Browse Items (30 total)

Late in the 19th century, some Virginians became interested in preserving historic buildings and landscapes that documented the state's illustrious past. White women led the effort to establish the Association for the Preservation of Virginia…

Silk has been produced and sold as a consumer good for thousands of years. The origin of silk production was in China and the earliest known examples date to 3000 B.C.E. For centuries, the trade routes known as the Silk Road stretched beween Europe…

By the 1870s, bicycles and tricycles using wire-spoked wheels were common, particularly in England. Albert A. Pope became the first American bicycle manufacturer under the trade name “Columbia” in Connecticut in 1878.The popularity of bicycles in…

Tobacco has been a major part of Virginia commerce for more than four centuries. Early tobacco art usually took the form of the planters' brand that makers used to distinguish their crop. Most planters used a form of their initials to distinguish…

“The Age of Iron” was published by the New York printing firm of Currier and Ives in 1869. It satirized the woman suffrage movement that was gaining widespread support in America during that time.The woman suffrage movement took root in 1848 at the…

As women participated in the movement to abolish slavery during the first half of the 19th century, some of them also began to advocate for women's rights. In July 1848, a group of women and men held a convention in Seneca Falls, New York. They…

Illustrated periodicals like Harper's Weekly were popular with Americans in the middle of the 19th century. After southern states formed the Confederate States of America, residents there could not easily receive newspapers and magazines printed in…

The temperance movement was one of many reform efforts that built support in the decades before the Civil War. Temperance is defined as moderation in action, thought, or feeling, and is often used to describe the long campaign to decrease the…

After the American Revolution, relations between the United States and Great Britain remained strained. In its long war with France, Britain imposed a blockade on neutral countries, including the United States, that disrupted shipping and trade.…

Women served in many capacities during the American Revolution. Thousands of women traveled with their husbands when they served in the Continental Army. Known as "camp followers," they marched with the supply wagons, set up camps nearby, and cooked,…