Browse Items (415 total)

Electricity meant everything from refrigeration to electric stoves and artificial lighting, and rural electrification radically altered the lives of rural women.

Zelma was the wife of William Shelton. They appear together in the second photo.…

Zelda Carter Fletcher Morton was born on June 6, 1874 on Sylvania in Green Springs. Her parents, Andrew and Sarah Carter, were married while enslaved and their marriage was recorded by the Freedmen’s Bureau in 1866 in the Cohabitation Lists.…

This is the mill built after the original was destroyed during the Civil War in 1863.

This is the identification folder that one carried when using rationing stamps during World War II. This folder contains information on the owner and his vehicle in order to use gas stamps. J. T. Harris of Orange, Virginia registers a van on January…

This is the War Ration Book issued to Freeman Walter Tomlinson in World War II. His stamps were given to him on March 6, 1942, and he used all but four. Tomlinson had to sign in agreement of certain conditions to obtain the book. If he violated these…

These are stamps for the purchase of gasoline in 1945. During World War II, these stamps would have been distributed in order to ensure that there would be enough resources available to support America's troops overseas.

The Woolfolk manufacturing plant in Louisa produced clothing and some of the first jobs for women in the area. Those who worked at the factory prized their jobs and their fellow workers. They created floats together for the local parades,…

The Married Woman’s Property Act which allowed married women to hold property separately from their husbands finally passed in VA in 1877 (the last state to do so, by the way)… this was a delicate period where women, of necessity, became vital…

Women in a carriage, likely Virginia Taylor (to be Mrs. W.B. Syndor) and a friend, up to visit their aunts Nancy and Lucy Taylor, who had a life interest in Westend. Virginia's father, Henry Taylor III, was a brother of the Nancy and Lucy and had…

This pay receipt demonstrates a short period of equality between white and African American teachers in the Jackson District of Louisa. Later, this pay receipt, for W.S. Bagby, a white teacher, would be much higher than that of an African American…

This registry demonstrates the attendance of Robert B. Winston's first grade class at the white school in Mineral. There are many patterns found in the registry. Boys attended school less frequently than girls and were fewer in number. Students also…

The brochure for the country inn run by Nancy and Lucy: "The Misses Taylor" of Westend. Their mother, Mary Minor Watson Taylor, specified in her that her unmarried children should have a life interest in Westend.

The girls' mother and father,…

Virginia (Taylor) Syndor's remembrances of Westend's farm and country in in the early 20th century

Russell Wright with his grandfather A'lelard Watkins
in a tobacco field near Bells Crossroads, Louisa County.