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The Eleanor S. Brockenbrough Library is the Museum's research facility and a special collections library. The Library maintains more than 15,000 books and pamphlets, 1,000 prints and sketches, and more than 200 shelf feet of manuscripts. Its valuable collection of documents, papers and books provides researchers information on the Confederate Army, Navy, and government, and postwar Confederate memorial organizations. A listing of some of the Library’s collections follows below.
Please note that the Brockenbrough library does not house Confederate service or pension records or other standard genealogical sources.
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Access and Research
Access to the library for research purposes is by appointment only, Monday - Friday, 10:00 a.m. - 4:30 p.m. There is a fee for research appointments; free appointments are a benefit of Museum membership. To set an appointment write to Library, The Museum of the Confederacy, 1201 E. Clay Street, Richmond, VA 23219 or e-mail us at library@moc.org.
Books and manuscripts within the Library's collection do not circulate. Photocopying service is available at a minimal cost. Click here for information on the Museum research services. Additional information and resources from the library are available in the Members Only section.
If you have questions about the library’s resources or services, please call
(804) 649-1861, extension 28 or email us at library@moc.org.
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TRANSCRIPTIONS FROM THE BROCKENBROUGH LIBRARY COLLECTIONS
Note: Additional transcripts of selected letters and diaries in the Library collection are available on the Members Only website as a benefit of membership.
Confederate Soldiers' Reminiscences from the Museum's "Roll of Honour"
* Revised and Updated *
The most valuable entries in the Museum's unique 346-volume biographical record project (undertaken in the 1890s and continued into the 1930s) are approximately 1,000 entries written and submitted by former Confederate soldiers. Museum Volunteer Ed Lee is transcribing these entries. The first transcripts -- available here -- feature entries from a volume consisting primarily of records of Tennessee soldiers.
Eyewitness Battle Accounts
More than 100 pages of transcriptions from the Eleanor S. Brockenbrough Library's soldier letters and diaries collections related to battles and skirmishes are available here.
This is is a large PDF document and will take slower servers several minutes to download.
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Finding Aids
Library staff are in the long-term process of creating a comprehensive searchable database of the collections. Although this database is not yet available on the website, the staff can use it to assist researchers upon request. Click here for more information on research.
Presented below are PDFs of list and table format inventories. These are less accurate and complete than the database in progress, but they provide details about the contents of specific collections.
Transcripts for collections indicated with a + are available on the Members Only segment of this website. Click here for more information on how you become a member of the Museum and gain access to these transcripts.
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Recent Addition. . .
The Brockenbrough Library collection continues to grow through the donation of books, manuscripts, prints, and other paper materials.
Exiled from her family home in Alexandria, Virginia, 21-year-old Eliza Waller Hunter was living in Orange Court House, Virginia, when she began keeping a pocket diary on January 1, 1862. In its pages she chronicled her life as a refugee in Orange and in Richmond. Her final entry on August 8th -- "I feel very badly" -- anticipated her death from typhoid a month later.
The diary is a donation from John N. Hackney, Jr., who is a collateral descendant of Eliza Hunter and her brother, Alexander Hunter, a Confederate soldier who wrote the 1905 classic, Johnny Reb and Billy Yank.
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In Our Vaults
The following is a listing of the major collections that are housed within the Eleanor S. Brockenbrough Library.
Jefferson Davis Family Collection
Featuring letters of Jefferson, Varina, and Varina Anne "Winnie" Davis, but consisting primarily of correspondence written to Jefferson Davis. |
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Confederate Government and Bureaucracy Collection
In particular, record books of the Treasury Department and Patent Office.
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Confederate Military Leaders Collections
Including significant collections relating to Archer and Joseph Reid Anderson, P. G. T. Beauregard, Henry Heth, Thomas J. "Stonewall" Jackson, Sam Jones, Robert E. Lee, Dabney H. Maury, John S. Mosby, W. H. F. Payne, and J. E. B. Stuart; an alphabetically arranged collection of official and unofficial documents by more than 100 other Confederate general officers. |
Robert E. Lee’s Appointment as Confederate General
| Confederate States Army Collection Series Collections of returns and correspondence from the Department of South Carolina and Georgia and General Carter L. Stevenson’s division, Army of Tennessee; several hundred muster rolls of Confederate companies; incidental papers relating to individual regiments, primarily in the Army of Northern Virginia; large collections of routine documents from several quartermaster and commissary officers; and letters and diaries written by Confederate soldiers. |
Confederate Prisoners of War Collection
A large collection of letters from Confederate prisoners held in Federal prison camps and 37 prisoner autograph books, primarily from Johnson’s Island, Ohio. |
Confederate Medical and Hospital Series
Featuring the papers of medical personnel, hospitals, and morning reports. |
Family History Series
Featuring the paper of soldiers and civilians that span the antebellum to postwar time periods. Most notable are the correspondence of a New York civilian who was engaged to a Confederate Virginian |
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Southern Women’s History Collection
A significant collection of original records of wartime women’s associations, wartime letters, and postwar reminiscences. |
African American History Collection
A small collection of documents relating to slaves, free blacks, and the employment of African Americans in the Confederate army. |
Hollywood Memorial Association Collection
The central archives of the association, 1866-1934. |
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United Daughters of the Confederacy Collection
A large collection of proceedings, chapter records, and historical records/reminiscences, primarily of the Virginia Division, 1900-1930; and sixty scrapbooks of "historical records" compiled by Mildred Lewis Rutherford, UDC historian general, 1910-1916.
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Veterans Collection
Published programs and proceedings of the UCV and Virginia Division reunions and meetings, as well as manuscript records of the New York Camp and several Virginia camps (some publications of Army of Northern Virginia and Army of Tennessee associations). |
Confederate Monuments and Memorials Collection
Large collections of original records relating to the Jefferson Davis Monument and Soldiers and Sailors Monument in Richmond, along with incidental documents and dedication addresses relating to dozens of southern monuments. |
Southern Historical Society Collection
A large collection of minute books and correspondence of the SHS (especially 1876-1894), along with manuscript copies of items published in Southern Historical Society Papers and a small collection of unpublished manuscripts. |
Confederate Memorial Literary Society "Roll of Honour"
A 346-volume biographical register containing names and basic information on approximately 1 in 15 Confederate soldiers, not to be confused with the Confederate Army’s Roll of Honor |
Confederate Imprint Collection
One of the world’s largest collections of items printed in the South from 1861-1864; indexed in published catalogs under the symbol "ViRC". |
Sheet Music Collection
More than 700 pieces of loose sheet music and bound volumes. |
George W. and Douglas B. Ball Numismatic Collection
Confederate currency, bonds and other financial instruments such as stock certificates, depositary certificates, and treasury checks. |
Map Collection
More than 400 items, including 115 manuscript maps; features maps created by the Confederate Topographical Engineers Bureau. |
Newspapers Collection
Several thousand wartime and postwar newspapers, including extensive wartime runs of bound newspapers from New York, Charleston and Columbia, South Carolina, and Richmond, Virginia, and scattered issues of more than 100 rare newspapers from the South, North, and Europe during the Civil War era. |
Prints and Sketches
The Museum’s collection of works of art on paper, comprising more than 1,000 lithographs, etchings, engravings, sketches, drawings, watercolors, and other media, featuring portraits of famous and obscure Confederates, battle and naval scenes, historically significant buildings, monuments, and works by Confederate soldier artists William Ludwell Sheppard and Allen Christian Redwood. |
United States Army Collection
Although the vast majority of material in the Library relates to the Confederacy, it also houses a small collection of official and unofficial papers relating to Union generals, soldiers, and commands. |
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Who Was Eleanor S. Brockenbrough?
 (1910-1985) Hired as assistant house regent when India Thomas was appointed house regent in 1939, Eleanor Brockenbrough was groomed for a position she was never to assume. More than any other person, however, she saw the Museum through its transitional years from shrine to modern museum. When executive director Peter Rippe replaced Thomas in 1963, Brockenbrough took the position of librarian and later assistant director. She served as interim executive director three times. The Museum’s research library dedicated in 1981 is named after her in honor of her contributions.
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