Bullets and scabs and hair art, oh my!

BY EDIE GROSS

Elijah Johnson was very, very lucky.

The soldier in the 15th Virginia Cavalry was carrying a small diary and a Bible in his left coat pocket when a skirmish broke out near Culpeper Courthouse on Sept. 13, 1863.

The bullet that might have killed him passed clean through his journal but lodged neatly in his Bible.

Capt. John Quincy Marr of the Virginia militia was not quite so fortunate.

On June 1, 1861, he became the first Confederate officer to die in the Civil War after being shot at Fairfax Courthouse.

The bullet that killed Marr and the journal and Bible that saved Johnson are part of a unique exhibit at the Virginia Historical Society in Richmond, titled "Bizarre Bits: Oddities From the Collection."

It's a fairly random assortment: everything from crude surgery tools and Victorian hair art to witchcraft trial records and at least one smallpox scab.

Essentially, staff members at the historical society were asked to name the oddest item they'd come across while examining the organization's vast holdings, which include 8 million manuscripts, 200,000 photos and more than 1,500 paintings, 5,000 maps and 32,000 objects.

The resulting list was whittled to about 40 items, which are on display through March 27. The weirdness factor is the only true link among them.

"We've been collecting for over 175 years," said William Rasmussen, lead curator at the historical society. "It's inevitable when you have a collection as large as ours for there to be some odd items. There are undoubtedly more where these came from."

The sheer randomness of the pieces is a big part of what makes the exhibit so much fun. You never quite know what you're going to encounter next.

One minute, you're staring at a tiny smallpox scab, removed from a baby in 1876 and mailed to a family in Charlottesville to be used for inoculation purposes.

The next, you're looking at a Swiss medical book from the 1500s with entire paragraphs blotted out by acids and hot irons, thanks to the Inquisition.

In one corner hang two silhouettes created in the early 1800s by artist Martha Ann Honeywell, who cut them out with her mouth since she was born with no hands or lower arms.

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Visits to the Virginia Historical Society are free. The museum at 428 North Boulevard in Richmond is open Tuesday through Saturday from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. and Sundays from 1 p.m. to 5 p.m. Starting next week, the museum will also be open on Mondays from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m.

The facility includes 14 gallery spaces, eight permanent exhibitions and a 5,200-square-foot reading room where visitors can do historical and genealogical research. You can search the historical society's holdings on its website at vahistorical.org.

In addition to "Bizarre Bits: Oddities From the Collection," current exhibits include:

"The Story of Virginia, an American Experience," which covers 16,000 years of history--the good and the bad, from prehistoric times to present--with family-friendly displays, interactive features, question-and-answer games and neat items like a 17th-century dugout canoe and a 1918 Richmond street car

"Virginians at Work," which shows how Virginians earned a living as the economy changed over the last 400 years

"The Virginia Manufactory of Arms" and "Arming the Confederacy," which showcase muskets, pistols, swords and rifles produced in Virginia in the 1800s

Starting Friday, "An American Turning Point: The Civil War in Virginia" examines how the men, women and children of Virginia experienced the war, which marks its sesquicentennial this year. This exhibit, which features more than 200 artifacts, will stay at the Virginia Historical Society until Dec. 30. Then it begins four years of travel to other museums across the state, including The National Museum of the Marine Corps, where it will stay for the first six months of 2014.

Read more stories about Fredericksburg
Date published: 1/31/2011

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