The Valley of the Shadow, Two Communities in the American Civil War ,(http://valley.vcdh.virginia.edu/)
Introduction
The Shenandoah Valley is a wide fertile valley just west of the Blue Ridge running from central Virginia to the middle of Pennsylvania. The Valley, due to its north south orientation and its agricultural wealth, became a well crossed battlefield during the civil war. The site, the Valley of the Shadow, examines two communities at opposite ends of the Shenandoah Valley during the Civil War era. The two communities that were chosen for the online archive were Franklin County, Pennsylvania and Augusta County, Virginia.
Background
The Valley of the Shadow site has its roots in a number of earlier projects from the University of Virginia in the 1990’s. As part of a movement of historians and other academics to try and use the internet as a resource the University of Virginia created the Institute for Advanced Technology in the Humanities. However, the idea to compare two communities in the North and South was first proposed as a book by Edward L. Ayers in September 1991. He examined maps and guides to military units and indexes of newspapers and found two areas centrally involved in the Civil War in close proximity to one another: Augusta County, Virginia, and Franklin County, Pennsylvania. At first the idea was not intended to be an online resource, but it was soon apparent that the new technology offered a powerful way to approach the project. The project evolved to include; letters, diaries, memoirs, census records, church records, government records, battle reports, speeches, and newspapers.
The site is still maintained by staff and students from the University of Virginia and individuals from both communities represented in the project.
Site and archive layout
The Valley of the Shadow divides the documents and archives associated with the two counties into three distinct time periods; The Eve of the War (1859-1861), The War Years (1861-1865), The Aftermath (1865-1870). Within each of these sections there are a number of sub-sections including image archives, letters, documents, newspapers, records, and maps. Each sub-section can be searched by a number of criteria. For example the image archive can be searched by location, subject, name, secondary location, and image source.
The site also includes a section to help and guide teachers as well as students of history and the Civil War.