$1.6 million going to revamp Virginia parks

The Fredericksburg and Spotsylvania National Military Park is getting $1.6 million to revamp exhibits at its two visitors center. The park preservers and interprets sites of the four major Civil War battles fought in and around Fredericksburg. • Article

Fredericksburg aims for wide audience

In and around Fredericksburg, Va., the Civil War's 150th anniversary won't be the sort of occasion that your father may remember from the centennial of the conflict. Fewer battle re-enactments. Less hoopla. No celebration of war. Rather, it will be a wide-ranging, thought-provoking commemoration.• Article

War's toll through one shattered family

A new exhibit at Fredericksburg and Spotyslvania National Military Park focuses not only on the tragedy of a lost life, but on the very real consequences of a family's loss of its breadwinner. "A Family Shattered" uses a very rare wooden cemetery headboard as the centerpiece to reveal the story of the family of Colonel John W. Patterson of Pittsburgh. • Article