Virginia Historical Society and Library of Virginia

We spent Wednesday and Thursday here at the campground. We had taken so many photos Tuesday at the Virginia Aviation Museum and sightseeing around Richmond, that it took me until Wednesday morning to get the photos labeled and uploaded to our Picasa Web Albums. Then I was able to finish our blog post for Tuesday and publish it. I spent the rest of the time working on our Neale genealogy in preparation for our visit today to the Library of Virginia.

We left the campground this morning at 10:30 and drove up to the Virginia Historical Society's Museum. We found a parking place in back of the Historical Society and walked around to the front entrance.

From VA Historical Soc Museum & Richmond

We stopped to look at The War Horse sculpture that is a memorial to the 1½ million Confederate and Union Army horses and mules who died or were wounded in the Civil War.

From VA Historical Soc Museum & Richmond

We were greeted by one of the volunteers and she directed us to the room where the 100 year old Military Memorial Murals are being restored. Most of the room was roped off and there were 3 people up on scaffolds cleaning the murals and they were using Q-Tips to
clean with. 

From VA Historical Soc Museum & Richmond

We looked at exhibits that took us back 16,000 years in Virginia up to the present time. We saw displays of Pocahontas and John Smith and the early settlers in Virginia.

From VA Historical Soc Museum & Richmond

We next went to the Revolutionary War and the founding fathers of our country. We saw this brass and copper plate that was used to print 20 shilling Revolutionary War money.

From VA Historical Soc Museum & Richmond

The museum exhibits took us through the Civil War up to the present day. We saw exhibits of native-born Virginians who became famous actors, entertainers and sports figures.

We saw household items that were manufactured in Virginia to include this Hamilton Beach toaster - both Mike and I remember using a similar one when we were growing up.

From VA Historical Soc Museum & Richmond

The museum's exhibits are too numerous to list here and we did take a lot of photos that are in our photo album. We stopped by the Gift Shop on our way out and bought some postcards and Christmas tree ornaments which I collect as souvenirs of our travels.

After leaving the Historical Society, we stopped at a Five Guys Burgers for lunch before going to the Library of Virginia.

There is a parking garage below the Library of Virginia and we were lucky to find a vacant spot. We took the elevator up to the entrance and went up to the second floor to the genealogy and archives section. I told one of the staff that we were looking for Mike's Neale ancestors and after giving him the dates and county, he looked up some books for me and directed us to the section where they were at.

While I looked through the Northumberland County books for our Neales, Mike went to a different reading room to read the magazines there. I wish I could say I that I found new information on our Neales, but I didn't. I did find some information that may lead me to some new areas to research. We stopped by the Virginia Shop (gift shop) for more shopping before leaving the library. We had our parking ticket validated before leaving the library, so our parking here was free.

This evening we had another RV pull into the campground. Mike and Valerie and their daughter are only spending tonight here. They haven't had the trailer very long and it sounded like the dealership where they bought the RV didn't do a very good job showing them how to operate all the systems in the trailer. They hadn't had any hot water and Mike helped them locate the switch for turning on the hot water heater.

Tomorrow is our last day here and we still have a few places to go sightseeing in Richmond.