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In The Beginning... It was September of 1991 when Edward L. Ayers proposed The Valley Project. Perceived to be a standard novel portraying the life and times around the Civil War, Ayers began collecting information for a comparison between the North and South communities centrally involved in the war; Augusta County, Virginia and Franklin County, Pennsylvania. Ayers collected information from all kinds of sources including letters, diaries, records and eventually had enough information to begin his creation. However, Ayers soon realized that computers were swiftly becoming the way of the future and he could use them to his advantage. With donations from IBM, the newly founded Institute for Advanced Technology in the Humanities (IATH), at the University of Virginia, began converting the documents into electronic copies and continued to hunt for more documents. It was the fall of 1993 when Thornton Staples, associate director of IATH, showed Mosaic to the group. Mosaic was an early computer capable of viewing the World Wide Web and thus changed the flow of thinking for the group from a digital project - to an online archive.
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The People
Co-Editors
Edward L. Ayers - Founder of Valley of the Shadow project.
William G. Thomas, III - Project Manager (1996 - 2001)
Anne Sarah Rubin - Project Manager (1994 - 1996), Part-Time Consultant (1997 - present)
Project Managers
Andrew J. Torget - Current Project Manager
Susanna Lee - Project Manager (2001 - 2003)
Amy E. Murrell - Interim Associate Director of the Virginia Center for Digital History (1999 - 2000)
Virginia Center for Digital History Staff (VCDH)
Kim Tryka - Associate Director of the VCDH
Jennifer Muter - VCDH Programmer
Felicia Johnson - VCDH Web Designer
Alice Carter - Curriculum Developer and Coordinator
The People
The official site's list of those who contributed along with role's in the project can be viewed here.
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Navigation The Valley of the Shadow website's navigation is particularily interesting. The main navigation page has three octagonal floor plans set up for each of; The Eve of War, The War Years, and The Aftermath. From within each floor plan, each room is a link to another page of the site whether it be Letters & Diaries, Church Records, or Maps & Images to name a few. At the bottom of every page is a link to this main navigation page.
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Snapshot Bibliography Information gathered including quotes and pictures: Copyright 1993-2004, All Rights Reserved Edward L. Ayers, http://valley.vcdh.virginia.edu/
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What is it? The Valley of the Shadow is comprised of thousands of war-time documents. The documents are divided into many sub-sections, with the overall three being; The Eve of War, The War Years, and The Aftermath. The documents mostly originated from the two cities Augusta County, Virginia and Franklin County, Pennsylvania. The Eve of War (Fall 1859 - Spring 1861) Includes statistics comparing the two cities with references to land values, soil types, real estate, and other statistics. Also included in The Eve of War is Church Records such as information on the religions of the time including Presbyterian, Episcopal, Lutheran and others. However, one of the most interesting topics about The Eve of War are the Letters & Diaries. This page provides links to various personal papers kept by the people of the two cities including the original documents. The War Years (Spring 1861 - Spring 1865) Contains Letters & Diaries, Official Records, Soldiers' Records, and other documents relating to the battles that occured. A particularily interesting page is the Battle Maps. This page contains an interactive map where you can view the progress of both the Augusta and the Franklin battalions as they travelled across the country, where the battles took place, and a time scale to see approximately how long the travelling time was. You can also view historic cities versus current cities. The Aftermath (Spring 1865 - Fall 1870) Contains documents including Census & Veteran Records as well as Memories of the War such literature written about the war. It also contains information on the Freedmens Bureau which documents freed slaves and lands after the war.
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Examples of Information and Documents
Example Letter
"In this brief prewar letter (1859) written from Staunton, B.S. Brooke comments upon the economic situation in Staunton, the insurrection, and slave sales."
Cochran Family Letters
"This collection contains prewar letters (1860-1861) written by two brothers from Augusta County who would eventually enlist in Virginia regiments. John H. Cochran enlisted as a private in the 46th Virginia Infantry in 1861. Before he did so, he wrote this eloquent series of letters to his mother about the Virginia secession debate. Cochran shares his pro-secession views and describes the division of Virginians over the issue. His brother, Benjamin Franklin Cochran, became a private in the 1st Virginia Cavalry, and he writes about the defense of Virginia in 1861. This collection also includes one letter from the Cochrans' cousin, A.G. Guskins, who writes from South Carolina about the secession crisis."
The 77th Re-Union
"Public Opinion notifies its readers of an upcoming reunion of the 77th Regiment Pennsylvania Volunteers. The brief article lists the officers of the regiment and provides statistics about its members."
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Interactive Map
An interactive map showing the paths of different regiments and locations of battles that took place during the Civil War. Also includes locations of historic towns, roads and railways along with modern cities and highways.
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