Lillian Gary Taylor, born Lillian Marie Gary, was the daughter of James Albert Gary and Lavinia Washington Corrie Gary. Mr. and Mrs. Gary had ten children, eight of whom survived to adulthood. Their firstborn, a daughter named Alberta Georgetta Gary and affectionately known as Daisy, was born September 20, 1858. Daisy died of scarlet fever […]

Through Lillian Gary Taylor’s Memories we glimpse the life of a late nineteenth-, early twentieth-century American family. In 1936, Mrs. Taylor set about chronicling her recollections of growing up in Baltimore society. After many years’ delay, she began work on this final version of Memories, on September 10, 1943, the day after Italy surrendered in […]

Lillian’s Collecting Journals provide a wonderful link between the collector and her collection. As she would add a book to her collection, Lillian would painstakingly record all the information she had about the volume into her journals, adding a carefully drawn hand-copy of the title page to the entry. These records, covering best-selling American fiction […]

Lillian Marie Gary, known affectionately as Lillie, was born near Baltimore in 1865. The fourth of ten children and the eldest of seven surviving sisters, Lillian was part of a large, loving family. Her parents, James Albert Gary and Lavinia Corrie Gary, were a wonderful influence on their childrens’ lives. Lillian remembers that her parents […]

  For forty-seven years, Duke practiced law in offices adjacent to the Albemarle County Courthouse, at 1 Court Square (shown at left in a 1920 Sanborn Corporation Map). The firm of Duke, Duke and Gentry moved into a building at 5th and Jefferson in 1921, when the town claimed the space on which Duke’s old […]

Boyhood Home     Judge Duke moved to Sunnyside in 1863, at the age of ten. Memories of the home were some of Duke’s fondest, as expressed in his Recollections. “In the early Spring of 1863,” he wrote, “my father sold the house in which he lived to Mr Wood—of Ivy, for his daughter Mrs […]

  Colonial officials carved Albemarle County out of Goochland County in 1744, as Virginia settlers streamed westward towards the Blue Ridge. Settled early, Albemarle became a important inland seat of Virginia politics. Thomas Jefferson made his home, Monticello, within its boundaries, and James Madison and James Monroe settled just north. Due largely to Jefferson’s influence, […]

  Duke rides in a carriage to a summer vacation spot in 1910.       R. T. W. Duke, Jr. lived through a period of precipitous technological change. During his lifetime, transportation by horse gave way to travel by automobile, electricity brought artificial light into homes, typewriters made handwritten business correspondence obsolete, and Americans […]

  In nineteenth-century Virginia, as elsewhere, politicians did much of their most important work informally. In the Virginia context, “Barbecues” were especially important occasions for the state’s elite to build connections among one another. From the beginning of the Civil War until after the end of Reconstruction (1870 for Virginia), Albemarle County’s landholders seldom convened […]