATP_BurialofLatane.2010.1.jpeg.webp?itok=_ImXE1TN)
Enslaved and free black people provided even more labor than usual for Virginia farms when 89 percent of eligible white...
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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...
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Juneteenth
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![Juneteenth Flag Juneteenth Flag](/sites/default/files/styles/fp_landscape_768x576/public/PopCiv_Juneteenth_Flag.png.webp?itok=zFWtlf45)
Pop Civ is a series developed by the John Marshall Center for Constitutional History & Civics at the VMHC. By connecting...
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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...
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Liberated Books
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![VB360.A2.1826.Rare_.TitlePage.jpg VB360.A2.1826.Rare_.TitlePage.jpg](/sites/default/files/styles/fp_landscape_768x576/public/VB360.A2.1826.Rare_.TitlePage.jpg.webp?itok=m_z7X3le)
During the Civil War, looting by soldiers was a common practice. The hungry soldier usually confiscated food and...