A daguerreotype of a young Baltimore merchant, the first victim of a bitter, homicidal political era, resides in the Special Collections Research Center in Swem Library—a ghostly message from the past.
W&M Libraries Blog
politics
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May 28, 2019Posted in: Special Collections -
January 17, 2018Posted in: Special CollectionsOn the night of Sunday October 16, 1859, twenty-three men emerged from the woods surrounding the town of Harpers Ferry, which sits at the confluence of the Potomac and Shenandoah Rivers in present-day West Virginia. Armed with rifles and pikes, their mission was to successfully secure the large cache of weapons kept in the town’s armory and expel the U.S. military from the area. -
November 13, 2017Posted in: Special CollectionsThis past spring Sharon Summers, Charles W. Scandrett, Janet S. Hunt, Barbara J. Kaufman, and Sandra S. Ellender generously donated the Civil War diary of Henry Alexander Scandrett to the Special Collections Research Center. Scandrett fought for the Union during the war and recorded his experiences in the pocket diary. -
November 8, 2017Posted in: Special CollectionsIn 1918, at the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month, an armistice was signed between the Allies and Germany, effectively ending World War I. This Saturday marks the anniversary of this event, commemorated as Veteran's Day in the United States, Armistice Day in France, and Remembrance Day in the United Kingdom. -
September 27, 2017Posted in: Special CollectionsIn reviewing boxes labeled as “unprocessed ephemera,” a colleague and I came across something really cool. It is a tiny image of Abraham Lincoln framed in copper. -
August 30, 2017Posted in: Special CollectionsIn December 2016, David B. Wolf, a New York attorney and collector interested in John Marshall and his biography of George Washington, donated three letters that join an existing collection of John Marshall Papers (Mss. -
July 5, 2017Posted in: Special CollectionsWhat is the difference between printing and publishing? This is perhaps something many of us don’t think about, but there is a difference. After all, we now speak of things being published on the internet, so there is not an inherent relationship between print and publication, at least not anymore. Two documents from the Thomas G. -
June 14, 2017Posted in: Special Collections -
February 15, 2017Posted in: Special CollectionsOn February 11 the exhibition, Written in Confidence: The Unpublished Letters of James Monroe, opened to the public. -
July 29, 2016Posted in: Special CollectionsOn October 11, 1918, an 7.5 magnitude earthquake shook the homes of residents in Mayaguez, Puerto Rico. Within minutes, the town was inundated by a large Tsunami. Destruction of buildings and homes in Mayaguez and surrounding towns was widespread.