National Home for Disabled Volunteer Soldiers

Providing goods to Veterans, their families, and visitors has been a staple of VA hospitals since their inception at the end of the Civil War. The Veterans Canteen Service (VCS) we know today evolved out of these early stores and VCS formally celebrates its 75th Anniversary this year.

History of VA in 100 Objects: The U.S. Naval Asylum in Philadelphia was the first federal facility to provide institutional care for disabled and elderly Veterans.

As another Thanksgiving is upon us, thoughts turn towards the traditions that surround the holiday, many of them involving food. At the National VA History Center Archives, staff members went looking to see what past Thanksgivings looked like and were rewarded with positive results.

After the Civil War concluded, the Veteran service organization Grand Army of the Republic commissioned multiple stained glass windows that were early powered light displays. Two survive today at VAs in Leavenworth, Kansas and Milwaukee, Wisconsin.

How did Veterans from the Civil War celebrate their country's Independence Day in 1875? In a feature that appeared last year on the VA Insider digital platform, a unique perspective is gained in a late 19th Century July 4th celebration.

President Warren G. Harding made a commitment to streamline and improve benefit services for the millions of World War I Veterans in the U.S. In August of 1921, he signed the bill creating the Veterans Bureau, the first independent federal agency to manage all facets of Veterans care. The legacy of the Veterans Bureau lives on in the modern VA, which continues its forerunner’s tradition of service to Veterans and their dependents.

The National VA History Center is progressing in the early stages at the Dayton VA Medical Center campus - but artifact collection to fill its rooms has successfully been underway. Less than a year after celebrating the Center's establishment, VAs History and Archive team transferred the first artifact into its collection - a 19th Century Bible from the campus chapel.