The search results below contain listings from our website. To search our library and museum collections catalogs, please visit the Collections page.
Article
A House Built of Virginia Stone
Image
Approximately forty miles south of Washington, D.C., the Aquia sandstone quarry on Government Island sits quietly in the...
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
A Spoon That Got Around...
Image
This silver serving spoon, labeled as “A Spoon That Got Around," was on view in The Story of Virginia exhibition in the...
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
Audubon's The Birds of America
Image
In the VMHC collections are several rare editions of his work, including a first edition of Viviparous Quadrupeds and...
Article
Booker T. Washington
Image
Booker T. Washington (1856–1915) was born enslaved on April 5, 1856, in Franklin County, Virginia. After emancipation...
Article
Bookplates
Image
The use of bookplates is almost as old as printing itself. They were used to record ownership and to reassure the owner...
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
Colonial Cookbooks
Image
Food and dining were integral to social life in the eighteenth century, particularly among the upper class. The gentry...
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
Confederate Love Poems
Image
The most prominent Civil War poetry is poetry of the battlefield.
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
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
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”...