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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Approximately forty miles south of Washington, D.C., the Aquia sandstone quarry on Government Island sits quietly in the...
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A Spoon That Got Around...
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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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Advice and Etiquette Books
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Studying etiquette books offers researchers a glimpse of how people interacted and how they adapted to their changing...
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Ambler and the Jeannette
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On July 8, 1879, the steamer the Jeannette set sail. It's goal: to be the first expedition to reach the North Pole.
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Arthur Ashe Jr.’s Family Tree: Tracing the Blackwell Family to 1735
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See a rare family tree, drawn by hand on canvas, tracing Arthur Ashe, Jr.’s family.
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Booker T. Washington
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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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Care Beyond National and Color Lines: Filipino Nurses in Virginia Across the 20th Century
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As of Winter 2021, Virginia remains among the top ten states for largest Filipino American populations, and by no...
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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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Colored Knights of Pythias Helmet (c. 1890)
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Race has been a divisive issue throughout American history, and this impressive helmet tells part of the story.
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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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Diderot's Encyclopédie
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Housed within the library collections of the museum is a complete thirty-five volume set of Diderot's Encyclopédie.
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Education in Virginia
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The Virginia Constitution of 1869, passed during Reconstruction, established a statewide system of free public schools...
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Elizabeth Keckley
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Born a slave in Dinwiddie County, Elizabeth Hobbs Keckley (1818–1907) purchased her freedom in 1855 and supported...
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Ella Fitzgerald's False Eyelashes
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Legendary singer and Virginia native Ella Fitzgerald, dubbed “The First Lady of Song,” exhilarated audiences with her...
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Equal Suffrage League of Virginia
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Learn about how the Equal Suffrage League of Virginia helped women gain the right to vote.
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For the Love of Beauty: The Collections of Lora and Claiborne Robins
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Explore nineteenth-century Hudson River School landscape paintings and colonial furniture collected by philanthropists...
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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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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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Jacob L. "JL" Morewitz
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Jacob L. “JL” Morewitz was born in Baltimore, Maryland, in 1896 but raised in Norfolk, Virginia. In 1916, at the age of...