Lydia Dodd

Perhaps no member of the Hanover Branch of the Association for the Preservation of Virginia Antiquities (APVA) was more crucial to the purchase, restoration, and early interpretation of Scotchtown than […]

Swords, armor, music, giant turkey legs: what’s not to love? Renaissance faires are having a moment (again), but how did a celebration of Renaissance Europe become so popular on American soil?

Ellerslie, located just half a mile from Bacon’s Castle, has a colorful history. It was recently purchased by Madelin and Logan Worrall, proprietors of Riverbound Farms, a Suffolk-based cut-flower business that supplies local florists, shops, and farmers markets. The Worralls plan to expand their flower farming to Ellerslie.

This blog was submitted to us by Gwyneth Kemeny, a Virginia high school senior pursuing architecture, various performing arts, and all things sweet and sentimental.

My name is Nina Earle, and I grew up in Richmond, Virginia.  I am working on a history major with public history and anthropology concentrations through the honors program at Roanoke College. Preservation Virginia has been a great place to intern while I am exploring different public history career options. Through working under the Manager of Education, I have gotten the chance to explore museum education and programming for all ages.

Help us wrap up our fiscal year on June 26th, Preservation Virginia’s day of giving. Your gifts to the Annual Fund directly supports those who make education, advocacy and preservation […]

May is Preservation Month, and what better time is there to highlight what is currently happening at Bacon’s Caste? See each image below to get a better understanding of the work that is going on at this historic property!

Historic interpreters, educators, or visitor services staff are often said to serve as the face of an organization because they provide the first introduction a visitor has to a site or museum. Because of this important position interpreters have in cultivating not only a positive visitor experience but hopefully museum membership and donors as well, front line staff maintain a vital role in the ecosystems of public history and cultural heritage institutions.

While performing restoration work at the John Marshall House in Richmond, Preservation Virginia staff made a recent discovery. House bell systems were used through the federal period to call for […]

In honor of LGBTQ+ Pride month, we are highlighting a few Virginian preservationists and architects, including Amaza Lee Meredith, one of the nation’s few African American architects in her time. […]

Over many centuries, lighthouse technology has continuously evolved and improved. Although the earliest known lighthouse dates to the Egyptians in 280 B.C., European style lenses were first invented in 1810 and consisted of thick, poor quality glass that gave the beams of many lighthouses a ‘muddy’ appearance.

2022 marked Preservation Virginia’s inaugural Historic Places Art Contest. Open to elementary, middle, and high school students across the Commonwealth, students were asked to look within their local communities to select an historic structure, building, or place they deemed significant, and to interpret it in 2-D art.

What do John Marshall and Taylor Swift have in common? Well, we’re glad you asked. Whether or not you’ve been a Swiftie since she debuted her first album in 2006, you’ve no doubt heard about Taylor Swift’s new album, Midnights, her upcoming Eras tour, and the digital stampede that took place on TicketMaster.com of fans seeking tickets earlier this week.

Among many other factors, our communities, cities, and towns are made up of any number of historic structures and spaces, and we invite Virginia’s students to consider which historic structures are important in their community. As the debut of Preservation Virginia’s community education programs that connect to our broader, statewide preservation efforts, we are excited to announce the inaugural Historic Places Art Contest for K-12 students this fall! 

Sonja Ingram, Associate Director of Preservation Field Services, interviewed Dr. G. Samantha Rosenthal, Associate Professor of History at Roanoke College, and co-founder of the Southwest Virginia LGBTQ+ History Project. Dr. Rosenthal is also the author of Living Queer History, Remembrance and Belonging in a Southern City, which tells the story of the LGBTQ community in Roanoke. The book includes over forty interviews with LGBTQ elders from the Roanoke area.

1. Could you tell us a little bit about yourself and your career, and what led to this role at Preservation Virginia? I’m a preacher’s kid who grew up in […]

As this year’s Preservation Month draws to a close, we wanted to take a moment to reflect inward on our own organization, and the amazing people we have who make our physical preservation of historic sites possible. Cape Henry Lighthouse site coordinator Rachel Balderson took the time to interview Eric to find out what it takes to become someone with the desire and know-how to do this kind of work.

Our PV Restoration Crew is in the beginning stages of prepping the 1820’s smokehouse siding at Bacon’s Castle for painting this spring. A large percentage of the early siding has […]

The Old Dawn School, also known as School #4, is one of a group of schools built for African American students in the late 19th-early 20th centuries in the African […]

My name is Zoe Brooks and I am a junior undergraduate student at Hollins University in Roanoke, Virginia, where I am majoring in History. I am from Appalachia, Virginia, and I just interned with Preservation Virginia’s John Marshall House during the month of January for Hollins’ “J-Term.”

During the historic period, the main house at Scotchtown was supplemented by a variety of outbuildings. The ice house -one of the two outbuildings reconstructed today- is a remarkable satellite […]

Preservation Virginia staff was able to get a glimpse of Fort Wool this summer. Fort Wool, a 15-acre, human-made, fort island, located near the Hampton Roads Bridge Tunnel, was one […]

Sharswood, designed by famed architect A.J. Davis of New York, was built in the 1850s for Charles Miller in the Mt. Airy Community of Pittsylvania County. Davis also designed Belmead […]

Happy Constitution Day! On this day in Philadelphia in 1787, 39 of our founders signed the United States Constitution, the most radical governing document of the age. While American founders […]

This summer, I have had the pleasure to be the curatorial intern at Preservation Virginia, working under Lea Lane, Curator of Collections, to learn more about the public history field. […]

As a historic house museum, Patrick Henry’s Scotchtown has unique opportunities to study and explore the details of daily life, including foodways. While Virginia was still a colony of Great […]

In 1999, the Stonewall Inn located at 51 and 53 Christopher Street in Greenwich Village, became the first LGBTQ site of significance listed to the National Register of Historic Places.

This Juneteenth, 156 years ago, news of the abolition of slavery finally reached the enslaved people of Galveston, Texas. Despite President Abraham Lincoln issuing the Emancipation Proclamation on January 1, 1863, news and implementation of the new law struggled to reach the far corners of the divided nation.

On Saturday, March 27, 2021, the John Marshall House had the pleasure of hosting the Center for Paranormal Research and Investigation (CPRI) from five o’clock in the evening until midnight, as they conducted an on-site investigation of the first and second floors of the Great Chief Justice’s 1790 Richmond home.

Preservation Virginia teamed up with Marc Wagner and Elizabeth Lipford from the Department of Historic Resources to visit two historic houses in King William County recently.

As part of Women’s History Month, we had a ‘virtual sit down’ with Preservation Virginia CEO, Elizabeth S. Kostelny. Elizabeth, who is celebrating 30 years with Preservation Virginia, has gained an incredible amount of insight and wisdom during her tenure.

Black history is American history and essential every day of the year. And in honor of Black History Month, we recognize that at this time, we have much to learn about the enslaved who lived and worked at the historic sites we open to the public.

By Matthew Nichol, VCU ’21, Education Intern February 15, 2021 Happy Presidents Day from the John Marshall House! We love to talk about American Presidents and the relationship between the […]

In 2019, while Preservation Virginia was completing our survey of Rosenwald Schools in Virginia, we met David Rainey. David, who has spent countless hours researching local African American school sites, […]

Dearest readers, perhaps you have seen the news: Miss Susan Colston, niece of the great Chief Justice John Marshall, is to be married! Undoubtedly, the grey silk gown she was […]

Since the holidays will look different for many families this year, let us look back and examine how Early Americans like Chief Justice John Marshall, his family, and the enslaved community who supported the household, celebrated the holiday. Which customs and traditions sound familiar to you and your family, and which have faded into obscurity?

Traveling the short distance from his home in the Court End of Richmond to the Constitutional Convention in June 1788, the future Chief Justice John Marshall arrived in new shoes, […]

It’s easy to forget the noise. A historic house is usually encountered as a quiet space, a silence broken only by the cadence of the interpreter’s narrative, and perhaps the […]

The Dr. Robert Walter “Whirlwind” Johnson’s house and tennis court in Lynchburg was added to the Most Endangered Historic Places List in 2005. At the time, the house was in a […]

We recovered some interesting finds while recently monitoring for archaeological sites during the installation of a new phone line at Smith’s Fort, including what looks like two post hole features and a possible trash pit.

Preservation Virginia staff visited Little Buckets Farm Sanctuary in Brunswick County last week to look at an early house in need of repairs. The farm is operated by Susan Klingenberg, who rescues farm animals in need and provides them with a safe home.

On August 26, 1795, President George Washington found himself in need of an Attorney General of the United States to serve within his administration.

In the first installment of our new Preservation in Action Video Series, Eric Litchford, Preservation Projects Manager, takes you through the recent rehabilitation work completed on the 19th-century smokehouse at Bacon’s Castle.

Just over two miles from the Jamestown-Scotland Ferry sits Smith’s Fort, a story-and-a-half, brick merchant’s home, built for Jacob Faulcon and his family in the mid-18th century. In 1609, Captain John Smith began construction of a fort site on the property.

Many initials and names have been carved into the exterior of the Old Cape Henry Lighthouse throughout its 227 years.

While everyone is working at home, we wanted to reach out with our staff recommendations on what we’re reading and watching ourselves! Many are history related, some are directly related to our sites, and some are just ones we liked.

In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, the landscape around Bacon’s castle was filled with outbuildings that supported the domestic and agricultural functions of a working plantation.  These buildings were generally small, single use structures that were primarily occupied and worked in by the enslaved population.

The Preservation Virginia mission statement singles out “historic places of memory.” A historic place of memory might be architectural, but it can also be something that fits in the palm […]

As a historic homeowner, spring cleaning takes special care and knowledge of the unique materials that make up your home. You don’t need to be an expert preservationist to spring clean your historic home, but try to keep these tips in mind as you tidy up.

The original slave quarter and smokehouse at Bacon’s Castle stand as rare examples of Virginia’s vernacular architecture. Built in 1829 and 1844, respectively, their preservation tells the story of plantation life in Southside Virginia.