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Recent Acquisition - Photograph Collection

Imperial Tobacco Co., Ltd, 422 East Franklin Street, Richmond, VA

#mustseerva #rvahistory

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Allen & Ginter (43)

Duke Lehndorff Allen & Ginter’s Cigarettes Richmond, Virginia

Racing Colors of the World One Packed in Each Box of Ten Cigarettes

Rocket Werks RVA Cigarette Cards

#allen&ginter #rva #rvahistory #racingcolors #cityatomic

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Allen & Ginter (42)

Duke of Portland Allen & Ginter’s Cigarettes Richmond, Virginia

Racing Colors of the World One Packed in Each Box of Ten Cigarettes

Rocket Werks RVA Cigarette Cards

#allen&ginter #rva #rvahistory #racingcolors #cityatomic

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Allen & Ginter (41)

J. B. Haggin Allen & Ginter’s Cigarettes Richmond, Virginia

Racing Colors of the World One Packed in Each Box of Ten Cigarettes

Rocket Werks RVA Cigarette Cards

#allen&ginter #rva #rvahistory #racingcolors #cityatomic

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Allen & Ginter (40)

Pierre Lorillard Allen & Ginter’s Cigarettes Richmond, Virginia

Racing Colors of the World One Packed in Each Box of Ten Cigarettes

Rocket Werks RVA Cigarette Cards

#allen&ginter #rva #rvahistory #racingcolors #cityatomic

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Allen & Ginter (39)

Walter Gratz Allen & Ginter’s Cigarettes Richmond, Virginia

Racing Colors of the World One Packed in Each Box of Ten Cigarettes

Rocket Werks RVA Cigarette Cards

#allen&ginter #rva #rvahistory #racingcolors #cityatomic

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Spencer Roane House

900-902 East Leigh Street

Built, 1819

Demolished, 1958

[HOR] — looking toward 900-902 East Leigh Street

Where all the nonsense started.

One of the last houses built before the depression of 1819 blighted Richmond was that of Spencer Roane. Roane, whose home was at “Spring Garden” in Hanover County, had rented various houses in Richmond and in 1815 had purchased the site at Ninth and Leigh. The house was under construction in 1819, though he did not occupy it before the following year. When completed it was a two-story house, not yet stuccoed, with a kitchen and stable to the east.

(Mahockney Plantation) — William & Mary grad, jurist of the Supreme Court of Virginia, secret society founder, & states rights advocate Spencer Roane

Judge Roane had very little time to enjoy his house, as he died at Warm Springs on September 4, 1822. Undeserved oblivion has engulfed the name of a man who was the chief legal exponent of the ideas of Thomas Jefferson and was a formidable opponent of Chief Justice Marshall. [HOR]

(White House History) — 3rd President of the United States Thomas Jefferson — Rembrandt Peale, 1800

A nice how-you-doing from old Thom Jefferson. You know, the Renaissance man, the Mac-daddy architect who was also the principal author of the Declaration of Independence and the Virginia Statute of Religious Freedom, an all-around Founding Father who got busy with his slave Sally Hemmings? That’s right, he encouraged Roane to kick up the states rights fairy dust that would coalesce into Compact Theory, a quaint legal notion which became the underlying framework of the Confederacy’s wild notion of secession, and the minor conflict known as the Civil War.

(History.com) — map of North America depicting Jefferson’s 1803 purchase of Louisiana from the French

Not that overarching federalism bothered him when it came to making enormous land grabs during his presidency, a validation of Scott Fitzgerald’s observation that first-rate intelligence should be able to hold two opposing ideas in mind at the same time and still function.

[JWB] — antifederalist essayist and Spencer Roane bestie Judge William Brockenbrough, who wrote under the pseudonym Amphityon, and who was son of Dr. John Brockenbrough, who let Jeff Davis use his crib for the Confederate White House

Jefferson egged on Roane and his pals William Brockenbrough, Thomas Ritchie, and John Taylor, letting them fan the flames of federal resentment through a series of essays published in the Richmond Enquirer. It was not a pretty war of words, leading John Marshall to note:

I think for coarseness & malignity of invention he [Spencer Roane] surpasses all party writers who have ever made pretensions to any decency of character… He will be supposed to be the champion of state rights, instead of being what he really is, the champion of dismemberment. (Mahockney Plantation)

[TRSVP] — Thomas Ritchie

Born in 1762 in Essex County, Spencer Roane was a first cousin and close friend of the great newspaper editor, Thomas Ritchie. An ardent supporter of the Revolution, he was elected in 1783 to the Virginia House of Delegates. From 1786 to ’89 he was state senator from Essex, King and Queen, and King William Counties. His first judicial position was as a member of the General Court (which was abolished by the Constitution of 1851). In 1794, though only thirty-two years old, he became a member of the Virginia Supreme Court.

(National Gallery of Art) — 2nd President of the United States John Adams — Gilbert Stuart, circa 1800/1815

President Adams appointed John Marshall Chief Justice at the last moment of his administration, preventing Jefferson from appointing Spencer Roane. Recognizing the need of a Republican (i.e. democratic) organ in Virginia, Roane established the Enquirer in 1804 and made his cousin Ritchie the editor. The Enquirer was often termed “the Democratic Bible.” In that same year he rendered one of his most important decisions, sustaining the Glebe Act, which dispensed parish lands to the poor.

[Virginia Memory] — painting of Chief Justice John Marshall by Henry Inman —1832

Under Marshall the United States Supreme Court had been getting steadily stronger. In 1815 it came into conflict with the Virginia Supreme Court of Appeals over the right of Lord Fairfax’s devisee to keep) a royal grant. Roane took the position that the state had the right of confiscating and re-granting alien property, and when the United States Supreme Court reversed this decision the Virginia court refused to obey the mandate, claiming that there could be no appeal from decisions of the highest state courts.

[RE06111819] — an essay in the Richmond Enquirer by the anonymous author Hampden, AKA Spencer Roane, feeling the righteous anger of the Aggrieved True Believer

Roane’s articles at this time did much to crystallize public opinion in favour of states’ rights. He also wrote articles attacking Marshall’s opinion in McCullough vs. Maryland (on the constitutionality of the United States Bank) in 1819 and in Cohens vs. Virginia, involving the right of appeal from a state court to the United States Supreme Court in a criminal case.

It has been said of Spencer Roane: “His name would not have been so nearly forgotten had not the civilization and system which he helped to found been so completely overthrown by the War between the States.” Like Benjamin Watkins Leigh at a slightly later period, he was a complete states’ rights man, and his memory has perished with the cause he defended.

(Library of Congress) — Beers Illustrated Atlas of the Cities of Richmond & Manchester, 1877 — Plate F — showing ownership of the former Spencer Roane lot by Mrs. Webb & S. Harrison

In 1825 Roane’s executors sold the property to Lewis Webb, who lived there until his death at the age of eighty-three, in 1873. He had had the house stuccoed about 1850 and had added the third story in 1857. The disfiguring porch and bay-windows are apparently of still later date.

(Cvillepedia) — Reverend Thomas L. Preston

After Mr. Webb’s death the house was rented for several years to the Reverend Thomas L. Preston, prominent Presbyterian minister. In 1884 Isabella Webb sold it, and it was at this point that it was divided into two dwellings. The eastern half was bought in 1888 by John Bell Bigger, long Clerk of the House of Delegates, who died in 1899, but whose heirs only sold the house in 1911. The western half belonged until that same year to Howard M. Walthall.

June 2021 — looking toward McRae Hall and the former 900-902 East Leigh Street location

Since then the history of the two dwellings has been the sad one of deteriorating property, changing hands often and occupied by a low grade of Negro tenants. Only the fact that it was the Richmond home of a man important in the development of Virginia law and political thought makes it worth this long a study. [HOR]

Once again, Mary Wingfield Scott flashes her needless racism, but she does have a point. While it may not be great that Richmond was the eye of the slavery hurricane and a crucible for the Spencer Roanes of the world, you can’t make up for it by forgetting that it happened.

(Spencer Roane House is part of the Atlas RVA! Project)

Print Sources

[HOR] Houses of Old Richmond. Mary Wingfield Scott. 1941.

[JWB] Judge William Brockenbrough. Benjamin Blake Minor. The Virginia Law Register Vol. 5, No. 11 (March, 1900).

[RE06111819] Richmond Enquirer. June 11, 1819.

[TRSVP] Thomas Ritchie; a study in Virginia politics. Charles Henry Ambler. 1913.

#rvalegends #rva #rvahistory #leighstreet #cityatomic #atlasrva

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Recent Acquisition - Postcard Collection

Wilson Inn, United Methodist Residence for Young Women. Located in the historic area of Richmond, Virginia. Offers a comfortable place to live at reasonable rates, for single young women, ages 17-25. For attractive rates write: The Director, 2037 Monument Avenue, Richmond, Virginia.

#mustseerva

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Richmond, Virginia skyline

#mustseerva

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E-114 Old Dominion Building

William Lawrence Bottomley (1883-1951), the well-known architect who planned a number of sophisticated Colonial Revival houses for wealthy Richmond-area clients, also designed this large utilitarian structure. In 1946, Atlantic Rural Exposition, Inc., had it built for the State Fair of Virginia for approximately $116,000 on property then known as Strawberry Hill. The building features a two-story oval exhibition space capped by a hipped roof with twin cupolas, and has been referred to as a cattle barn, shed, covered ring, and Main Exhibit Building. It became a part of the Richmond Raceway Complex in 1999.

7555 East Laburnam Avenue

May 2021

#rva #rvahistory #laburnamavenue #rvamarkers #cityatomic #atlasrva

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Allen & Ginter (38)

Swallow-tailed Flycatcher Allen & Ginter Richmond, Virginia

Birds of America One Packed in Each Box of Cigarettes Allen & Ginter’s Cigarettes Richmond, Virginia

Rocket Werks RVA Cigarette Cards

#allen&ginter #rva #rvahistory #birdsofamerica #cityatomic

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Runaway

Dedicated to the lasting memory of Larry E. Bryant, a faithful and dedicated employee of the City of Richmond, Department of Public Works, who died from injuries received in a runaway boxcar accident while performing his duties in operation of the Richmond Floodwall Protection system on July 28, 1994. Also injured were City employees Ronald Coleman, Willie Edwards, John Hay and Robert Streater.

Virginia Capitol Trail, near Seventeenth & Dock Streets

December 2020

#rvamarkers #rva #rvahistory #capitoltrail #seventeenthstreet #dockstreet #atlasrva #cityatomic

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Recent Acquisition - Photograph Collection

Mayo Bridge, Richmond, Va.,1963 J. S. Wrenn Jr. Photograph Collection

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Recent Acquisition - Photograph Collection

Mayo Bridge, Richmond, Va.,1963 J. S. Wrenn Jr. Photograph Collection

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Recent Acquisition - Postcard Collection

Jefferson Hotel, Richmond, Va. Postmarked March 1914

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tribute to the smallest cosmonaut yuri gagarin.

#spacerace

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Ancient Advertising(118)

Rebel Diesel Behind Building =>

515 Dinwiddie Avenue

The building is attached to 515 Dinwiddie, but the sign is actually on the Sixth Street side.

April 2021

#rva #rvahistory #ancientadvertising #sixthstreetmanchester #cityatomic #dinwiddieavenue