The Office of Historic Resources provides a wide range of programming on topics of historic importance to the city, the region, and the nation. View some of our recent speaker presentations, below.

Civil War Veterans and Opioid Addiction in the Postwar Decades  with Jonathan S. Jones, PhD. (August 27, 2022)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f-L76tHuXsw&t=6s

Unequal Access: Segregation of Fairfax County Libraries
(February 13, 2022)

Fairfax County Public Library staff members Chris Barbuschak and Suzanne LaPierre present their new research on the segregation of Fairfax County's public libraries. 

Slave Trading in the Civil War South
February 26, 2022

Robert Colby, a postdoctoral fellow at Christopher Newport University, will speak on the survival of the trade in slave during the Civil War, exploring the slave trade's connection to military events, emancipation, and Confederates' expectations of a slaveholding future.

2021

So Runs the World
(January 23, 2021)

Author and poet Lisa Samia as she explores the close relationship of John Wilkes Booth and his older sister Asia Booth Clarke.

The 1^st United States Colored Infantry
(February 27, 2021)

Civil War historian Bryan Cheeseboro presented the story of the 1^st United States Colored Infantry.  This was not just another regiment, but one of the Black regiments raised right here in the nearby District of Columbia.

Chalkboards to Smartboards to Virtual: 150 Years of Free Public Education
(March 14, 2021)

Historic Resources Director Susan Inskeep Gray explores the major milestones of Fairfax public schools from 1870 through today.

Unlike Anything That Ever Floated:  The Monitor and Virginia and the Battle of Hampton Roads
(March 27, 2021)

The battle between the USS Monitor and the CSS Virginia (ex USS Merrimack) erupted in Hampton Roads, Virginia, Sunday, March 9, 1862 and represented naval, industrial, technological, and social revolutions during the American Civil War. Watch as author Dwight Hughes reveals the dramatic story.

The Road to Happiness
(April 11, 2021)

This silent film produced by Ford Motor Company features scenes in Fairfax County and what is now Fairfax City, with local residents playing key roles.  Christopher Barbuschak, an archivist/librarian with the City of Fairfax Regional Library who been fascinated with the film since childhood, shared his extensive research to identify actors and locations.

Know Their Names: The Enslaved People of Fauquier County
(April 24, 2021)

The Policy Limits to Lincoln's Clemency
(May 22, 2021)

Forgotten Fairfax: Lost Towns and Communities
(June 13, 2021)

The Writing on the Walls: Conserving and Analyzing Civil War Graffiti with Advanced Technology
(June 26, 2021)

Agents for Change: Female Activism in Virginia from Suffrage Today
(July 12, 2021)

Virtual talk with curator Karen Sherry, Ph.D., of the Virginia Museum of History and Culture in Richmond. Explores the traveling exhibition of the same name.

"Determined: The 400 Year Struggle for Black Equality"
(August 8, 2021)

Virtual talk with curator Karen Sherry, Ph.D., of the Virginia Museum of History and Culture in Richmond. Explores the traveling exhibition of the same name.

Americanization in the Classroom
(Sept. 8, 2021)

2020

The Campaign for Woman Suffrage in Virginia
(August 12, 2020)

Too Much for Human Endurance: The George Spangler Farm Hospitals and the Battle of Gettysburg
(August 27, 2020)

The Occoquan Suffrage Prisoners
(September 13, 2020)

Angelina Grimké: One Woman Against a Nation
(September 26, 2020)

First and Always: A New Portrait of George Washington
(November 15, 2020)

Lee is Trapped and Must be Taken
(November 21, 2020)

Author Rick Schaus focuses on the aftermath of the bloody Battle of Gettysburg and General George Meade’s response to President Lincoln’s mandate to bring about the “literal or substantial destruction” of Gen. Robert E. Lee’s retreating Army of Northern Virginia.

In Their Words: A Civil War Christmas
(December 13, 2020)

Re-enactors bring to life Civil War-era letters, poems, and other Christmastime readings. Listen to the words of soldiers, civilians, and enslaved people as they remember Christmas in the antbellum and Civil War period.