VMHC Lectures

In this August 11, 2022 lecture, Catherine Ingrassia explores the fascinating research from her book, “Domestic Captivity and the British Subject, 1660–1750.”

Indentured servitude was common in colonial America. When voluntary, it allegedly offered dispossessed British subjects the opportunity to improve their situation after their term. However, the practice of kidnapping or “spiriting away” people into involuntary indentured servitude occurred with great regularly. This talk discusses two fictional representations of the case of James Annesley (1715–1760). The heir to an Irish barony, Annesley’s uncle had him secretly kidnapped as a child and sold as an indentured servant in Virginia where he labored for fourteen years. When Annesley finally returned to England, he was the subject of more than sixty publications in London all of which emphasized his role as an “indentured slave.” These British narratives about colonial America give voice to persistent anxieties about the potential captivity of British subjects on colonial soil. More forcefully, they also reveal a concern about the potential erosion of male British identity within a corrosive climate where ignorant Americans masters hold them captive. The narratives strategically represent the American masters as particularly brutal to compensative for the vast British financial interests in the West Indies, the site of notoriously horrific conditions for enslaved people. In addition to discussing Annesley’s captivity, the talk will also consider other states of domestic captivity common within England and elaborate upon the especially threatening conditions for women held captive within a colonial, domestic space.

Catherine E. Ingrassia is Professor and Chair in the Department of English at Virginia Commonwealth University. In addition to her most recent book Domestic Captivity and the British Subject, 1660–1750, she is the author or editor of six other books including Authorship, Commerce and Gender in Eighteenth-Century England: A Culture of Paper Credit and the Cambridge Companion to Eighteenth-Century Women Writers.

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

Was the American Revolution really a revolution?

Was George Washington a great general?

Was the American victory a miracle or inevitable?

Dr. Joseph Ellis explores these questions and more in his lecture on July 20, 2022, about "The Cause," complicating conventional narratives to present a richly nuanced vision of this foundational moment in American history. A landmark work of narrative history, "The Cause" challenges the story we have long told ourselves about our origins as a people, and as a nation.

Joseph Ellis is one of the nation’s leading scholars of American history. A professor of history, he has taught in the Leadership Studies program at Williams College, the Commonwealth Honors College at the University of Massachusetts, Mount Holyoke College, and the United States Military Academy at West Point. Ellis’s commentaries have been featured on CSPAN, CNN, and PBS’s Lehrer News Hour, and he has appeared in several documentaries on early America. The author of twelve books, he was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for "Founding Brothers: The Revolutionary Generation" and won the National Book Award for "American Sphinx: The Character of Thomas Jefferson." Joseph Ellis’s latest work is "The Cause: The American Revolution and its Discontents, 1773–1783."

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

On July 14, 2022, historian Daniel Thorp delivered a lecture about his book, "In The True Blue’s Wake: Slavery and Freedom among the Families of Smithfield Plantation."

In 1759, William Preston purchased sixteen enslaved Africans brought to Maryland aboard the True Blue, an English slave ship. Over the next century, the Prestons enslaved more than 200 individuals and used their labor to establish and operate Smithfield, the family’s Virginia seat, and the plantations into which it was later divided. In the True Blue’s Wake tells the story of the men and women who were enslaved at Smithfield between its establishment in 1774 and the abolition of slavery there in 1865: who they were and how they and their families endured the experience of slavery. It then follows those families after their emancipation as they moved throughout the United States and explores how they and their descendants used their families’ new freedom to advance in the world.

Dr. Daniel B. Thorp is an associate professor of history at Virginia Tech. He is the author of several books, including Facing Freedom: An African American Community in Virginia from Reconstruction to Jim Crow; and In the True Blue’s Wake: Slavery and Freedom among the Families of Smithfield Plantation.

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

Transportation was not merely a way to move about the state or country. The ability to travel across the United States became highly restricted as early as the Scott v. Stanford (1857) case, which denied Dred Scott’s claim to freedom and citizenship after relocating from a free to a slave state. Nearly a century later, the Montgomery Bus Boycott helped spark what we now know as the classic phase of the civil rights movement, and bussing became paramount in the battle against massive resistance to school desegregation. In many ways, Virginia sits at the crossroads of these three distinct struggles, and Black Virginians helped to change the course of the country toward a more equal and accessible way of life.

This talk from July 8, 2022, recalls the lives and experiences of John Mitchell, Jr., Irene Morgan, Pauli Murray, and Bruce Boynton as they challenged transportation segregation in Virginia while simultaneously dismantling anti-Blackness in America’s social landscape.

On July 4, 2022, curator Karen Sherry led a conversation with William and Ann Oppenhimer, long-time collectors and advocates of folk art, as they shared stories about their work in the field and about the objects on view in the VMHC exhibition, "Visionary Virginians: The Folk Art Collection of William and Ann Oppenhimer."

On June 23, 2022, historian Samantha Rosenthal delivered a lecture about an LGBTQ community in Roanoke, Virginia, and how queer people today think about the past and how history lives on in the present.

Queer history is a living practice. Talk to any group of LGBTQ people today, and they will not agree on what story should be told. In her book "Living Queer History," Samantha Rosenthal tells the story of a small city on the edge of Appalachia. Interweaving historical analysis, theory, and memoir, Rosenthal tells the story of their own journey—coming out and transitioning as a transgender woman—in the midst of working on a community-based history project that documented a multigenerational southern LGBTQ community. Based on over forty interviews with LGBTQ elders, Living Queer History explores how queer people today think about the past and how history lives on in the present.

Gregory Samantha Rosenthal (she/her or they/them) is associate professor of history and coordinator of the Public History Concentration at Roanoke College. She is co-founder of the Southwest Virginia LGBTQ+ History Project, a nationally recognized queer public history initiative. Her work has received recognition from the National Council on Public History, the Oral History Association, the Committee on LGBT History, the American Society for Environmental History, and the Working Class Studies Association. Samantha is the author of two books, Beyond Hawaiʻi: Native Labor in the Pacific World (2018) and Living Queer History: Remembrance and Belonging in a Southern City (2021).

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 June 16, 2022, authors Jan Meck and Virginia Refo delivered a thoughtful talk and discussion about their new book, The Life and Legacy of Enslaved Virginian Emily Winfree.

The Life and Legacy of Enslaved Virginian Emily Winfree tells the true story of an African American woman who was the embodiment of courage, love, and determination. Given a small cottage after the Civil War by her former master and father of her children, she raised her family through the hardest of times, always keeping them together. The author will be joined during the program by moderator Joseph Rogers, Manager of Partnerships & Community Engagement at the VMHC, Dr. Emily Jones, great-great-granddaughter of Emily Winfree, and Ana Edwards, Public Historian, Chair of the Sacred Ground Historical Reclamation Project, information about which can be found at sacredgroundproject.net.

Dr. Jan Meck is a retired NASA scientist, and Virginia Refo is a retired foster care and adoption social worker and an experienced genealogist. Since retiring both have been docents and researchers at the Virginia Museum of History & Culture.

Dr. Emily J. Jones is the great-great-granddaughter of Emily Winfree. She believes her ancestors have directly influenced her work. Currently, she serves as the Deputy Director of the Center on Culture, Race & Equity and Director of the New York State Education Department’s Technical Assistance Partnership for Equity (TAP Equity) at Bank Street College of Education in New York City. Dr. Jones holds a PhD in Education Policy from Rutgers University, an MS in Elementary Education from Mercy College, and a BA in Economics from Spelman College.

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 20, 2022, historian James Horn delivered the 2022 Stuart G. Christian, Jr. Lecture about his book, A Brave and Cunning Prince: The Great Chief Opechancanough and the War for America.

In 1561, an Indian youth was abducted from Virginia by Spanish explorers and taken to Spain. Called by the Spanish Paquiquineo and subsequently Don Luís, he was introduced to King Philip II in Madrid, as well as to influential Catholic prelates and courtiers, before being sent back to America to help with the conversion of Indian peoples. In Mexico City, he converted to Catholicism and after many years was eventually able to secure his return to his homeland on the York River as a guide to a small group of Jesuits. There, he quickly organized a war party to destroy the mission and everyone associated with it. During the remainder of the sixteenth century, he and his brother, Powhatan, built a massive chiefdom that stretched from the James River to the Potomac, and from the coast to the piedmont. When the English arrived in Virginia in 1607, he and his brother chief launched a series of attacks on the settlers in an attempt to drive them out. These wars, the first Anglo-Indian wars in North America, spanned the greater part of the next four decades. Known by the English as Opechancanough, he was ultimately unsuccessful but would come closer than any of his peers in early America to succeeding. He survived to be nearly 100 years old and died, as he lived, fighting European colonists.

James Horn is the president of the Jamestown Rediscovery Foundation at Historic Jamestowne, the original site of the first permanent English settlement in America. He is author and editor of eight books on early America, including 1619: Jamestown and the Forging of American Democracy and A Land as God Made It: Jamestown and the Birth of America. His most recent book, A Brave and Cunning Prince: The Great Chief Opechancanough and the War for America, was published last November.

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 December 9, 2021, historian Bruce A. Ragsdale presented a lecture about his book, Washington at the Plow: The Founding Farmer and the Question of Slavery.

For more than forty years, George Washington was dedicated to an innovative and experimental course of farming at Mount Vernon, where he sought to demonstrate the public benefits of recent advances in British agriculture. The methods of British agricultural improvement also shaped Washington’s management of enslaved labor, and he was at the forefront to efforts to adapt slavery to new kinds of farming. His ultimate inability to reconcile the ideals of enlightened farming with coerced labor and race-based slavery was critical to his decision to free the enslaved people under his control. Washington at the Plow significantly enriches the more familiar biography of the revolutionary general and first president and offers a new perspective on the founders’ response to abolitionist appeals.

Bruce A. Ragsdale served for twenty years as director of the Federal Judicial History Office at the Federal Judicial Center. He has been a fellow at the Washington Library at Mount Vernon and the International Center for Jefferson Studies. He is the author of A Planters’ Republic: The Search for Economic Independence in Revolutionary Virginia and Washington at the Plow: The Founding Farmer and the Question of Slavery.

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

For generations, many have flocked to the shores of southeastern Virginia for its beaches, resorts, and seasonal fun at its many destinations. In this lecture from June 2, 2022, award-nominated nonfiction author and historian Nancy E. Sheppard takes a trip down “Memory Lane” to visit some of the beloved but lost attractions of Hampton Roads, including Buckroe Beach and Ocean View amusement parks. Learn more about the places that brought so much joy to many but are no more.

Nancy E. Sheppard, a writer and historian of her native Hampton Roads, Virginia, is the author of several books, including The Airship ROMA Disaster in Hampton Roads; Hampton Roads Murder & Mayhem; and Lost Attractions of Hampton Roads.

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