Virginia Vignettes

It began as the Belgian Pavilion and was built for the 1939 World’s Fair in New York. Designed by the Art Nouveau architect Henri Van de Velde, the structure and its distinctive, 161-foot tower were intended to be the centrepiece of a new university back in Belgium. But when the Nazis invaded, the pavilion became [...]

The famed Methodist bishop and Prohibitionist James Cannon Jr. was at one time one of the most powerful Democrats in Virginia. Then, in 1924, he opposed the Democratic presidential candidate Al Smith because of Smith’s wet, immigrant, Catholic supporters who were from, in Cannon’s words, “the sidewalks of New York.” Some charged the bishop with [...]

James Cannon Jr. was a bishop of the southern Methodist Church, a leader of Prohibitionists in Virginia and the nation, and a political activist of such skill and combativeness that he became one of the most famous, and deeply controversial, American figures of the early twentieth century. Best known as a relentless advocate of Prohibition, [...]

They were mad because of things he wrote as editor of Richmond’s Southern Literary Messenger. Poe began work at the journal in 1835, increasing its circulation, publishing his own stories and poems, and developing important contacts with the northern literary establishment. Still, Poe became best known for his caustic literary criticism, such as a December [...]

John Stewart Battle served as governor of Virginia from 1950 to 1954. A loyal Democrat in line with the Byrd Organization, the state machine run by U.S. Senator Harry Flood Byrd Sr., Battle overcame a spirited challenge by three fellow Democrats to win the 1949 gubernatorial primary. His greatest achievement as governor was a massive [...]

“Jim Limber” or James Henry Brooks—his legal name and his life dates are uncertain—was a free, mixed-race child in Richmond during the Civil War who lived for slightly more than a year with Confederate president Jefferson Davis and his wife Varina. Contemporary accounts suggest that he enjoyed a close relationship with the Davis family, leading [...]

Sheldon Vanauken did. The Lynchburg College professor—he taught English there from 1948 until 1980—engaged in a passionate love affair with one Jean Palmer Davis while the two were at Oxford in the 1950s. C. S. Lewis, the famous author of The Lion the Witch, and the Wardrobe, taught at Oxford at the time, and he [...]

Marion Harland did. The writer was born in Amelia County and spent much of her early life in Richmond. Over the course of 65 years, she penned a number of novels that seemed to enact her own divided loyalties over secession, slavery, and Reconstruction. Later in life, however, her interests turned more domestic. Struggling for [...]

The Wilderness is associated with scenes of fire. During the Civil War battle, exploding shells sparked flames that burned the wounded. “It is not supposed that many lives were lost in this terrible manner,” a witness wrote, “but there were some poor fellows, whose wounds had disabled them, who perished in the dreadful flame.” In [...]

The Wilderness was a tightly forested area nearly 12 miles wide by 6 miles long and located south of the Rappahannock and Rapidan rivers, ten miles west of Fredericksburg in Spotsylvania County, Virginia. During the Civil War, two major battles were fought there: Chancellorsville in May 1863, where Stonewall Jackson famously outflanked Union forces under [...]