The more history I do, the more amused I am by Ambrose Bierce’s The Devil’s Dictionary. Originally published as The Cynic’s Word Book in 1906,…
Kenneth ForestMay 5, 2025
"He is a woman!” The voices of James McLaughlin, Jesse Barnes, and R.J Hardy rang out on March 21, 1902 in Ettrick, Virginia.1 Close friends…
Casey ClaubergApril 2, 2025
In October 1981, many Virginian cities along the James River opened their taps to find water with a “rusty, swampy, generally unpleasant odor.”1 After closing…
Jessi BennettFebruary 3, 2025
Virginia Chronicle, the Library of Virginia’s freely accessible database of historic newspapers, has surpassed the 4.5-million-page mark with new additions spanning over 250 years now…
Kelley EwingJanuary 6, 2025
Editor's Note: This blog came about as staff members explored some of the old gift catalogs in our collection. We know that during the holiday…
Cara GriggsDecember 23, 2024
Whether an exactly true account or not, the above dispatch from Boston reported in the Richmond Enquirer is just one small example of the extensive…
Errol SomayNovember 22, 2024
Sites like Chronicling America, the Library of Congress’s database of over 20,000,000 digitized newspaper pages, and Virginia Chronicle, the Library of Virginia’s digital newspaper database,…
Kelley EwingSeptember 18, 2024
In February 1909, an unusual death notice appeared in a monthly magazine. Thirty-six-year-old Elizabeth Neely Warrington of Norfolk, Virginia, had died a few months earlier,…
Rebecca SchneiderAugust 19, 2024
Several new newspapers were added to Virginia Chronicle in May, bringing the newspaper page count to over 4.3 million! Recent additions include community weeklies, additional…
Kelley EwingJuly 31, 2024
I was fortunate enough to be able to visit family living in the path of totality for the solar eclipse on April 8. The day…
Nathan VerillaJune 3, 2024
When I began processing a portion of the Richmond City Chancery Causes, I did not know the name “Gilbert Hunt.” I had not known about…
Jennifer TaylorMay 15, 2024
As soon as English colonizers established themselves in Virginia, one of their main concerns was the education of Indigenous people. The education implemented by the…
Ashley CraigApril 17, 2024
Earlier this year, several new titles were added to Virginia Chronicle, the Library of Virginia’s digital newspaper database. Among the latest additions are the earliest…
Kelley EwingApril 15, 2024
Archivists recently discovered a previously unknown photograph in some unprocessed Civil War-era state government records. The records concerned President Abraham Lincoln’s April 1865 visit to…
Library of VirginiaApril 1, 2024
