Virginia Vignettes

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 [...]