In 1889 tradition-minded women, including many from Virginia's most prominent families, formed the Association for the Preservation of Virginia Antiquities (APVA), the first state preservation organization in the United States. In Preserving the Old Dominion cultural historian James Lindgren shows how the preservation movement strove to rebuild a revered past upon the foundations of its historical structures.

The APVA's siginificance lies not only in the fact that it played a major role in the resurgance of conservativism in the late nineteenth-century South, but that it fits into a larger American picture where tradition-minded Americans tapped their history- whether imagined or real- to shape their identity.

Preserving the Old Dominion incorporates history, anthropology, architecture, archaeology, religion, and politics; it will be of interest to historians in all fields as well as women's studies scholars.