Virginia Repositories—Richmond

The Museum of the Confederacy

Eleanor S. Brockenbrough Library
The Museum of the Confederacy
1201 E. Clay Street
Richmond, VA 23219

No phone
E-mail: library@moc.org. Please e-mail a specific and detailed request.
Web: http://www.moc.org/collections-archives/eleanor-s-brockenbrough-archives?mode=general

The Museum is open daily during the conference 10:00 a.m.‒5:00 p.m. Museum web: https://www.moc.org/visit-us/hours-admission?mode=richmond

Library Hours: Sporadic hours. Not open during NGS Conference; however, we may be open one day during NGS 2014 Conference. If you want to do research while you are in Richmond, send an e-mail to library@moc.org and request an appointment to do research. Watch the Conference Blog two weeks before Conference for up-to-the-minute news on research opportunities with the Museum of the Confederacy.

Repository

The Museum of the Confederacy is in the process of merging with the American Civil War Center to form the American Civil War Museum, which will be located at Tredegar Iron Works on Richmond’s downtown waterfront. For more details see https://www.moc.org/sites/default/files/new_name_nr.pdf. The move is scheduled to be completed in 2016.

The Museum’s library collection eventually will be moved to the Virginia Historical Society. See details at https://www.moc.org/sites/default/files/the_american_civil_war_museum_and_virginia_historical_society_to_combine_forces_on_archival_resources.pdf. The long term plans include digitizing some of the collection and making it available online.

Important!

For the foreseeable future, the Museum’s library collection will be available on a very limited and sporadic basis with no library staff. As a result, we will no longer be able to answer general history reference questions. We will attempt to answer questions about documents unique to our collections and accommodate on-site research or provide copies of documents; but, because there is no specifically designated library staff, we will handle those requests as other duties allow.

Be Prepared

Research fees and photocopying fees waived for members of the Museum and NGS Conference attendees if research opportunity is offered.

If you are given the opportunity to research by appointment, be on time, follow the rules, and leave promptly when your time slot ends.

Highlights of the Collection

What we do NOT have: military service and pension records; birth, marriage, death records, etc.; comprehensive lists of soldiers, prisoners, comprehensive military unit records.

What we DO have: Records of selected Confederate military units and commands; diaries (primarily Confederate soldiers); Confederate soldiers’ letters; correspondence, official and unofficial papers of Confederate military leaders; Jefferson Davis Family Collection (the single largest collection consisting primarily letters sent to President Jefferson Davis); a limited number of family history collections (primarily correspondence among family members); letters and autograph books of Confederate prisoners held in Northern prison camps (especially Johnson’s Island, Ohio); Confederate burial records (primarily photocopies and published, but also including original burial records for Hollywood and Oakwood Cemeteries in Richmond and Woodlawn Cemetery, Elmira, New York); the records of the Southern Historical Society (1869-1894, including wartime military records that the Society collected); and the “Roll of Honour” (a 346-volume biographical project amassed, ca. 1894-1940s, consisting of 50,000+ entries, most of which offer only name, rank, and unit – often erroneous – and perhaps 1,000 autobiographical entries, some of which have been transcribed and are available on the Museum’s website) http://www.moc.org/collections-archives/eleanor-s-brockenbrough-archives?mode=general

Finding aids and Inventories

A wide variety of MS Word file inventories are available upon request.

John M. Coski, Historian
The American Civil War Museum

Virginia Repositories—Richmond