Browse Items (37 total)

Lucy Goode Brooks (1818–1900) and members of the Ladies Sewing Circle for Charitable Work established the Friends Asylum for Colored Orphans in 1871. These formerly enslaved women enlisted the support of the Cedar Creek Meeting Society of Friends…

In 1894, Mary Tinsley Greenhow, who as a teenager was paralyzed during a horse riding accident, founded the Virginia Home for Incurables. Disabled Richmonders needing life-long care lived at the home near Capitol Square. In 1898, the home moved to W.…

The Memorial Foundation for Children’s story began in 1805, when a homeless girl supposedly presented herself at the door of Jean Moncure Wood, wife of Governor James E. Wood. Realizing that the city lacked a shelter for needy girls, Mrs. Wood worked…

Boys standing outside the Richmond Male Orphan Society at Amelia and Meadow Streets, Richmond, Va. The Richmond Male Orphan Society began in 1846 when the director of the Female Humane Association was approached by a homeless boy begging for coins.…

City Home, an almshouse located at 210 Hospital Street, Richmond, VA. Shown here circa 1960.Richmond’s Committee for the Relief of the Poor managed white and black almshouses, a soup kitchen, a hospital and other health and social services.…

Richmond’s Committee for the Relief of the Poor managed white and black almshouses, a soup kitchen, a hospital and other health and social services. Construction of a new white almshouse on Hospital Street finished in 1860. During the Civil War, the…

Pinback button In 1885, Methodist minister William Booth established the Christian Mission Center in East London for the city’s poor and homeless.  Booth changed the name to The Salvation Army in 1878, using military terms to organize the evangelical…

Metal lapel badge for the United Way

Pinback button The Young Women’s Christian Association (YWCA) first met in New York City in 1858. While based in Christianity, the YWCA was more focused on social issues, initially affordable housing for working women. It later was active in the…

Pinback button In 1924, the Richmond Area Community Council created the Community Fund, later known as the Richmond Area Community Chest. This trust centralized fundraising and fund distribution to the Council’s more than thirty member organizations.

Nurse Lucille Meador walks through the snow wearing snowshoes at the Beth Sholom Home of Virginia, 5729 Fitzhugh Avenue, Henrico County, Virginia The Beth Sholom Home of Virginia opened in 1945 as Virginia’s first Jewish nursing home. Originally…

Lucy and J. R. F. Burroughs founded the Bethany Home for Friendless Children in 1894. The childless couple established the orphanage on their 165-acre farm, located near Bon Air in Chesterfield County. Incorporated in 1898, Bethany Home had no…