Richmond Narratives

My book is out now!

Check local bookstores or internet purveyors for your copy!

Nickelodeons and Black Vaudeville: The Forgotten Story of Amanda Thorp


An old postcard image of downtown (East Main Street) Richmond with brick buildings, people walking, and a carriage pulled by a horse and a large open cart pulled by a horse. Wikipedia image; public domain.
Richmond Main Street in 1900. Photo from Wikipedia, public domain.

Richmond Narratives are stories about people who lived in Richmond, Virginia, generally in the early 20th century, who might otherwise be lost to history. I hope to connect the rich history of the early 1900s to the lives of people who actually lived it: not to the movers and shakers, but rather to the moved and shaken.

Richmond Broad Street in 1905; celebration of the anniversary of the Emancipation Proclamation. Photo from Wikipedia, public domain.

The stories are a kind of cross between historical vignettes and the results of genealogically-based research. Subjects are found in land records of old houses and businesses and in historic cemeteries. In some cases, relatives living today seeking family members of the past may find them mentioned here. If you do, I hope you’ll contact me, especially if you have photographs you’d be willing to share.

Richmond Narratives will also be essays that are my thoughts and experiences as my own life evolves and I confront not only the present as a recent retiree here in Richmond, my recently-adopted home with which I so easily fell in love — but also my remembrances of growing up, often in the same times but in another southern town in Southeast Arkansas.


About us: We have spent a lifetime working: he as a Marine for 23 years and then as a government employee for 16 more, and she (the author and photographer) as a shoe salesman, fast food restaurant worker, journalist, editor, government employee, stay-at-home mom, public school volunteer, and university instructor though not all at the same time (really, isn’t that what women do)? We have moved around a lot, though we accidentally stayed in Knoxville, Tennessee, for 16 years, and we plan to stay in Richmond, Virginia, at least that many.


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I have made every effort to locate copyright holders of every image that is used here and might be copyrighted. If you own the copyright to an image I have used here, please let me know and I will either attribute the image to you or remove it as you require.

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