would add a certain historical perspective for legislators to learn what their predecessors did in the past centuries. And so with these collaborators he created “Legislative Minutes.” He described how he and the Virginia Historical Society staff came up with quotes that he read into the minutes every day. Of pertinent topics were those regarding Sunday closing laws (that would come to haunt them later), the Statute for Religious Freedom, executions, dueling, the Jamestown 1907 Exposition, woman’s suffrage, and addresses by luminaries like Dwight D. Eisenhower and Winston Churchill.

So where did the idea come from? Frances Pollard is the librarian at the Virginia Historical Society and her staff helped research and pull together the quotes. She explained, “When Charles F. Bryan Jr. [VHS President] attended a conference of state historical society directors last year, he heard about an interesting project. The Montana Historical Society had produced a series of ‘This Day in History,’ vignettes for their state legislature. When Dr. Bryan returned to Richmond, he discussed the project with several members of the General Assembly, and the VHS formed a partnership with the House of Delegates to produce a similar series of legislative history moments.

“The [VHS] Reference Department (Toni Carter, Gregory Stoner and myself) researched and wrote 46 Virginia “Legislative Moments in