NOT EVEN PAST: Season 2
Not Even Past is produced by Encyclopedia Virginia at Virginia Humanities. Hosted by Editor Brendan Wolfe, it's for history lovers but also for people who just love a good story. In each episode, Wolfe combs through the encyclopedia looking for the most interesting people and the most provocative questions. This podcast is produced by Miranda Bennett.
Carrie and Emma Buck, on the grounds of the Virginia State Colony, in November 1924 (Arthur Estabrook Papers, Special Collections & Archives, University at Albany, SUNY)
Episode 1: Her Body Was Not Her Own
Host Brendan Wolfe introduces us to Carrie Buck, the plaintiff in the notorious Supreme Court case Buck v. Bell (1927) that authorized Buck’s forced sterilization. Producer Miranda Bennett also interviews the scholar Paul Lombardo and visits the former Virginia State Colony for Epileptics and Feeble-Minded in Lynchburg.
The Battle of the Crater, Petersburg, Va. (Digital Commonwealth)
Episode 2: A Monstrous Tongue of Flame
Host Brendan Wolfe remembers one of the strangest and most heartbreaking of Civil War battles: the Battle of the Crater. It began with the largest explosion to date in the Western Hemisphere and ended with a massacre. Wolfe and producer Miranda Bennett also interview Emmanuel Dabney, of the National Park Service, who talks about what happened at the battle’s anniversary reunion.
Iron wrist shackles that date to the seventeenth or eighteenth century (Virginia Historical Society)
Episode 3: Another Man’s Property
Host Brendan Wolfe marvels at Anthony Johnson, a slaveholder on the Eastern Shore who, earlier in life, had been known only as “Antonio a Negro.”
From the Los Angeles Sunday Times, April 12, 1908 (Daily Mirror)
Episode 4: Keeping House with Marion Harland
Host Brendan Wolfe reads Common Sense in the Household: A Manual of Practical Housewifery (1871) by Marion Harland. The Virginian brought cookbooks to the masses while defending the traditional roles of women. Producer Miranda Bennett also talks to Sarah Searle, proprietor of the cooking blog the Yellow House.
Negotiating Peace with the Indians by Theodor de Bry, 1634 (Virginia Historical Society)
Episode 5: A Most Savage Tale
Host Brendan Wolfe investigates the life of Thomas Savage, a Jamestown colonist who, as a boy, was given over to the Indians. He spent the rest of his life negotiating the precarious line between two warring cultures.
View of Richmond from Saint John’s Church, ca. 1851 (Virginia Historical Society)
Episode 6: Crazy Bet & Mary Jane
Host Brendan Wolfe tells the story of Elizabeth Van Lew and Mary Richards Bowser, two mysterious women with deep connections to the Episcopal Church. Both Union spies during the Civil War, one ended her life a pariah while the other disappeared from history. Producer Miranda Bennett also talks to Grace Aheron, an Episcopalian grappling, like Van Lew and Bowser, with her role in a large and complex community.