Friday afternoon is here, and with it, EV’s weekly wrap-up. As you make your weekend plans, take a look at our favorite links from around the web this week: Is news coverage of the debt crisis giving you a headache? Yeah, me, too. But in this podcast, our friends at BackStory offer a clear, concise, and even [...]

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From a story on the Liljenquist Family Collection at the Library of Congress: The story starts 15 years ago in a Virginia park. The dad, Tom Liljenquist, has two boys in tow, about 5 and 3 years old, and the younger one plucks an object from the sandstone bed of a quiet creek. It’s a Civil [...]

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On this day in 1587, one of the soon-to-be lost colonists at Roanoke wondered aloud, “Hey, whatever happened to George?” One of Governor John White‘s top advisers, George Howe had wandered away from camp a few days after the English arrived and hadn’t been heard from since. Such circumstances generally didn’t bode well for the [...]

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Yesterday we posted our entry on William Strachey. If you’re not already familiar, Strachey was aboard the Sea Venture, a ship bound for Jamestown in 1609 that almost sank in a storm and instead washed up on the Bermudas. Strachey’s account of that adventure is believed to have been important source material for Shakespeare’s play [...]

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On this day in 1776 [okay, yesterday; sorry], a Thursday, Landon Carter, still obsessed with the weather, the credit given to Patrick Henry, and his runaway slave Moses, entered the following into his diary: A little sprinkling in the night after incessant lightning for a long while […] I asked [Richard Henry] Lee who came [...]

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On this day in 1776, a Tuesday, Landon Carter entered the following into his diary: A pleasant morning and some rain in the night which I most sincerely thank the god and my God of mercies for and I hope it has been a good drink to the choaking crops, though B. Beale says there [...]

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Happy Friday! As you brainstorm ways to keep cool this weekend, check out this list of links that caught our eyes this week: Out of the Box, the blog of the archivists at the Library of Virginia, showcases a series of beautiful and bizarre commercial letterheads they unearthed from the LVa’s various collections. The Civil [...]

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On this day in 1861, everyone was like, Whoa! Yesterday was a long day! Which is not unlike this day in 2011, at least for me, having spent yesterday touring Jamestown, Yorktown, and Williamsburg, and, quite honestly, getting my fill of people in tricornered hats. That being said, it was probably somewhat tougher on those [...]

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On this day in 1776, a Monday, Landon Carter entered the following into his diary: Out of the 8 bushels oysters, I had six pickled and two bushels for dressing. But I was asked what Beale sent oysters up in July. I answered it was my orders. Who would eat oysters in July said the [...]

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On this day in 1776, a Monday, Landon Carter, on hearing that five of his runaway slaves were in a Middlesex County jail, entered the following into his diary: Last night John Beale came up. I intend to agree with him, if I can, to take Norris’ plantation under his care. He says that two [...]

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On this day in 1776, a Sunday, Landon Carter—having mistakenly heard his rival Patrick Henry is dead and now worked up over Henry’s renown for having opposed the Stamp Act in 1765—entered the following into his diary: It is not many days past I heard that in the lobby of the late convention it was [...]

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The above video considers the idea of slave reenacting at Colonial Williamsburg. A few years ago, I wrote about my own questions and skepticism regarding such historical interpretation, and like the folks who made the video, I came away more or less convinced. (Via Kevin Levin)

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On this day in 1776, a Saturday, Landon Carter, worried about a number of escaped slaves and taking unseemly joy in the rumored death of Patrick Henry, entered the following into his diary: John Selden met Purcell coming up and bid tell me that Dunmore last week sent off a load of negroes to one [...]

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The other day, alert reader Marc Anderson noticed the phrase “Petty Auger” in one of Landon Carter’s diary entries. “I’m assuming the transcriber was not familiar with near the same name ‘periauger’? … the boat,” Anderson wrote, referring to the fact that the word means dugout canoe, such as what is being constructed by the [...]

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On this day in 1639, the future Virginia governor William Berkeley was knighted at Berwick-upon-Tweed. In 1835, Mary Custis Lee, daughter of Robert E. and the Mrs., was born. And in 1862, Union general John Pope and the army he rode in on occupied Culpeper County. In other words—and please, no offense to the above-named [...]

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Happy birthday to Luther Porter Jackson, who was born on this day in 1892. We forgive him for being out of state at the time. By 1922, though, he had married Johnella Frazer, a music teacher at Virginia State in Petersburg, and he took a job there himself, keeping it until his death in 1950. [...]

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On this day [actually yesterday; sorry!] in 1776, a Tuesday, Landon Carter, several of whose slaves, led by a man named Moses, had recently escaped, entered the following into his diary: Beale returned but brought no account of Moses and his gang. He went to the King and Queen camp on the point between the [...]

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On this day in 1775, the Continental Congress sent George III what became known as the Olive Branch Petition. By this point, the domestic squabble some were calling a revolution had been raging for a couple of months, with terrible things being said—on both sides—and, what with all the commotion, the neighbors were beginning to [...]

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On this day in 1939, just two months before the start of World War II in Europe, the United States secretary of the Navy died in office. He was Claude Augustus Swanson, of the Swansons of Swansonville in Pittsylvania County. Made their money in tobacco, and in tobacco they lost it. Claude, meanwhile, went into [...]

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On this day in 1776, a Saturday, Landon Carter—several of whose slaves, led by a man named Moses, had recently run away—entered the following into his diary: The first real summer heat—for it obliges me to wear but one pair of thin stockings. Much is said of the slavery of negroes, but how will servants [...]

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On this day in 1962, William Faulkner, author of the only book assigned to me twice in college (and once in graduate school), died of a heart attack in Byhalia, Mississippi. He willed the major manuscripts and personal papers in his possession to the Albert and Shirley Small Special Collections Library at the University of [...]

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On this day in 1776, a Friday, Landon Carter—several of whose slaves, led by a man named Moses, had recently run away—entered the following into his diary: Hearing so many contradictory stories about Moses and his gang, I sent Beale off this morning to get fully informed either in Lancaster, Middlesex, or Gloster. I gave [...]

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On this day in 2007, I arrived in Virginia without a job or a home, but with a good working knowledge of 1776 (1972).* And while being able to recite the lyrics to “Sit Down, John!” has neither been sufficient in terms of my professional advancement nor even helpful where the happiness of my marriage [...]

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On this day in 1776, a Thursday, Landon Carter—not yet aware of what had occurred at the Continental Congress in Philadelphia—entered the following into his diary: Yesterday brought me from Jos. Harwood £30 for my horse Nimrod; one 12 pound one 10 pound and one 8 pound note, James River bank. I hope I am [...]

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On this day in 1863, on the third day of the Battle of Gettysburg, Lee attacked the center of the Union line in what became known as Pickett’s Charge. No chicken salad this time, unless you count the fact that somehow this huge defeat has turned into “the high water mark of the Confederacy.” From [...]

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