IMAGE: The Librarian (1566) by Giuseppe Arcimboldo (Wikipedia Commons)

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A couple of weeks ago now, the photography blog Shorpy published an image of a man identified only as “Buzzard Pete.” With the help of Coy Barefoot, we identified him as Peter Briggs (1828–1912), a former slave who worked as a gardener at the University of Virginia. Some readers reacted positively to these images of [...]

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IMAGE: Postcard of HMS Raleigh figurehead (postmarked Plymouth, May 31, 1966) depicting Sir Walter Raleigh; the original ship wrecked in 1922, and this photograph likely was taken here (Matthew Boyington/Anywhen)

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This spring, the Virginia Indian Programs at the Virginia Foundation for the Humanities, in collaboration with Encyclopedia Virginia, launched the Virginia Indian Archive. (Funding was provided by the Mary Morton Parsons Foundation and Dominion.) What follows is a short history of Virginia Indians that draws on many of the archive’s wonderful images and links to [...]

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Yesterday I received an e-mail from Coy Barefoot referring to my speculations about the identity of one “Buzzard Pete” and what he may have meant to the University of Virginia community: Enjoyed your post about “Buzzard Pete.” I believe that is Mr. Peter Briggs (1828–1912). I discuss him (with a photo) on page 89 of my book [...]

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On this day, sometime between 1853 and 1857, Lewis Miller composed an ode to the Virginia spring in his notebook: the Beautiful Sugar Maple’s Tres are Growing here, and we find honey and good water, Now beams to heaven the violet’s dewy eye; the bird’s cheerey melody, Sweet April comes, where the dove in the vocal grove, [...]

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Yesterday I was pointed to the photograph directly above, which appeared on the photoblog Shorpy, and asked: Who was this guy Buzzard Pete? Well, for starters, here’s what Shorpy tells its readers: Charlottesville, Virginia, circa 1905. “Buzzard Pete.” Evidently a celebrated figure on the University of Virginia campus, fondly recalled decades later in various alumni [...]

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From the National Geographic Tumblr Found: Cars parked at a drive-in theater with a 53-foot wide screen in Alexandria, Virginia, December 1941. Photography by J. Baylor Roberts, National Geographic While our friends at National Geographic don’t speculate, I wonder if the film above is Rise and Shine, released by Twentieth Century Fox on November 21, 1941. IMDb [...]

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Not because this has anything to do with Virginia history, but because we’ve already posted about the Blue Marble and, this morning, the Black Marble, the above video is worth the time. Think of it as rounding out the trilogy. It begins with that famous prediction, by the British astronomer Sir Fred Hoyle, who wrote [...]

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Last week we celebrated the fortieth birthday of the so-called Blue Marble image of Earth, taken by Apollo 17 on its way to the Moon. Now, via the Atlantic, comes Black Marble: For three weeks spread out over April and October of this year, the Suomi NPP satellite (jointly of NASA and NOAA) scanned all [...]

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The famed “Blue Marble” view of Earth turns forty years old today. From Life.com: A large part of Blue Marble’s lasting appeal surely has something to do with the fact that the proportions and the features on display in the photo are so familiar. In a roughly square frame sits the almost perfectly round Earth [...]

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The above map, showing the Union army’s positions before Washington, D.C., appeared in a supplement to the New York Times on December 7, 1861. Headlined “The Army Before Washington,” the story begins: The interest which attaches to the military operations of the National army on the line of the Potomac, has induced us to present the [...]

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A party at the Virginia Military Institute, from the December 22, 1941, issue of Life magazine. The caption reads: Cadets and girls sit one out in Jackson Memorial hall under the famous painting by B. West Clinedinst (V. M. I. Class of ’80) of the charge at New Market. The boys above are no older [...]

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From the February 16, 1959, issue of Life magazine, a photo-essay on the reopening of public schools in Virginia to African American students: As Virginia’s “massive resistance” to integration crumbled last week, 21 Negro students walked cautiously into former all-white public schools. They came prepared to face enmity, ridicule or even physical violence. They found [...]

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As we were speaking of George Washington earlier, above you’ll find a rather minimalist portrait of the first president begun by the artist Jason Novak and completed by his eighteen-month-old daughter, Gertie. The pair collaborated on all the United States presidents, and I have picked out a few from Virginia. (Here is a list of [...]

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As you might imagine, I read a lot of history, and one of the best books I’ve read in the last year is Slaves Waiting for Sale: Abolitionist Art and the American Slave Trade by Maurie D. McInnis. Happily, the Library of Virginia also loves the book, presenting McInnis with its 2012 Literary Award for [...]

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  The Dutch historian Jo Hedwig Teeuwisse found 300 old negatives at a flea market, many depicting scenes from World War II. She researched the locations, took photographs from the same spot, and overlaid the two. The results are haunting. You can see the original two photographs below. And if this reminds you of Historypin, [...]

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Ruins of Rotunda, painting of the University of Virginia Rotunda ruins after fire, on a Rotunda roof tile, by Minnie Jones, ca. 1895–1896 (University of Virginia Special Collections); after the jump, a photograph of the ruins. PREVIOUSLY: A Beautiful Day for a Fire

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G. Washington. Late President of the United States of America. Painted by G. Hodson at New York. Engraved by P. Dawe; April 1, 1801 (Harvard University Library)

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An interesting bit of history: everybody knows the photograph above, taken by Alfred Eisenstaedt in Times Square on V-J, or Victory over Japan, Day, August 14, 1945. It was published in Life magazine on August 27 with the following caption: In the middle of New York’s Times Square a white-clad girl clutches her purse and [...]

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Confederate veterans (Chrysler Museum of Art)

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The blog Yesterday’s Papers, published by the Canadian cartoonist and illustrator John Adcock, is a minor miracle. And while I could bore you with praise, I will instead shamelessly steal the guts of a recent post by E. M. Sanchez-Saavedra—one that I hope will brilliantly underscore the ways in which the Internet can be exactly like your old [...]

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George Washington‘s birthplace Birthplace National Monument via Google Street View.

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In honor of Natasha Trethewey‘s appointment as poet laureate of the United States, VQR has commissioned from the Virginia Arts of the Book Center (a sister program of the encyclopedia) the above broadside. Printed by our own poet in residence, Kevin McFadden, it contains an original woodcut by Josef Beery, all in service of Trethewey’s poem [...]

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Having already mentioned that today is the sesquicentennial of the titanic Battle of Antietam, here is another photograph. Alexander Gardner took it on September 19, 1862, two days after the battle and the day that Robert E. Lee retreated back south into Virginia. He provided this caption: A Contrast: Federal buried, Confederate unburied, where they [...]

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