The search results below contain listings from our website. To search our library and museum collections catalogs, please visit the Collections page.
Article
A Beardless Boy of Seventeen Years
Image
Even before Aristophanes wrote of Lysistrata’s plan to end the Peloponnesian War (431–404 BCE) by convincing the women...
Article
Advice and Etiquette Books
Image
Studying etiquette books offers researchers a glimpse of how people interacted and how they adapted to their changing...
Article
Audubon's Viviparous Quadrapeds
Image
Following the success of his Birds of America, John James Audubon began to gather material for an equally ambitious...
Article
Children's Manuscripts
Image
Prominent Virginians are well represented in the many manuscripts housed at the VMHC. However, documents by individuals...
Article
Clarise Sears Ramsey
Image
Charlotte Clarise Sears Risley Harrold Ramsey (1867–1922), whose parents were Joseph Henry Risley and Mary Elizabeth...
Article
Diary of William Gwathmey, 1859
Image
On October 16, 1859, John Brown led eighteen followers in a raid on the federal arsenal and armory at Harpers Ferry...
Article
Glee Clubs
Image
The VMHC has several glee club items in its collection. The earliest item, an 1848 broadside entitled “Rally Whigs”...
Article
James Jones Archive (1870s-1960s)
Image
With a coat of faded red paint and a crude hand-forged hasp to secure its lid, the simple pine chest – once used to...
Article
Jefferson’s Desk
Image
There are many reproductions of the desk on which Thomas Jefferson wrote the Declaration of Independence. Some have even...
Article
Love and War
Image
Though it has torn many asunder, war has also brought people together.
Article
Murals Inspired by the Story of Virginia
Image
Richmond is now home to more than 100 outdoor murals, and this popular form of artwork reflects the city’s modernity and...
Article
Offense or Defense?
Image
To win the war, United States troops needed to invade and control an unfriendly South and subdue Confederate armies.
Article
On Dueling
Image
In the United States and elsewhere, traditional and patriarchal conceptions of honor prescribed that men could respond...
Article
Opiate Addiction in the Civil War's Aftermath
Image
In the Civil War’s wake, thousands of veterans became addicted to morphine and opium, medicines used to treat painful...
Article
Oysters in Virginia
Image
Learn about the history of oyster in Virginia's food culture, tourism, and economy.
Article
Robert E. Lee after the War
Image
After the Civil War, Robert E. Lee left his life in the military and accepted the position of president of Washington...
Article
Scandal in Virginia
Image
The salacious love life of Warren Seymour Lurty, now memorialized in boxes and boxes of letters, proves to us that...
Article
Shaving Kits
Image
Before the invention of the disposable double-edged safety razor in 1895, a straight razor was the easiest, most...
Article
The Brook Hill Collection
Image
In 2018, the VMHC was gifted an extraordinary collection of books, documents, and art associated with the Stewart and...
Article
The First Modern War?
Image
The technology of the industrial revolution applied to the science of killing made the Civil War a turning point between...