Colonial Williamsburg

John and I are a specific kind of history buffs. We aren’t much into museums, we can’t tell stories about historical events and there are very few dates in history we actually know.

The history we do like is the kind we can experience. More of a hands on kind and not so much reading plaques in a museum or passages from a book (like in school).

Candy and I have been planning to come to Williamsburg VA for the last couple of years with or without “the men”.

Finally, we made it and this is definitely the hands on kind of history John and I like best.

We parked at the Colonial Williamsburg visitor center, bought our tickets and hopped on the bus that took us to the historic district.

Here we wandered the streets of Williamsburg on foot, while some chose to travel around town in a horse-drawn carriage.

There were characters all around town going about their business and were anxious to talk about colonial life. For the most part the actors stayed in character and talked about issues and concerns of the time.

We came across a carpenter who was fashioning a face board for a house in town.

He used period carpentry tools and methods to plane and carve the face board.

Items produced by the tradesmen and women in the town are used in the town itself which I thought was pretty neat.

As we strolled slowly through town and that overwhelmed-excited-feeling settled down we started noticing “the little things”. Like the fence gates around the yards.

Today we have spring hinges to automatically close our gates. Back in the 1700’s they used the “ole ball and chain”. The ball isn’t terribly heavy so opening the gate isn’t hard, and as the ball falls back to the ground the chains attached to it pull it closed. Cool.

The shutter latches were neat too. So many houses today have shutters that that are for decoration only. It was surprising to see the same type of shutters and the ingenious way they held them open.

We made our way through the town looking at the building architecture and catching glimpses of the old cobble stone streets.

There was to be a reading of the Declaration of Independence at the Capitol building according to the visitor center, so we made our way to the far end of town.

So…how do you notify a town with no telephones, radios or TV’s that there is an important event happening at the Capitol?

You send a drummer down through town and all the residents follow him. Kinda like the Pied Piper.

Once we were all assembled the reading commenced.

The Declaration was originally read at the Courthouse in Williamsburg by Benjamin Wallers on July 25, 1776, after it arrived from Philadelphia, but the area outside the Capitol is bigger and easily handles the large number of tourists. So.

After the reading was over many of the towns people interacted with us and asked question, some even claiming they didn’t understand half of what was said.

Moving back up through town and thinking we were going to go back to just walking around, I was delighted when another man spoke up and addressed the crowd.

He was a newspaper man and was encouraging people to talk about what they had heard and embrace the thought of freedom from the King.

A bit farther down the street we came across the recruitment center. I guess I have always had a romantic view of the Colonists assuming they were all great adventurers, rebels against tyranny and ready to take up arms. But it wasn’t like that at all.

A carpenter, working for “The State” was in serious money trouble because he had yet to get paid. The debtor and other townspeople harassed him to join the military.

Some people were happy under England’s rule, or were so caught up in trying to survive that fighting a war against their home country and all their resources seemed too daunting a task.

So much for my romanticism.

Below is the recruitment skit that was played out for us.

Recruitment