Special Collections

Jamestown Island Civil War map with troop positions and encampments labelled
Posted on May 1, 2024

Has Special Collections acquired a Jamestown spy map from the Civil War era? Lindsay Bliss weighs in!

Nov 2021

  • Covers of zines created by William & Mary students
    November 12, 2021
    Belonging is an ongoing goal for our archives, and our aim is to have collections that support and reflect the research and interests of students, faculty, staff, and the world.

Oct 2021

  • ca. 1872 stereoview of DoG street
    October 20, 2021
    I am old enough that several of the places that I have lived over the years have been torn down, including the house on South Boundary Street that I lived in for two years as a W&M student. To all those who wander up and down DoG Street: think about the street's very different appearance before Colonial Williamsburg and many buildings were removed during its development. The stereoview below shows a very familiar building (the powder magazine), which had a very different setting prior to CW.
  • TikTok
    October 8, 2021
    April 13th, 2021 marks the entry of the first TikTok into William & Mary’s Special Collections web archives.

Jun 2021

  • June 30, 2021
    Recently, I began a process to show my appreciation to William & Mary, in a modest way, for my education and to give something back to the College as I approached the 50th anniversary of my graduation in 1970.

May 2021

Apr 2021

  • Admission sign at Stockade Theatre
    April 28, 2021
    Over the winter and spring of early 1941, a towering landmark rose on the rural landscape less than two miles from downtown Williamsburg. The structure housed the screen for the Stockade Theatre Auto-Torium at Casey’s Corner, where Richmond and Ironbound Roads intersect.

Mar 2021

  • Recipes and household tips taken from newspapers and pasted into the back of The Virginia House-wife.
    March 29, 2021
    My favorite kinds of materials in archives are the ones we might describe colloquially as “well-loved,” where you can tell that someone—or perhaps more than one someone—spent hours writing, reading, and thinking about a topic.
  • First page of Lady Jean Skipwith's ledger
    March 25, 2021
    Sometime between 1795 and 1826, Lady Jean Skipwith made an account of the flora on her property. [i] A pocket-sized notebook, now in the Special Collections Research Center (SCRC), contains her handwritten list of plants.
  • E. R. Rose cabinet card, verso
    March 23, 2021
    Written by graduate student assistant, Erna Anderson. This exhibit is on view in the Swem Library lobby through April 1, 2021. [[Content warning: This post discusses blackface and gender impersonation.]]  
  • Allen Ginsberg at W&M, 1971 Colonial Echo, vol. 1, p. 95 (Photo by Bruce Nyland)
    March 8, 2021
    Beatific. Sympathetic. Spiritually illuminated. An ecological, fresh-planet consciousness. So Beat writers Allen Ginsberg and Jack Kerouac described their work, their art, their lives.