VMHC Lectures

On April 16, 2009, Lorri Glover delivered a Banner Lecture entitled "The Shipwreck That Saved Jamestown: The Sea Venture Castaways and the Fate of America." The wreck of the "Sea Venture" on Bermuda in 1609 and the role its survivors played in the eventual rescue of the failing colony at Jamestown are dramatic tales from the founding years of the nation. In a new book, authors Lorri Glover and Daniel Blake Smith retell this account of shipwreck, courage, mutiny, and deliverance. The authors make a forceful case that the "Sea Venture" bears no small part in the ultimate survival of English colonization in America. Dr. Glover teaches American history at Saint Louis University.

This lecture was cosponsored with the Society of Colonial Wars in Virginia.

(Introduction by Paul A. Levengood)

The content and opinions expressed in these presentations are solely those of the speaker and not necessarily of the Virginia Museum of History & Culture.

On May 27, 2010, James Horn discussed his book A Kingdom Strange: The Brief and Tragic History of the Lost Colony of Roanoke." In 1587, a small band of men, women, and children put down the first tentative roots of English settlement on the sandy soil of Roanoke Island along the North Carolina coast, in what was then considered part of Virginia. In the face of dwindling supplies and hostile Indians, the English leader, John White, left his family and friends and re-crossed the Atlantic in a desperate attempt to assemble ships to rescue the failing colony. However, the threat from the Spanish Armada delayed his return until 1590, and when he did, the colonists had completely disappeared. In his dramatic new account, master historian James Horn revisits the tragedy of this first, failed effort at English colonization in the New World. He offers new evidence about what happened to the Lost Colony and its people. The author of five books on early American history, James Horn is vice president of research and historical interpretation and director of the John D. Rockefeller Jr. Library at Colonial Williamsburg. This lecture was cosponsored with the Society of Colonial Wars in Virginia. (Introduction by Paul A. Levengood)

The content and opinions expressed in these presentations are solely those of the speaker and not necessarily of the Virginia Museum of History & Culture.

On April 2, 2009, David Brown and Thane Harpole delivered this lecture entitled "Werowocomoco and Fairfield Plantation: Rediscovering the Forgotten Landscapes of Gloucester County." The excitement of discovering lost landscapes, including the Burwell family's ancestral home and the nearby village of Powhatan and Pocahontas, has resulted in the resurgence of support for historic preservation in the Middle Peninsula. David Brown and Thane Harpole described these activities to illustrate everyday life in colonial Virginia and to show how our interpretations of it influence our own day. Brown and Harpole are archaeologists, co-directors of the Fairfield Foundation, and founding members of the Werowocomoco Research Group.

(Introduction by Paul A. Levengood)

This event was cosponsored with the Society of Colonial Wars in Virginia.

The content and opinions expressed in these presentations are solely those of the speaker and not necessarily of the Virginia Museum of History & Culture.

On May 27, 2010, James Horn discussed his book A Kingdom Strange: The Brief and Tragic History of the Lost Colony of Roanoke." In 1587, a small band of men, women, and children put down the first tentative roots of English settlement on the sandy soil of Roanoke Island along the North Carolina coast, in what was then considered part of Virginia. In the face of dwindling supplies and hostile Indians, the English leader, John White, left his family and friends and re-crossed the Atlantic in a desperate attempt to assemble ships to rescue the failing colony. However, the threat from the Spanish Armada delayed his return until 1590, and when he did, the colonists had completely disappeared. In his dramatic new account, master historian James Horn revisits the tragedy of this first, failed effort at English colonization in the New World. He offers new evidence about what happened to the Lost Colony and its people. The author of five books on early American history, James Horn is vice president of research and historical interpretation and director of the John D. Rockefeller Jr. Library at Colonial Williamsburg. This lecture was cosponsored with the Society of Colonial Wars in Virginia. (Introduction by Paul A. Levengood)

On December 5, William C. Wooldridge delivered a Banner Lecture entitled "Mapping Virginia: Pictures of a Moving Place, 1587-1783."

Drawing from the engaging images in Mapping Virginia: From the Age of Discovery to the Civil War, Bill Wooldridge shows the very different ways that cartographers, and by implication their audiences, conceived of Virginia from generation to generation from the sixteenth century through the Revolutionary War. Until the mid-eighteenth century, these changing visions of Virginia had only a distant connection to changes in the colony's legal boundaries. Instead, they reflected the Old World's evolving understanding of the place, from exotic Eden to much of Eastern North America to the country around Chesapeake Bay to imperial England's greatest province.

William C. Wooldridge, a retired attorney and current VHS trustee, is the author of Mapping Virginia and of several articles on cartographic history.

The content and opinions expressed in these presentations are solely those of the speaker and not necessarily of the Virginia Museum of History & Culture.

On January 23 at noon, Sheldon Bart delivered a Banner Lecture entitled "Race to the Top of the World: Richard Byrd and the First Flight to the North Pole." In the age of adventure, when dirigibles coasted through the air and vast swaths of the earth remained untouched and unseen by man, one pack of relentless explorers competed in the race of a lifetime: to be the first aviator to fly over the North Pole. The main players in this high stakes game were Richard Byrd, a dashing navy officer and early aviation pioneer; and Roald Amundsen, a bitter rival of Byrd’s and a hardened veteran of polar expeditions. Each man was determined to be the first to fly over the North Pole, despite brutal weather conditions, financial disasters, world wars, and their own personal demons. Byrd and Amundsen’s epic struggle for air primacy ended in a Homeric episode, in which one man had to fly to the rescue of his downed nemesis and left behind an enduring mystery: who was the first man to fly over the North Pole? Sheldon Bart, an authority on polar pioneer Admiral Richard E. Byrd, is the president and founder of the Wilderness Research Foundation and a member of the board of governors of the American Polar Society.

On December 5, William C. Wooldridge delivered a Banner Lecture entitled "Mapping Virginia: Pictures of a Moving Place, 1587-1783." Drawing from the engaging images in Mapping Virginia: From the Age of Discovery to the Civil War, Bill Wooldridge shows the very different ways that cartographers, and by implication their audiences, conceived of Virginia from generation to generation from the sixteenth century through the Revolutionary War. Until the mid-eighteenth century, these changing visions of Virginia had only a distant connection to changes in the colony's legal boundaries. Instead, they reflected the Old World's evolving understanding of the place, from exotic Eden to much of Eastern North America to the country around Chesapeake Bay to imperial England's greatest province. William C. Wooldridge, a retired attorney and current VHS trustee, is the author of Mapping Virginia and of several articles on cartographic history.

On November 14, 2013, Elizabeth O'Leary delivered a Banner Lecture entitled "Carillon: The Story of a Richmond Community." An active community nestled near Richmond's Byrd Park, the Carillon neighborhood has a surprisingly rich, complex history. Basing her lecture on her recently published work,The Carillon Neighborhood: A History, Dr. Elizabeth O'Leary will relate the story of the area’s land and people from the colonial frontier to antebellum farmland; Gilded Age streetcar suburb to upscale Jazz Age development; site of a postwar housing boom to hub for civil rights activism. The lecture will provide special focus on the formation of the Carillon Civic Association and its efforts in the turbulent 1960s and '70s in nurturing one of Virginia's first successfully integrated communities.

On November 14, 2013, Elizabeth O'Leary delivered a Banner Lecture entitled "Carillon: The Story of a Richmond Community."

An active community nestled near Richmond's Byrd Park, the Carillon neighborhood has a surprisingly rich, complex history. Basing her lecture on her recently published work,The Carillon Neighborhood: A History, Dr. Elizabeth O'Leary will relate the story of the area’s land and people from the colonial frontier to antebellum farmland; Gilded Age streetcar suburb to upscale Jazz Age development; site of a postwar housing boom to hub for civil rights activism. The lecture will provide special focus on the formation of the Carillon Civic Association and its efforts in the turbulent 1960s and '70s in nurturing one of Virginia's first successfully integrated communities.

An art historian who resides in Richmond, O'Leary is the former associate curator of American art at the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts.

The content and opinions expressed in these presentations are solely those of the speaker and not necessarily of the Virginia Museum of History & Culture.

On October 31, David O. Stewart delivered a Banner Lecture entitled "Family of Assassins: The Surratts of Maryland." Everyone knows about John Wilkes Booth, the man who killed Abraham Lincoln on April 14, 1865. But what about Mary Surratt, the boardinghouse keeper who "kept the nest that hatched the egg" of assassination and was the first woman executed by the United States government? Or her son John, a Confederate courier and boon companion to Booth, who fled through Canada and Britain to Vatican City, ending up as a Papal Zouave until he was chased across the Mediterranean and hauled back to face a Washington, D.C., jury that deadlocked and set him free?