Housed in Special Collections, the Oral History collection (RG 26-) comprises over 250 individual interviews with persons affiliated in some capacity with The University of Virginia. Administrators, faculty, alumni, staff, faculty wives and children, and businessmen share their stories of life at the university and within the greater community of Charlottesville. These interviews span the […]

Guide to the Papers The University’s collection of Jefferson papers comprises some 3,650 items. Most are original documents or contemporary transcripts made by secretaries and family members, but some are more recent transcripts and photographic or electrostatic copies of documents which remain in private hands or in less readily accessible institutional repositories. Of the total, […]

The Holsinger Studio Collection constitutes a unique photographic record of life in Central Virginia from before the late 1800s through the first decades of the twentieth century. The collection consists of approximately 10,000 wet-plate glass negatives and 500 celluloid negatives from the commercial studio of Rufus W. Holsinger—and later his son, Ralph. Approximately two-thirds of […]

Richard Thomas Walker Duke, Jr. and the Duke Family Papers at the University of Virginia Between 1899 and 1926, Richard Thomas Walker Duke, Jr., a prominent Albemarle County, Virginia, jurist and civic leader, recorded the most memorable events of his life in five, leather-bound volumes for the benefit of his children. This website contains digital […]

Jackson Davis, an educational reformer and amateur photographer, took nearly 6,000 photographs of African American schools, teachers and students throughout the Southeastern United States. His photographs — most intended to demonstrate the wretched conditions of African American schools in the south and to show how they could be improved — provide a unique view

The history of Virginia and that of the Cabell family are inextricably linked; indeed, since about 1726, the Cabells have been one of the Commonwealth’s most interconnected and influential families. This site offers a broad introduction to the Cabell family and to the extraordinary archival material that Cabells in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries left […]

About the U.Va. Visual History Collection: This database now contains images from various sources throughout our collections. There are some major categories, most of which are related to the University of Virginia. These image categories are: • The Rotunda • Sports and Athletic Events • Faculty and Students throughout U.Va. history • People–surnames A-C (not […]

In 1924 Paul Victorius left his home in New York City to study medicine in London. As he pursued a medical degree he began collecting rare books and manuscripts, focusing primarily on material concerning Charles Darwin and the theory of evolution. After two years, Victorius dropped his medical studies and opened his first bookshop, selling […]

Albert H. Small is a real-estate developer in Bethesda, Maryland who earned a degree in chemical engineering from the University of Virginia in 1946. The Declaration of Independence Collection is the most comprehensive in the world about the document. Small pledged his entire collection to the University, where selected items are now on display in […]

Marion duPont Scott (1894-1983) was an internationally renowned Virginia horse breeder and owner of Montpelier, James Madison’s Orange County home. A great-granddaughter of the founder of E. I. du Pont de Nemours & Co., Mrs. Scott grew up at Montpelier. For a time, she was married to Hollywood actor Randolph Scott. She owned and bred […]