Jeffrey Garth Edmunds

The Law Library has a limited number of copies of the excellent booklet, "Understanding Your Domestic Relations Rights in Virginia 2010-2011" to give away to the general public.

Prepared specially for non-lawyers by the Metropolitan Richmond Women's Bar Association, the booklet provides clear and up-to-date answers to many of the most commonly asked questions about adoption, paternity, family violence, divorce, spousal and child support, custody and visitation, property settlements, and etc.

Get your copy by contacting the Law Librarian at 540-372-1144, ext. 238.

James Wallace McGinly visited the Central Rappahannock region several times. Nothing unusual about that -- except that McGinly visited in 1862, 1863 and 1864; he was wearing a blue uniform at the time; and he recorded the details of his visits in a diary.

CRRL has been given a photocopy of that diary, thanks to Edward G. Nix of Illinois. It will be cataloged, and placed in CRRL’s Virginiana Collection.

Easy access to local codes and ordinances is just the sort of thing that we've come to expect from the Internet. The City of Fredericksburg, Stafford County, Spotsylvania County and Westmoreland County  -- all now have their codes available on line.

But for those times when on-line won't do, there are printed copies of all these codes available in the Law Library, where CRRL staff members can also assist you in using them.

 The mysterious powers-that-be have shipped over a few more boxes of that remarkable new book Wealthy in Heart: [An] Oral History of Life Before Fort. A. P. Hill. Those books will be distributed FREE, on a first come-first-served basis, until the boxes are emptied.

Seems as though every time there is an incident like the recent tragedy at Fort Hood, Clint Van Zandt turns up on TV, offering insight into what has happened and how to understand it. Van Zandt is well known for having been, for many years an FBI major crimes analyst, “profiler” and hostage negotiator. You may not know that he is today the president of a local business, Van Zandt Associates – an international risk and threat management consulting firm.

 A recent foray into CRRL’s mysterious vaults and back rooms failed to turn up Masonic Secrets or the Lost Ark – but it did turn up something interesting nonetheless: fifteen big, hard-bound volumes of the Lost Newspapers of Spotsylvania!

Pope Benedict XVI recently invited disaffected “Anglican Catholics” to swim the Tiber, as they say -- to cut their old ties to the Anglican Communion and hook up with the Roman Catholic Church. This may be the biggest thing to hit the ecumenical movement in generations….

Who are these disaffected folks? Why did the Pope invite them, and how might they respond?

There have been newspapers published in Fredericksburg since 1788. (The only gap came in 1862-65, when the city was devastated by war.)  Fredericksburg has been a one-newspaper town – the Free Lance-Star –- since the 1920s, but before that many newspapers were published locally….