MSS. Manuscript Collections

This collection includes three memoir volumes and three diaries written by John Henning Woods, a Southern Unionist, Confederate conscript, and eventual Union soldier during the American Civil War. While the collection spans the period of years from 1856 through 1873, the majority of the collection focuses on the years during the Civil War.

A single letter and envelope written by Charles L. Brown to his mother, Lydia Brown, in Waltham, Mass., dated 4 January 1862 and sent from Hampton, Va. Brown enlisted with the 16th Massachusetts Infantry on 29 June 1861, Company H, as a corporal. At the time of his death at Gettysburg on July 1863, he held the rank of Sergeant.

The Educational Cookery Collection includes flyers, pamphlets, cooking school catalogs, recipes, menus, cookery lessons, and other ephemera relating to cookery and education, dating from the 1880s to the 1960s.

The collection contains three flyers for the national and Virginia branches Woman's Christian Temperance Union (WCTU), dating from about 1929.

The collection includes stereoviews, mostly of Civil War-era or Civil War-related images. Items in the collection are individually described in the contents list of the finding aid.

Please note: Stereoviews can be viewed without equipment, but Special Collections does have a stereoscope available upon request.

The collection includes a letter from Atwell W. Robertson to Captain William C. Jeffress, written from Jenning's Ordinary, Virginia (Nottoway County) in July 1863. The majority of the letter includes news from home about Robertson's family, common friends, and information about local farming.

The collection consists of a hand-written receipt book and catalog of the household library, likely kept in the 1870s and 1880s. In addition, there are a few home remedies, some drawings and signatures (Willie Osborn), and what appear to be short journal entries.

The collection includes a receipt from Old Kentucky Distillery for five barrels of Cherokee Springs whiskey deposited by Bluthenthal & Bickart distillery of Georgia in 1901.

The collection includes 7 photographs showing U. S. Army Air Corps bombers and group bombing exercises. The photographs were taken during inspection and training exercises based out of Langely Field, near Hampton, Virginia, during March and April 1928.