History Blog

Our libraries will be closed on Thanksgiving and the day after, so now's the time to pick up some reading to take you through the holiday. We have many cookbooks to help plan the feast, but of our other collections these three books tell stories especially true to life and true to the heart to help make your holiday a warm one.

 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.

Civil War - Fredericksburg: Then & Now was released October 28. This new DVD is a cooperative production of the Civil War Round Table of Fredericksburg and the Central Virginia Battlefields Trust.

Come to the Headquarters Library theater onThursday, November 5, 7-9 pm, to view parts of the DVD, and meet with the producers, director, and narrator who will be available for questions.

Four Mayors of Fredericksburg: An Oral History by Archer Williams.
Former mayors Charles Cowan, Josiah Rowe, Edward Cann, and Lawrence Davies give their impressions of the city's growth under their administrations, from the 1950s to the 1980s.

By Jane Kosa, CRRL Staff

Imagine living in Fredericksburg in the 1860s and seeing the bustling riverfront shut down during the first year of the war. Picture the remains of the railroad bridge across the Rappahannock that the retreating Confederates wrecked in April 1862. See the pontoon boats that the Army of the Potomac used to construct temporary bridges to cross the river. Stand at the southern end of Marye's Heights and relive the December 1862 Battle of Fredericksburg. Take a walk down Hanover and Liberty Streets in 1864 and view the shattered buildings. Such is the power of the photographic lens.

 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!

You can search genealogy collections from North America, Europe, Australia, and more with Ancestry® Library Edition. There are over 4 billion listings for individuals found in more than 4,000 databases. Ancestry® includes many censuses, vital records, immigration records, family histories, military records, court & legal documents, directories, photos, maps, and more.

This interview airs beginning Wednesday, October 28.
Dr. Crawley is the Distinguished Professor of History who brings the story of the university to life. He is the author of author of University of Mary Washington: A Centennial History, 1908 to 2008. With fascinating anecdotes and an insider’s perspective, he talks with Debby Klein.

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…. 

Ghost stories abound in our area. From a lovelorn lass at a colonial mansion to a Virginia patriot fallen on hard times to soldiers for whom the battle goes on, our region is rife with spirits of all sorts. This fall, take time for a tour of the Ghosts of Fredericksburg.