Colonial Williamsburg Research Division Web Site

Special Collections, Subject Areas

The subject areas defined for the Special Collections in the Rockefeller Library's Collection Development Policy include:

  • Virginia and the Chesapeake region to 1865
  • Anglo-Americans significant to Virginia history to 1800
  • African-Americans in colonial Virginia and America
  • Women and family in colonial Virginia and America
  • Native Americans in colonial Virginia
  • Anglo-American social, economic, and mercantile development to 1865
  • Anglo-American imperial administration, particularly as it relates to Virginia
  • The American Revolution, particularly in Virginia
  • Early American law, medicine, science, agriculture, industrial and domestic crafts; European works on these subjects
  • American theater to 1800
  • Conduct and manners; also instruction for servants to 1800
  • Dress and fashion in colonial America
  • Music and dance, 1650-1800
  • Travel accounts of Virginia to 1865
  • Significant examples of early American printing and binding, especially that of Virginia
  • Books shown by documentary evidence to have been sold in colonial Williamsburg or of known significance to colonial Virginians
  • Books with bookplates or inscriptions of colonial residents which provide evidence of eighteenth-century reading patterns
  • Books, playbills, broadsides, legal documents, etc. printed in eighteenth-century Williamsburg
  • Books bound in eighteenth-century Williamsburg
  • Genealogical records relating to eighteenth-century Williamsburg residents
  • Architectural and landscape drawings and photographs relating to the restoration of Colonial Williamsburg and to eighteenth-century Virginia architecture and gardens
  • Photographs, field notes, and research notes compiled by Colonial Williamsburg architectural historians during the process of reconstructing Colonial Williamsburg buildings
  • Twentieth-century research materials relating to historical, archaeological, and architectural research conducted by Colonial Williamsburg employees
  • Twentieth-century research relating to American history, particularly theses and dissertations, in microformat