National Park Service Offers Downtown Richmond Programs Highlighting the Capital's Civil War History

Date: July 10, 2008
Contact: Mike Andrus, 804 226-1981 x. 30

The National Park Service will present during the months of July and August a weekly series of downtown Richmond talks, tours and tales highlighting the capital’s Civil War history. David W. Lowe, National Park Service historian, opens the series on July 20 with a talk on his experiences in editing and publishing the journals and correspondence of Lt. Col. Theodore Lyman. Col. Lyman served on the staff of General George G. Meade, from 1863 to the Civil War’s end in 1865. The program will be held at 2 p.m. at Richmond National Battlefield Park’s Civil War Visitor Center at the historic Tredegar Iron Works, located at 470 Tredegar Street. This event is free and open to the public. Parking is available on site for $3 an hour.

In Meade’s Army: the Private Notebooks of Lt. Col. Theodore Lyman,Lowe has collected and annotated the writings of Theodore Lyman. Lyman was an eyewitness to the battles of the Virginia campaigns of 1864-1865, including the battle of Cold Harbor, and wrote detailed journals and correspondence throughout his time with the Army of the Potomac. A collection of Lyman’s letters to his wife during the Civil War was published in 1922 under the title Meade’s Headquarters, 1863-1865; it has long been a valuable resource for historians. With the publication of Lyman’s notebooks, Lowe has provided historians and general lovers of history with a broader picture of Lyman’s experience with the Army of the Potomac, and an even more intimate view of the inner workings of that army’s headquarters.

Please join the National Park Service and its partner, the American Civil War Center, for these upcoming Capital History talks and tours:

• July 27—“Men of Iron” Walking Tour followed by a talk by Calder Loth, Senior Architectural Historian with the Virginia Department of Historic Resources, on the rebirth of the Tredegar Gun Foundry (begins at 1 p.m. at the Tredegar Iron Works)
• August 3—Mark Greenough, historian at the State Capitol, and Park Ranger Mike Gorman will guide tours of the Confederate capitol and grounds (begins at 2 p.m. at the Washington Statue on the Capitol grounds)
• August 9—Talk on women’s roles in the Civil War followed by “Laboring on the Home Front,” a ranger-guided walking tour of the Tredegar Iron Works, canal and Brown’s Island to focus on the contributions of the female, black and foreign-born workers in the city. (begins at 1 p.m. at the Tredegar Iron Works)
• August 16—Talk on Richmond’s Civil War prisons followed by a ranger-guided walking tour of Belle Isle (begins at 1 p.m. at the Tredegar Iron Works)
• August 23—Ranger-guided walking tour of the historic Tredegar Iron Works emphasizing the men and machines that armed the Confederacy (begins at 2 p.m. at the Tredegar Iron Works)