Two Communities in the American Civil War

Thank you for visiting the Valley of the Shadow, also known as the Valley Archive.

Think of the Valley of the Shadow website as an archive that's housed in a dedicated building.

Our virtual archive is indebted to Thomas Jefferson for its architectural layout. Jefferson is best known as the third President of the United States. But he's also the founder of the University of Virginia (where this project is based), and the architect of its original buildings. Our octagonal floor plan is that of Poplar Forest, the summer home Jefferson designed for himself.

The Valley Archive is divided into eight rooms - Reception, Public Records, Reference Center, Letters & Diaries, Newspapers, Church Records, Military Records, and Maps & Images. These rooms are all hotlinked from the octagonal floor plan of our Archive. You'll never be far from the floor plan, or a link to it.

First, you'll walk in the front door to RECEPTION. You can read about the evolution of the Valley of the Shadow project, or you can email us your comments and suggestions.

You'll walk from Reception into the PUBLIC RECORDS room. Here you can search population and agricultural censuses, tax digests, and for Augusta county, records about slaveowners and free blacks. It's likely you'll find these particularly useful, as the federal, county, and city governments kept the most systematic records in nineteenth-century America.

Public Records is one of the rooms that opens on to the REFERENCE CENTER. This room is centrally located to enable you to get your bearings. To take full advantage of the Archive, you'll need to check that your browser is equipped to view all our graphics, and listen to our audio. In the Reference Center, you'll find the tools you need. There's a list of related websites, about the Civil War, Augusta County, American History, and the University of Virginia. The bibliography is located here, together with our pre-Civil War history fact book entitled The Impending Crisis. This links to our narratives of events leading to the Civil War, under the following headings: John Brown, Party Conventions, Lincoln's Election, Secession, and War Begins.

Turn left out of the Reference Center, and you'll come to our LETTERS & DIARIES repository. Letters and diaries are perhaps the richest, not to mention rarest, source that offers us insights into 19th Century life, in particular people's private thoughts and feelings. You can inspect our collection from Augusta County, Franklin County, and other areas, as well as a set of personal papers from the Civil War.

The NEWSPAPER READING ROOM is off the other side of the Reference Center. This contains transcriptions of articles of newspapers from both Augusta and Franklin counties. There's a newspaper search facility, together with a selection of articles from a number of major metropolitan newspapers from outside the Valley, including the New York Tribune and the Richmond Enquirer.

Off the left hand side of the passageway to the back of the Reference Center, you'll find our collection of CHURCH RECORDS. We have records from both Augusta and Franklin Counties, and McCauley's authoritative list of churches in Franklin County.

Adjacent to Church Records is our collection of MILITARY RECORDS. Our facility lets you search records from both Augusta and Franklin counties.

At the rear of the archive is our collection of MAPS & IMAGES. Here you'll find a collection of general maps of the Valley, together with maps of Staunton and Augusta County, and Chambersburg and Franklin County. There are also images of both Augusta and Franklin Counties.

Click here to go back to the contents page, and enjoy your visit to the Valley Archive!