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I visited Virginia in July 2018 and let me tell you that not only is Virginia for lovers but it’s also full of books, good history, good food, and good people. I traveled the state from the north in Manassas, to the Northern Neck tidewater area, around Tappahannock, over to Richmond, down to Jamestown, out to Charlottesville, further down to the Halifax area, up through the Blue Ridge Mountains and Shenandoah Valley, and back to Manassas.
I drove more country miles than I did interstate miles and that is where the true beauty of Virginia lies, in its roads, trees and natural splendor. There were way too many little towns to mention that I drove through and fell in love with.
As a family historian land reminds me of ancestors, and for me Virginia is full of my ancestors.
Virginia is also full of books! One of my predilections I have is to collect books as I travel, I’ve always done so. I’d like to share with you the books that I came across, most of which I purchased, that are relevant to Virginia history and genealogy. As a self-proclaimed “book nerd” I have to tell you that Virginia is one of the most exciting places to find books, not only because there is so much written about her, but also because there are volumes that can only be found there that have been published in small runs by independent organizations such as family researchers or genealogical societies.
Make sure you check out the SLIDESHOW of books I purchased at the end of the article. #booknerd.
Reading Virginia: Books That I Purchased On My Trip
• Barbour, W. B. 1941. Halifacts. Danville: J. T. Townes Printing Company.
• Kelly, Brian C. 2003. Best Little Stories From Virginia. Naperville, IL: Cumberland House.
• Hogge, Dennis. 2013. Mathew Brady’s First Manassas: A Biography and Battlefield Tour. Centerville, VA: Old Dominion Publishers.
• Young, Henry Preston Jr. 1999. Country Folks: The Way We Were Back Then In Halifax County, Virginia. Lawrenceville, VA: Brunswick Publishing.
• Dabney, Virginius. 1971. Virginia: The New Dominion, A History from 1607 to the Present. Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press.
• Elstner, Carolyn Jones and Katherine Porter Clark. 2016. Dear Old Ellwood: A Home In The Wilderness. Washington, VA: Rappahannock Historical Society.
• Davis, Virginia Lee Hutchinson. 2006. Jamestowne Ancestors: 1607-1699. Baltimore: Genealogical Publishing Company.
• McCartney, Martha W. 2012. Jamestown People To 1800: Landowners, Public Officials, Minorities, and Native Leaders. Baltimore: Genealogical Publishing Company.
• McCartney, Martha M. 2007. Virginia Immigrants And Adventurers 1607-1635: A Biographical Dictionary Baltimore: Genealogical Publishing Company.
• Horn, James. 2006. A Land As God Made It: Jamestown and the Birth of America. New York: Basic Books.
• Horn, James. A Kingdom Strange: The Brief and Tragic History of the Lost Colony of Roanoke. New York: Basic Books.
• McCusker, John J. 1978. Money And Exchange In Europe And America, 1600-1775: A Handbook. Chapel Hill: UNC Press.
• Brain, Jeffrey P. 2011. In Search Of Bartholomew Gosnold. Tuscaloosa: Borgo Publishing.
Reading Virginia: Books I Saw And Will Acquire
• Cooper, William J. Jr. 2001. Jefferson Davis, American. New York: Vintage Books. [purchased 2019]
• Adams, Stephen. The Best and Worst Country in the World: Perspectives on the early Virginia Landscape. Charlottesville, University of Virginia Press. [purchased 2019]
• McCusker, John J. 1991. The Economy of British America, 1607-1789. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press. [purchased 2019]
• Ferling, John. 2013. Jefferson And Hamilton: The Rivalry That Forged A Nation. New York: Bloomsbury Press.
• Coffey, Lynn. 2015. Mountain Folk: More Oral Histories of the Appalachian People. Charlottesville: Quartet Books.
• Coffey, Lynn. 2009. Backroads: Plain Folk and Simple Livin’. Charlottesville: Quartet Books.
• Aiken, David. 2006. Blood Money: The Civil War And The Federal Reserve. Gretna, LA: Pelican Publishing. [purchased 2019]
• Hoffer, Peter. 2018. Uncivil Warriors: The Lawyers’ Civil War. New York: Oxford University Press. [purchased 2019]
• Thomas, Emory M. 2011. The Confederate Nation: 1861-1865. New York: Harper & Row. Thomas, Emory M. 2011. [purchased 2019]
• Groeling, Meg. 2015. The Aftermath of Battle: The Burial of the Civil War Dead. El Dorado Hills, CA: Savas Beatie LLC.
• Wiley, Bell Irvin. 2008. The Life of Johnny Reb: The Common Soldier of the Confederacy. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press. [purchased 2019]
• Wiley, Bell Irvin. 2008. The Life of Billy Yank: The Common Soldier of the Union. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press. [purchased 2019]
• Wolf, Thomas (ed.). 2011. Historic Sites in Virginia’s Northern Neck & Essex County. Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press. [purchased 2019]
• Genealogical Society of the Northern Neck of Virginia. 2012. The Shepherd’s Fold: Cemetery Records of Northumberland County Virginia Churches. VA: New Papyrus Publishing.
• Crowther, Prosser Jr. 2009. Rock Of Ages: The Story of 300 Years of Family Burials in Northumberland County, Virginia. VA: Northumberland Historical Press.
Reading Virginia: Books I Saw Yet Already Own
• Fischer, David Hackett and James C. Kelly. 2000. Bound Away: Virginia and the Westward Movement. Charlottesville: UVA Press.
• Breen, T. H. 1987. Tobacco Culture: The Mentality of the Great Tidewater Planters on the Eve of Revolution. Princeton: Princeton University Press
• Bailyn, Bernard. 2012. The Barbarous Years: The Peopling of British North America: The Conflict of Civilizations, 1600 – 1675. New York: Knopf.
• Fischer, David Hackett. 1991. Albion’s Seed: Four British folkways in America. New York: Oxford University Press.
• Horn, James. 1994. Adapting to a New World: English Society in the Seventeenth-Century Chesapeake. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press.
• Walsh, Lorena S. 2010. Motives of Honor, Pleasure, and Profit: Plantation Management in the Colonial Chesapeake, 1607 – 1763. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press.
• Price, Edward T. 1995. Dividing the Land: Early American Beginnings of Our Private Property Mosaic. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Reading Virginia: Slideshow Of Books I Purchased
I hope you found those books as inspirational as I found the people and places of Virginia to be. It’s a state where you can still find plenty of good manners and good people, a place where much of WHOLESOME life has not been eroded by modern times.
My ears were filled with joy to hear that wonderful Virginia accent, which is a shade different from a Texas twang or an Appalachian drawl – it’s has a beautifully sublime lilt to it! The true importance of this book list is in its research potential; genealogy is not simply compiling dates and names of ancestors but also in understanding the times in which they lived.
Reading opens up unimaginable avenues of contextual information to transition your work from genealogy to family history. There are multiple volumes of books similar to what I’ve enumerated available (and searchable) on Google Books, Ancestry or even the LVA.
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