VMHC Lectures

In this lecture on May 24, 2022, historian Alex Kershaw spoke about his book, Against All Odds: A True Story of Ultimate Courage and Survival in World War II. As the Allies raced to defeat Hitler, four men, all in the same unit, earned medal after medal for battlefield heroism: Maurice “Footsie” Britt, Michael Daly, Keith Ware, and a baby-faced Texan named Audie Murphy. In the campaign to liberate...

George Washington Parke Custis was raised at Mount Vernon by George and Martha Washington. Young “Wash” appears in Edward Savage's 1789 painting of the first presidential family, his small hand placed symbolically on a globe. He would later mark the national landscape by building Arlington House on the Potomac. A poor student, he emerged as an agricultural reformer and sought-after Federalist...

On April 28, 2022, historian Jane Turner Censer presented a lecture about the literary career of Amélie Rives. By 1890, Amélie Rives was well-known all over America, both as the author of a scandalous novel and as a beauty who had married a very wealthy heir of New York’s Astor family. Only five years earlier, Rives, then a twenty-two-year-old living in the family plantation outside Charlottesvill...

On March 24, 2022, Carl R. Lounsbury discussed the four centuries of Chesapeake history as revealed through material world of Eyre Hall. Erected in 1759 on the Eastern Shore, Eyre Hall is still occupied by descendants of its builder, Littleton Eyre. Since construction, succeeding generations acquired and preserved a rich variety of documents and objects including furniture, books, silver, and pain...

On April 7, 2022, Kimberly C. Borchard presented a lecture about the 500-year-old myth of Appalachian gold and its catastrophic consequences for the Native Floridians that gave Appalachia its name. Growing up in rural Appalachia, Kim Borchard was well-acquainted with stereotypes of Appalachian poverty and backwardness. For that reason, she was struck by accounts of an opulent, gold-rich province b...

On March 15, 2022, Dr. Charles Bryan and VMHC president and CEO Jamie Bosket had a conversation about some of the topics covered in Dr. Bryan’s latest book, "Imperfect Past Volume II: More History in a New Light." The late southern writer John Egerton observed that there are three kinds of history: what actually happened, what we are told happened, and what finally came to believe happened...

Interested in addressing a problem, making something better, or helping others in your community? Whether you are a veteran activist or a novice eager to get started, the global pandemic has impacted the ways in which we can advocate for change. Join a panel of today’s changemakers as they discuss how to tap into your passion, get involved in a cause, apply your unique skills, and take action in a...

In this virtual event on February 19, 2021, VMHC Curator Karen Sherry led audiences in a conversation with Dr. Gladys West. This Dinwiddie County native helped develop GPS and other satellite mapping technology during her long career at the Naval Surface Weapons Center at Dahlgren, Virginia. Dr. West shared stories from her remarkable life, including rising from rural poverty to gain an education...

On November 12 , 2018, Richard Brookhiser delivered the banner lecture, “John Marshall: The Man Who Made the Supreme Court.” In 1801, a genial and brilliant Revolutionary War veteran and politician became the fourth Chief Justice of the United States. He would hold the post for thirty-four years (still a record), expounding the Constitution he loved. Before he joined the Court, it was the weakling...

On January 13, 2022 Dr. Mary A. DeCredico had a discussion of Richmond and its people during the Civil War. Confederate Citadel: Richmond and its People at War offers a detailed portrait of life’s daily hardships in the rebel capital during the Civil War. Drawing on personal correspondence, private diaries, and newspapers, historian Mary A. DeCredico spotlights the human elements of Richmond’s eco...

On October 28, 2020, Harold Holzer delivered a lecture titled "The Presidents vs. the Press" Since America’s first president began the very first presidential feud with the press, American chief executives have been engaged in an endless struggle with journalists for control of the reporting that constitutes the first draft of history. This presentation will focus on three exemplars of thi...

On March 10, 2022 Gayle Jessup White, author of Reclamation: Sally Hemings, Thomas Jefferson, and a Descendant’s a Search for Her Family’s Lasting Legacy, discussed her 50-year journey to confirm her family’s oral history that they are descended from the country’s third president. Growing up in Black middle-class Washington, DC, Jessup White was 13 when she first heard the family lore. Fueled by p...

On February 24, 2022 historians Brian Daugherity and Alyce Miller delivered a lecture about Black educational activism in Goochland County in the early twentieth century. In this lecture, based on their award-winning article published in the Virginia Magazine of History & Biography in 2020, Brian Daugherity and Alyce Miller will analyze community efforts to increase educational access and oppo...

On February 10, 2022 historian William Blair had a discussion of the early Reconstruction era effort by Freedmen’s Bureau officers to document that Black Americans faced little justice for atrocities committed against them. We tend to think our current situation unique in featuring partisan bubbles in which people mistrust information from the other side. But immediately after the Civil War, a tox...

On November 11, 2021 historian Caroline E. Janney had a discussion about her book on Lee’s army after Appomattox. In her dramatic new history of the weeks and months after Appomattox, Ends of War: The Unfinished Fight of Lee’s Army after Appomattox, Caroline E. Janney reveals that Lee’s surrender was less an ending than the start of an interregnum marked by military and political uncertainty, lega...

On October 20,2021 writer Catherine Baab-Muguira held a lively and informative lecture to look at Edgar Allan Poe and how his life can teach us counterintuitive lessons on achieving creative success. Edgar Allan Poe led one of the saddest lives ever. He lost virtually everyone he loved, and his grinding poverty meant that he and his family were sometimes starving in the literal sense. What’s more,...

Join bestselling author Nathaniel Philbrick on October 20, 2021, who delivered the J. Harvie Wilkinson, Jr. Lecture based on his newest book, “Travels with George: In Search of Washington and His Legacy." When George Washington became president in 1789, he undertook a tour of the ex-colonies to talk to ordinary citizens about his new government, and to imbue in them the idea of being one thing...

On October 7, 2021 A. E. Dick Howard held a discussion about the evolution of Virginia’s Constitution from 1776 to the present day. Virginia’s Declaration of Rights (1776) declares all men to be “equally free and independent.” But, as to the suffrage, the Declaration speaks in more qualified terms; there must be “sufficient evidence of permanent common interest with, and attachment to, the communi...

On September 15, 2021 historian David O. Stewart discussed on his book about George Washington and his rise as a leader Washington’s rise constitutes one of the great self-reinventions in history. In his mid-twenties, this third son of a modest Virginia planter had ruined his own military career in the French and Indian War through poor judgments and brash overreaching. By his mid-forties, that he...

On September 2, 2021 historian Robert P. Watson held a discussed his book about the Confederacy’s infamous Libby Prison and the Civil War’s largest jail break. Robert Watson provides the definitive account of the Confederacy’s infamous Libby Prison, site of the Civil War’s largest prison break. Libby Prison housed Union officers, high-profile foes of the Confederacy, and political prisoners. Watso...

On August 19, 2021 historian John Reeves discussed the battle of the Wilderness, the first clash between Ulysses S. Grant and Robert E. Lee. John Reeves has been a teacher, editor, and writer for more than twenty-five years. The Civil War, in particular, has been his passion since he first read Bruce Catton’s The American Heritage Picture History of the Civil War as an elementary school student in...

On July 15, 2021 historian Carolyn Eastman exanimated the career of James Ogilvie, a now-forgotten celebrity of the very early nineteenth century, and what it tells us about the intersection of political culture and celebrity—at a moment when the United States was in the midst of invention. Carolyn Eastman is an associate professor of history at Virginia Commonwealth University and a Distinguished...

On June 24, 2021 historian Vanessa Holden had discussion of her book about how women contributed to America’s most famous slave rebellion, often called Nat Turner’s Rebellion. In this talk Dr. Holden will speak about material from her forthcoming book, "Surviving Southampton: African American Women and Resistance in Nat Turner’s Community." She will discuss her research process and the typ...

On May 20, 2021, Christopher Leahy delivered the banner lecture, “President without a Party” The first president to ascend to the office because of the incumbent’s death, John Tyler also remains the nation’s only chief executive to have been kicked out of his own political party. In September 1841, angry that Tyler’s use of the veto destroyed their legislative agenda, members of the Whig Party hel...

On May 5, 2021, Ty Seidule as he delivered a lecture about his book, "Robert E. Lee and Me: A Southerner’s Reckoning with the Myth of the Lost Cause" In a forceful but humane narrative, former soldier and head of the West Point history department Ty Seidule's Robert E. Lee and Me challenges the myths and lies of the Confederate legacy―and explores why some of this country’s oldest woun...