The next morning we decided to do the Williamsburg volkssmarch. Colonial Williamsburg is a living history museum, but there’s also a modern town and a college. Usually, a volkssmarch is designed so that walkers feel like they have experienced the area when they have completed the walk. The volkssmarch started in the historical area of Willliamsburg, then continued through the contemporary town, along a trail that is part of the College of William and Mary, across the campus, and back to the starting point. As usual, it was 10 kilometers (6.2) miles in length. We took nearly four hours to walk this trail because we kept stopping to look around.
When I was in high school I applied as a junior to the College of William and Mary, and I was accepted into their early admissions program. My father was due for a transfer from Camp Lejeune, NC, and he was expecting another East Coast tour of duty. William and Mary would be a good place for me to go – I’d be living in dorms, but not too far from wherever my parents might be stationed. When I was a senior, though, my father’s transfer came in. It was to Hawaii rather than the East Coast assignment he had expected. My parents felt strongly that it was too far from Hawaii, where they would be living, to Virginia, where I would be attending school. So the college application process was started again – this time on the West Coast. I ended up going to the University of California at Santa Barbara. My mother was in the Marine Corps during World War II, she had been stationed in Santa Barbara, and it seemed to be a good place for me.
I spent all four years at Santa Barbara. I always felt it was too large a school for me; there were close to 15,000 undergraduates there. I met my first husband at UCSB, and aside from a couple of years in Georgia and Texas, I have spent all of my adult years on the West Coast. Every now and then I wonder how my life would have been different had I gone to school at William and Mary. It was a much smaller school – around 5,000 students, I believe – and most likely I would have graduated and married an East Coast person. Who knows where I’d be living now? Oddly enough, though, I never visited the College of William and Mary when I was applying for early admission in 1965. This trip was the first time I was ever on the college campus. And I really liked it.
The Colonial Williamsburg pass costs $38 a person, and we weren’t sure that we wanted to spend that much money. After doing the volkssmarch, though, we decided to buy the passes and spend Tuesday and Wednesday in the historical area.
We began in the visitor center. There’s a movie that dramatizes life and events in Williamsburg in about 1774. I remember watching this same film when I was there in 1970. It stars a young Jack Lord and is the longest continuously running movie in the United States. I read that students at William and Mary memorize the script and recite it at showings of the film. In spite of its age, the film does a good job of placing present-day visitors in the historical period immediately preceding the Revolutionary War.
In one scene I particularly remember, two gentlemen are talking about how the British are getting out of hand and how each colonist will have to make a decision as to where their loyalties lie. The first man says, “So what will you do?” The second says, “I am going home.” The first replies, “I am home.” I recall hearing those lines 31 years ago.
Colonial Williamsburg was conceived nearly a hundred years ago. Between 1774 and 1912 parts of the city had expanded and adopted the architectural conventions of the times in which they were built. Some buildings had been added to, and some were in disrepair. The minister of Bruton Parish Church had the idea of restoring Williamsburg to the Revolutionary time period. He attended an alumni dinner at which he was seated beside John D. Rockefeller Sr. As a result of their dinner conversation, a foundation was established and Rockefeller donated millions of dollars to the restoration cause.
In the early years of the restoration effort, construction on the project was done using contemporary techniques and tools. It was important to get the basics of the town completed so that visitors would come to the area. After time, though, further construction used the methods of 18th century colonial America. For example, there is a kitchen currently being restored just off the main street. The carpenters working on the project use no electricity; their tools are the same as were used in 1774. The projects take much longer to complete, but the work is as authentic as modern archaelogical research can make it.
Today, Colonial Williamsburg is a living history museum. Modern-day people play the roles of actual historical figures and of common citizens. They are dressed in clothing authentic to the period, and they engage in activities that occurred in revolutionary times. Visitors walk the streets, observing the activities. They can engage in conversation with the citizens of Colonial Williamsburg. The idea is that, when visitors leave, they have experienced the life and times of prerevolutionary Virginia.
At the visitor center we obtained a newspaper of the events of the week. For Tuesday, October 2, 2001, we noted that Patrick Henry would be speaking in the garden of the Governor’s mansion at 10:30 am. The historical figure was talking to the crowd about the events of the day in 1774, and expressing his opinions about them. There was a lengthy question-and-answer session. Some of the questions were about historical issues, to which he responded. A few were about contemporary events. Someone asked Mr. Henry what he thought of the terrorist attacks. True to his historical perspective, the man said he had no knowledge of such events; however, he then went on to discuss incidents where pirates had come up the James River and done some damage, and his thoughts on that. His opinion was that it is sometimes necessary to take up arms to defend one’s way of life. It was easy for visitors to compare the historical events of 1774 and 2001and to see the cycle of history.
Patrick Henry was an arrogant but likeable man, a left-wing thinker in his time. I noted that Art listened intently to Mr. Henry’s comments, frequently nodding in agreement.
We spent some time watching the kitchen restoration project. Crowds were fairly thin on this day, so we were able to have conversations with the workers. These people were playing a “type” from the colonial period, so their responses were not limited to what they would have known in 1774. They were doing colonial activities, but they could be contemporary teachers as well. There were a couple of men splitting the bark off trees, preparing them to be cut into boards. We asked what kind of wood they were working with, where the logs came from. The man said that in 1774 the wood was local, but that these days it came from locations in the Deep South.
The craftsmen across the path began their work with the rounded, debarked logs and hewed it into boards for construction. There was a team of two or three men and they traded off every 15 minutes or so. The person resting talked to the visitors. The man we talked to has a bachelor’s degree in history from William and Mary. He’s worked at Colonial Williamsburg for eight years, learning the trade of 18th century carpentry from his master. He said that people usually come to work there because they have energy and passion for the historical project, but they stay on because they love the crafts they learn and the way of life they practice. No one who works at Colonial Williamsburg gets rich, he said, but they have the satisfaction of knowing that they are practicing a trade that has died out over most of the rest of the world, and they are having a chance to preserve it. Some of the finest blacksmiths and silversmiths and shoemakers in the world work at Colonial Williamsburg. Most workers live in other towns, where the cost of living is lower.
The kitchen currently being reconstructed is being done from the ground up, rather than from an actual archaeological base found at the site. The only thing they had to go by was the stone foundation they found buried there. The workers are using historical indicators that the house in front would have such a kitchen, and they are modeling their work after similar structures in New England. This particular building will take about 18 months to complete, and it will be an ongoing project even during the off season.
On Wednesday we attended a gathering of Africans behind one of the buildings on Main Street. Two of the men were portraying slaves – one of them a messenger for his owner, and one a long-time aide of his master, who had adopted the dress and manner of a gentlemen. Another man portrayed a freed slave. Their conversation revealed the differences in thinking among Africans during that historical time. The messenger had opinions which are consistent with how traditional history books portray slaves – he wished he could be free, wasn’t too keen on his master even though he was treated well. The aide was comfortable in the role his master had given him. He’d had wider experience and education and actually looked down on the lower slaves. The freed slave brought up some disadvantages of being free. For example, if he was on the road, any white person could ask to see the freeman’s papers that proved he was free. Even then, the papers could be taken from him and he could be taken in to the authorities. Though legally free, this man did not live life as a free person; there were chronic limitations.
Following their conversation among themselves, the men held a question-and-answer session with the visitors. Because they were not playing specific historical characters, these men were not limited to a 1774 perspective. Many of the questions related to current racial issues. I commented on an observation I’d made. Thirty years ago, when I last spent any time in the South, segregation was very common. I rarely saw black and white people mingling. On this trip, I had seen middle class and upscale blacks at the grocery store, on the subway and in restaurants. Race seems these days to be a non-issue. I asked the men if that was indeed the case. They indicated that modern Virginia is not representative of the South; that I would notice that segregation more if we traveled further south, into Alabama and Mississippi, for example.
One evening we watched a fife and drum group. I had thought that fife and drum was like drum and bugle, so I was expecting a larger group of musicians than the two people playing fife and the two playing drum. Only four people. We learned that, in 18th century Williamsburg, fife and drum corps were part of the military. They would be near the commanders, and the different brief tunes were signals of instruction from the commander to the soldiers. The music carried much further than a general’s shouted orders (and, adds Art, were much more accurate. No one soldier could interpret the message as “let’s sit down and take a rest”. But they probably had a tune for that, too). The drum tempo would set the pace of the march.
We went to court in 1774. Once our visitor group had entered the courthouse, volunteers were solicited for two court cases, scenarios were described and scripts were given out. One was for a debt that had not been paid and the other involved the setting up of separate property for a widow who was remarrying. I was surprised that women’s rights were protected during that time. After court was concluded, we stood on the steps with one of the 18th century characters. He explained to us that women were cared for and protected by the men, so they were not independent, but they had rights under the English Book of Common Law, which was used in the colonies. This differs from current American law which is based on legislation; there are no common laws in present-day United States.
The least interesting event for me in Williamsburg was a hanging in effigy of Lord Frederick North, the prime minister of England in 1774. According to family lore, he was actually one of my relatives. He was held accountable for many of the British actions that the colonists found unacceptable. Visitors gathered around the courthouse as a straw figure, mounted on a cart, was pulled across the road. After a mock trial on the courthouse steps, the effigy was moved to the grounds behind the courthouse, hanged and burned. Most of the crowd seemed very interested in this scenario, but for some reason it didn’t appeal to me. Hangings and burnings have never been high on my list of public events to witness - particularly when I am related to the victims.