I made mention Thursday of a story that appeared in an Associated Press release of the treasure that was recently discovered above the ceiling tiles in an office in the Virginia state Capitol building during renovation.Through the magic - and the interactive nature - of the weblog, I quickly received an email from someone who had the opportunity to look over the documents that had been hidden all these many years and were just recently discovered. That person was kind enough to forward these pictures for all to see.
To refresh your memory, the AP writer, Bob Lewis, provided the following;
RICHMOND, Va. (AP) -- The construction dust inside Virginia's 18th century Capitol is still so thick, the stately House of Delegates chamber is barely discernible.
But from the mess and debris, hidden texts have emerged that afford a fresh glimpse into forgotten times - and the issues that dominated debate on Capitol Square.
The books and documents were discovered during the ongoing $99 million foundation-to-roof makeover of Virginia's 200-year-old Capitol, said Richard F. Sliwoski, who is overseeing the project for the Department of General Services.
One discovery, a yellowing, cardboard-bound volume of thousands of pages of legislative and executive branch reports from 1863 contains Gov. John Letcher's order that 5,340 slaves from across the state be used to dig fortifications around Richmond, the Confederate capital, during the height of the Civil War.It documents that the Virginia Military Institute consumed 5,250 pounds of bacon and just three-fourths of a pound of tea in June of 1863. And salt - then the primary preservative of food - was so scarce the Joint Legislative Committee on Salt decreed that the mineral be rationed: 30 pounds per year for each man, woman and child in Virginia.
Construction workers discovered the book and other documents behind ceiling tiles in what had been the governor's third-floor suite of offices.
"As they were taking down the ceilings, the book fell with it," Sliwoski said.
Another report breaks down by gender the causes of insanity for scores of people committed to the state asylum over two years. One man was committed for "fever and loss of law suit," two men and one woman for love, one man and three women for jealousy and 11 men and three women for "pecuniary troubles."
To tie histories together, consider this:
At the same time the boys attending VMI were consuming all that bacon in June of 1863, and the legislature was duly making note of it in the documents discovered these many years later in 2006, Captain Pichegru Woolfolk was driving his Ashland (Virginia) Artillery battery toward a tiny town in Pennsylvania called Gettysburg. It was there only days later, during the assault on Little Round Top on July 2 that Capt. Woolfolk (after scheduling a duel with another member of Lee's artillery the same morning!) sustained a wound that put him out of the war - at least temporarily.
I was reminded of this bit of history - and trivia - when I read the line in the AP story, "As they were taking down the ceilings, the book fell with it ...," for this reason:
Captain Pichegru Woolfolk survived the war and was working in the Capitol building in Richmond one day in 1870 when, according to Harry W. Pfanz in his classic Gettysburg, The Second Day, the "ceiling in a chamber of Virginia's capitol fell, crushing him beneath it."
Gettysburg. Ashland Artillery. Tragic death. Renovation. Treasure. History.
