Browse Items (222 total)

In October 1859, abolitionist John Brown and a small group of white and Black men slipped across the border between Maryland and Virginia (now West Virginia) with a plan to occupy the federal arsenal, armory, and rifle factory at Harper's Ferry.…

Founded in 1909, Virginia's Equal Suffrage League sought support for the vote in many ways. Members lobbied legislators, gave public speeches, and published editorial letters, broadsides, and pamphlets. They advanced many arguments about why women…

Benjamin Henry Latrobe (1764–1820) was born in England, where he worked for an engineer and an architect before immigrating to the United States. He became one of the young nation's most significant architects and designed the U.S. Capitol. While…

As women participated in the movement to abolish slavery during the first half of the 19th century, some of them also began to advocate for women's rights. In July 1848, a group of women and men held a convention in Seneca Falls, New York. They…

With the end of the Civil War came the end of slavery in the American South. The Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution, ratified on December 9, 1865, officially outlawed slavery. Racial hostilities towards formerly enslaved men and…

Illustrated periodicals like Harper's Weekly were popular with Americans in the middle of the 19th century. After southern states formed the Confederate States of America, residents there could not easily receive newspapers and magazines printed in…

In the 1930s, the Virginia State Commission on Conservation and Development’s Division of History and Archaeology received funds from the Works Progress Administration’s (later known as the Work Projects Administration) Federal Art Project to…

Lynchburg native Desmond T. Doss (1919–2006) was the first conscientious objector to receive the Congressional Medal of Honor. A conscientious objector is one who is opposed to serving in the armed forces and/or bearing arms on the grounds of moral…

Harry Flood Byrd (1887–1966) served as state senator from 1915 to 1926, governor from 1926 to 1930, and as a United States Senator from 1933 to 1965. Byrd hailed from Winchester, Virginia, and came from a prominent and politically connected family.…

Hopewell, Virginia, was like many small towns in the south that benefited financially from outside industrial development early in the 20th century. At the outbreak of World War I in 1914, the E.I. DuPont de Nemours Company began producing guncotton…