VMHC Lectures

On April 22, 2010, Lee Shepard delivered a Banner Lecture entitled "Hidden Treasures: A Short History of the Mary Custis Lee Trunks." In 2002, two wooden trunks were found at Burke & Herbert Bank & Trust Company in Alexandria, Va. The trunks contained letters, legal papers, journals, travel souvenirs, financial records, and smaller artifacts that were collected by Mary Custis Lee,...

On January 28, 2010, Noah Andre Trudeau delivered a lecture on his book Robert E. Lee. Almost 150 years after the fact, Robert E. Lee remains a towering figure of the Civil War era, an acclaimed strategist and an enigmatic personality. In his new book, the latest in the critically received Great Generals Series, prolific author Noah Andre Trudeau presents an insightful narrative about the Confeder...

On January 24, 2008, Dean King delivered this Banner Lecture. In 1815 the American sailing ship Commerce ran aground on the northwestern shore of Africa. In his prize-winning book, Skeletons on the Zahara, Dean King recounts the misfortunes of the shipwrecked crew. They were captured by nomadic Arab slave traders and marched across the desert, subjected to heat, starvation, and cruelty. At last th...

On February 14, 2008, Lauranett Lee delivered this Banner Lecture. Historic highway markers are beloved features of the Old Dominion's landscape. Through these signs, away from the high speed of interstates, the careful motorist can piece together major themes running through Virginia's past. One of the most important but sometimes neglected such strands is the story of African Americans....

On October 1, 2009, Julian Hudson delivered a lecture entitled "Prestwould: Gracious Living on the American Frontier, 1790-1830." Prestwould Plantation, built at the end of the eighteenth century in a post-revolutionary Georgian style, is located on the bluffs above the Roanoke River near Clarksville, Virginia. Dr. Julian Hudson, the executive director of the Prestwould Foundation, has ove...

On May 27, 2010, James Horn delivered the banner lecture "A Kingdom Strange: The Brief and Tragic History of the Lost Colony of Roanoke" In 1587, a small band of men, women, and children put down the first tentative roots of English settlement on the sandy soil of Roanoke Island along the North Carolina coast, in what was then considered part of Virginia. In the face of dwindling supplies...

On March 4, 2010, Michael Kranish delivered a lecture on his book Flight from Monticello: Thomas Jefferson at War. In his new book, Michael Kranish recounts Thomas Jefferson's difficult tenure as Virginia's governor during the Revolution. The story begins with the background of struggle against British rule, then the tumultuous outbreak of fighting and Jefferson's role in the Continent...

On May 28, 2009 John Ferling delivered a Banner Lecture entitled "The Ascent of George Washington: The Hidden Political Genius of an American Icon." In 2007 John Ferling spoke at the VHS on his history of the Revolutionary War, "Almost a Miracle." Now he has drawn on his unsurpassed knowledge of that era to provide a fresh and provocative new portrait of the greatest of the Founder...

On February 4, 2010, Muffie Meyer delivered a lecture entitled "Dolley Madison: A Documentary." In March, the "American Experience" history series on PBS will broadcast a new documentary on the life of Dolley Madison. Today’s event offers a preview of part of the documentary, along with commentary about the making of the film by the producer and director, Muffie Meyer. This event i...

On April 16, 2008, Jay Winik delivered a lecture entitled "The Great Upheaval: America and the Birth of the Modern World, 1788–1800." As the 1790s began, a fragile American republic took its first uncertain steps, the Russian empire expanded, and France plunged into revolution. Jay Winik's new book, "The Great Upheaval," illuminates how events in these three nations combined to...

On May 21, 2009, Daniel P. Jordan delivered the 2009 Stuart G. Christian, Jr., lecture entitled "Jefferson in Perspective." Daniel P. Jordan recently retired as president of Thomas Jefferson's Monticello, one of the most beloved historic sites in America. No other historian today has immersed himself more deeply into the multifaceted life of our third president. Drawing on his many yea...

On April 16, 2009, Lorri Glover delivered a Banner Lecture entitled "The Shipwreck That Saved Jamestown: The Sea Venture Castaways and the Fate of America." The wreck of the "Sea Venture" on Bermuda in 1609 and the role its survivors played in the eventual rescue of the failing colony at Jamestown are dramatic tales from the founding years of the nation. In a new book, authors Lorr...

On May 27, 2010, James Horn discussed his book A Kingdom Strange: The Brief and Tragic History of the Lost Colony of Roanoke." In 1587, a small band of men, women, and children put down the first tentative roots of English settlement on the sandy soil of Roanoke Island along the North Carolina coast, in what was then considered part of Virginia. In the face of dwindling supplies and hostile In...

On April 2, 2009, David Brown and Thane Harpole delivered this lecture entitled "Werowocomoco and Fairfield Plantation: Rediscovering the Forgotten Landscapes of Gloucester County." The excitement of discovering lost landscapes, including the Burwell family's ancestral home and the nearby village of Powhatan and Pocahontas, has resulted in the resurgence of support for historic preserv...

On December 5, William C. Wooldridge delivered a Banner Lecture entitled "Mapping Virginia: Pictures of a Moving Place, 1587-1783." Drawing from the engaging images in Mapping Virginia: From the Age of Discovery to the Civil War, Bill Wooldridge shows the very different ways that cartographers, and by implication their audiences, conceived of Virginia from generation to generation from the...

On November 14, 2013, Elizabeth O'Leary delivered a Banner Lecture entitled "Carillon: The Story of a Richmond Community." An active community nestled near Richmond's Byrd Park, the Carillon neighborhood has a surprisingly rich, complex history. Basing her lecture on her recently published work,The Carillon Neighborhood: A History, Dr. Elizabeth O'Leary will relate the story of...

On October 31, David O. Stewart delivered a Banner Lecture entitled "Family of Assassins: The Surratts of Maryland. "Everyone knows about John Wilkes Booth, the man who killed Abraham Lincoln on April 14, 1865. But what about Mary Surratt, the boardinghouse keeper who "kept the nest that hatched the egg" of assassination and was the first woman executed by the United States governm...

On October 10, 2013, Mary Theobald delivered a banner lecture entitled First House: Two Centuries with Virginia's First Families. Conceived during the Revolutionary War, built during the War of 1812, and looted during the Civil War, Virginia's executive mansion has endured fires, threats, riots, and hurricanes. Written to coincide with the mansion's bicentennial in 2013, First House: T...

On July 25, 2013, Brian D. McKnight delivered a Banner Lecture entitled "Contested Borderland: The Civil War in Appalachian Kentucky and Virginia." During the four years of the Civil War, the border between eastern Kentucky and southwestern Virginia was highly contested territory, alternately occupied by both the Confederacy and the Union. In Contested Borderland, Brian McKnight examines t...

On August 22, 2013, Neva Hart delivered a banner lecture entitled "War and Pieces: Quilts through America's War Years." For soldiers in the field or citizen soldiers who declared the moral equivalent of war, quilts have been used throughout America's history not only as comfort, but to further "the Cause." It wasn't the Boston Tea Party that started the fight! Learn how...

On September 4, 2013, Gene Allen Smith delivered a banner lecture entitled "Fighting for Freedom: African Americans and the War of 1812." Images of American slavery conjure up cotton plantations and African Americans locked in bondage until the Civil War. Yet early in the nineteenth century the state of slavery was very different, and the political vicissitudes of the young nation offered...

On August 8, 2013, Ray McAllister delivered a Banner Lecture entitled "Ocracoke: The Pearl of the Outer Banks." The Outer Banks have enticed Virginians with the lure of sun, sky, and sea for generations. Despite this idyllic appeal, these once-isolated barrier islands have also witnessed a turbulent past. Pirates, hurricanes, shipwrecks, and U-boats all make their appearance in the varied...

On June 20, 2013, Dean King delivered the 2013 Hazel and Fulton Chauncey Lecture at the Virginia Historical Society entitled "The Feud: The All-American, No-Holds-Barred, Blood-and-Guts Story of the Hatfields and McCoys." The content and opinions expressed in these presentations are solely those of the speaker and not necessarily of the Virginia Museum of History & Culture.

On June 13, 2013, David C. Keehn delivered a Banner Lecture entitled "Knights of the Golden Circle: Secret Empire, Secession, Civil War." The Knights of the Golden Circle was a mysterious southern-based society that set out in 1859 to establish a slave empire in Mexico. In late 1860, it shifted its focus to supporting the secession movement and intimidating Unionists in the South. Accordin...

On June 19, 2012, Edward Ayers delivered a Banner Lecture entitled "The Civil War at a Crossroads: The Seven Days." In the spring of 1862, Virginia's civilians faced a different kind of war than they had the year before. Advancing Union armies now occupied large amounts of territory in western Virginia and in Tidewater, and their presence had a dramatic effect on local populations. Pro...