The Shockoe ExaminerBlogging the History of Richmond, Virginia: Civil War Richmond

Friday, March 5, 2010

Civil War Richmond - A remarkable site on Richmond history.

Ruins of the Gallego Flour Mills in the burnt district, Richmond, Va.

A great site on Richmond history is Civil War Richmond - created and maintained by an army of one, Mike Gorman. His description of the site is as follows: "an online research project designed to collect documents, photographs, and maps pertaining to Richmond, Virginia, during the Civil War. Here you will find information regarding many varied facets of life inside the Confederate Capital. Because there is so much information regarding the hospitals and prisons in Richmond, these have been given their own sections - the "other sites" section deals with other important topics, including: battery defenses, cemeteries, industry, and civilian activity."

Visit and explore the site HERE.

There's Lots to see and read.

- Ray B.

3 comments:

john m said...: Props to a truly amazing website.; March 5, 2010 at 3:44 PM
Shockoe Examiner Staff - see bottom of blog entry for the specific author. said...: Thanks John!; March 5, 2010 at 4:38 PM
sbobet said...: Props to a trulsbo
sbo
y amazing website.; January 28, 2012 at 4:49 PM

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Contributors:

Ray Bonis:

Ray worked at VCU Libraries' James Branch Cabell Library from 1989 until 2021. He is the co-author of Virginia Commonwealth University (2006) and Greetings from Richmond (2009) - an architectural history of the city.

Selden Richardson:

Architectural historian and author of Built By Blacks: African American Architecture and Neighborhoods in Richmond, Virginia (2006), The Tri-State Gang in Richmond: Murder and Robbery in the Great Depression. (2012), and Richmond Murder & Mayhem (2023)

On History:

"The dead were and are not. Their place knows them no more and is ours today...The poetry of history lies in the quasi-miraculous fact that once, on this earth, once, on this familiar spot of ground, walked other men and women, as actual as we are today, thinking their own thoughts, swayed by their own passions, but now all gone, one generation vanishing into another, gone as utterly as we ourselves shall shortly be gone, like ghosts at cockcrow."
-- G. M. Trevelyan (1876-1962) from his "Autobiography of an Historian," An Autobiography and Other Essays (1949).

Key Dates in Richmond History
(more to follow)

1737 – William Mayo laid out the original street plan for the town of Richmond on land provided by William Byrd II.

1742 – Chartered as a town

1780 – Virginia’s state capital moved from Williamsburg to Richmond.

1782 – Incorporated as a city.

1788 - Virginia State Capitol building completed.

1860-1865 – Serves as capital of the Confederate States of America.

1910 - Manchester, the city located just south of the James, is consolidated with Richmond.

1949 - Oliver Hill (1907-2007) elected to City Council, first African American since Reconstruction.

1968 - Virginia Commonwealth University created by the merger of the Medical College of Virginia and Richmond Professional Institute.

1977 - Henry Marsh elected as first African American mayor of Richmond.

2009 – Shockoe Examiner founded.