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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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Ellen Glasgow’s Broken Heart
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Valentine’s Day cards and the celebrations around the holiday began to escalate during the early twentieth century.
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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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Fore-edge Painting
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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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Fraud! Controversy! And neat properties in Virginia: Things you never knew about title insurance
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Did you know that title insurance is almost exclusively an American business? In most industrialized countries...
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From Horse-Driven to Gas-Fueled Transportation
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This gravity-flow pump (c. 1927), used near Petersburg, Virginia, is evidence of the state’s transition from horse...
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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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Grace Sherwood: The "Witch of Pungo"
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On July 10, 1706, a forty-six-year-old Princess Anne County woman named Grace Sherwood faced an unusual legal procedure...
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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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How Did Civilians Suffer?
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White women and children were left to fend for themselves, and many became widows and orphans when one in five...
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Industrialization in Virginia
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The 1920 census revealed that, for the first time, more Americans were living in urban areas than rural ones. However...
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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...
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John Carter of Mars
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Edgar Rice Burroughs (1875–1950), best known as the creator of the Tarzan books, also wrote a popular science fiction...
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John Marshall Speculates on America’s Second Bank
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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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John Randolph Dueling Pistols (c. 1820)
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The death of former Treasury Secretary Alexander Hamilton — resulting from his famous 1804 duel with Vice President...
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Lane Cedar Chest
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Few Virginia-manufactured items were as well known as the Lane Cedar Chest. When the Lane Company closed its Altavista...
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Larus & Brother Advertisements
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In 1877 a partnership between Charles D. Larus and Herbert C. Larus formed the Larus & Brother Company. This small...
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Letterhead
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Correspondence between individuals plays an important role in our understanding not only of how people communicated in...
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Life Portrait of Pocahontas
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The only life portrait of Pocahontas (1595–1617) and the only credible image of her, was engraved by Simon Van de Passe...