Blog Entries

Winchester has certainly been home to many remarkable people, including many women over the decades who owned and operated their own businesses. Several in particular stand out for the unique ways they showed strength in their careers as businesswomen.

While going through a collection of personal papers, staff at the Stewart Bell Jr. Archives found this sweet handmade dance card for a Grand Masquerade Ball. There isn’t much information about who hosted the ball or when, but the dances, which include a grand march, the two-step, the waltz, German figure, and the Virginia Reel were all popular in the middle to late nineteenth century.

Did you know that a famous classic American writer was originally from Frederick County?  When people think about Willa Cather (1873-1946), they often associate her with the Midwest (she spent her teenage and college years there, and many of her novels are set in the Midwest), but actually Cather spent much of her childhood in our neighborhood.  

Recently, one of our researchers sent us an old news clipping found in a family scrapbook. The article, entitled “The Handley Library A Priceless Boon: Nemo Thinks All the Winchester People Should Feel Very Grateful For It” was undated but the content suggests it was written shortly after the Handley Library opened to the public in 1913.

Many of us are stuck at home right but we can still let our imaginations soar with stories from the past. Winchester native Admiral Richard E. Byrd (1888-1957) had an unquenchable thirst for adventure his entire life. At the age of twelve, he made an unsupervised journey around the entire world.  When the United States entered into World War I, Byrd received flight training and by 1918 had earned his wings. 

Are you a doodler? If you are, you might appreciate this sketch found in an account book kept by George William Bragg between 1880 and 1884. The sketch shows a fantastical landscape of giant books connected by ladders and stacks. Meanwhile, a small figure in a top hat scrambles to reach the peak via a high staircase leading to what is labelled “room at the top.”

Frederick County, Virginia, Courts-Martial of Militia Troops conducted between September 1755 and October 1761, transcribed by John Walter Wayland from originals in back pages of  Frederick County Deed Book 18, are now available online through the Stewart Bell Jr. Archives Digital Collections.

Interview with Becky Ebert from the Stewart Bell Jr. Archives. Learn how to do research in the archives department, the history, genealogy, upcoming programs, and more!

Listen here.

The Stewart Bell Jr. Archives and the Museum of the Shenandoah Valley are again partnering to host Shenandoah Valley Heritage Day on Saturday, March 7, from 10 a.m. to 1:30 p.m. at the Museum of the Shenandoah Valley (MSV).

“Patient and long we waited for the day/ When the saloons should all be wiped away,” begins The Doom of the Saloon, one of several song scores to be found in the book Best Temperance Songs, published in 1913.   This book and many other prohibition related items are featured in the latest exhibit by the Stewart Bell Jr. Archives.

On September 2, 1919, only a few months after their return from Europe, members of Company I of the 116^th Virginia Infantry marched down North Loudoun Street as part of a World War I Victory Parade.

Company I was organized at Winchester in March 1911 and formed part of the longest serving unit of the Virginia National Guard, the 116^th Virginia Regiment. The regiment, formed in 1741, had participated in every major American conflict beginning with the French and Indian War.

Last week, Craig Cobb and his family visited the Stewart Bell Jr. Archives from Indiana. While here they donated a personal account of the Battle of Cedar Creek written by Mr. Cobb's ancestor, B. F. [Benjamin Franklin] Cobb, in 1907.

You never know what will be the next donation to the Archives, or where it will come from. In this latest blog post from the Stewart Bell Jr. Archives, photograph assistant Bettina Helms tells the story of how we acquired several new images of the Baker family of Winchester.

In June, Rebeca Thibodeau of Ocala, Florida contacted the Archives after she had purchased a framed set of eight pictures of Henry Baker family members at a church rummage sale. After researching the family, she realized they were from the Winchester area. Would we like to have them?

College student Matt Geczy worked on a number of projects for the Stewart Bell Jr. Archives this summer and wrote this blog post to share his experience. 

Visitors to the Handley Library can enjoy a new exhibit put together by Archives intern Matt Geczy featuring items from the Jeannette and Robert G. Harper Family Papers. This new collection consists of personal and business papers of the Gray family of Berkeley County, West Virginia, and shows the family’s role in the history and development of Berkeley County from the late 1700s through the Civil War, when it became part of the newly formed state of West Virginia, and into the early twentieth century.