Rediscovery and Reconstruction

June 9-10

We got a late start Friday and parked in the Colonial Williamsburg Visitors’ Center after one.

On advice of the lady selling tickets, we went to Jamestown Island, site of the original colony. It’s at the very end of Colonial Parkway on the banks of the James River.

It was thought that the original Jamestown fort had been lost forever to erosion, until an archeologist named William Kelso from William and Mary University proved otherwise.

He surmised that an old tower standing alone on the island was part of a church mentioned in early manuscripts as standing in the middle of the fort.

Excavations in 1994 proved him right. What has happened since is billed as “the Rediscovery of Jamestown.”

One corner of the original three-sided fort stood where the James River has indeed eroded the shore, but the rest of the site is on solid ground. The outline is now marked by a reconstructed palisade.

The site, managed by the National Park Service, is still an active archeological dig. It has some spots where digging is in progress. They are covered with tarps when the researchers aren’t working. 

Other pits are open for viewing, but covered with wire gratings so no one falls in.

We stopped at the Ed Shed, an educational exhibit primarily for kids. There is an assortment of artifacts in a wooden tray that have, for one reason or another, lost their provenance. Some may have been found and moved. Others may have been incorrectly categorized.

In any event, they are OK to touch. There are chunks of imported flint, bits of clay pipes, and animal bones.

There is also a table where you can sit with tweezers and a magnifying glass to sort trays of tiny rubble that maybe came from one of the trash pits. You pick up a saucer of small bits and look closely. 

Fish scales go into one container, flint chips into another, pebbles into yet another, and so on. A lab will examine everything more closely and perhaps get another hint at what the early settlers ate or used in their daily lives.

Like all adventures, Jamestown has some colorful stories. John Smith, leader of the colonists, is a case in point. A plaque says he was first a military adventurer in Europe. He was captured by Turks and sold as a slave to a Russian master.

Smith killed the master and fled back to England. He signed up with the Virginia Company of London for the trip to set up a colony on the coast of North America.

As with most invasions of wilderness, it was pretty rough going at first. Of the original company of 104 to arrive on the island, 38 survived. It’s a history of disease, Indian wars, starvation, and cannibalism.

Many artifacts dug up at the site are on display in the Archaearium Archaeology Museum. It seems so many men were dying that there was a surplus of arms and armor. Diggers have recovered helmets, cuirasses, and halberds that were tossed into trash pits.

One room has two skeletons found in early graves. They have been tentatively identified. 

One is believed to be a teenage boy whose teeth show evidence of a condition that my have contributed to a systemic infection. 

The other may be the captain of the Godspeed, one of the three ships that carried the original colonists.

We walked around the site for a couple of hours. We took a break from a brief rain storm in a church built over the site of the original that used to go with the tower.

We sat in the restored tower until the rain slacked off.

Harry decided to go on the wagon for a few days. Maybe if he cuts out the calories from alcohol, he can reduce some girth. Not too much, mind, because at his age if he loses too much padding he’ll turn into a prune.

Joanna had been talking about Southern food, specifically Virginia ham. The only place that Google turned up with that on the menu was Cracker Barrel. We had tried one in Arkansas a couple of years ago and found it better than we expected, so we tried the one down the road from Club Wyndham.

Instead of country ham, Joanna opted for grilled catfish, which was pretty good. 

Harry took chicken and dumplings. The chicken was white meat cooked without the bone, and therefore without much flavor.

There was wine on the menu but it presented no temptation to misbehave. There were four: Rosato Moscato, Rosato Sweet Red, some kind of rose, and a Chardonnay.

One of Harry’s wisecracks was that he had never met a bottle of wine he didn’t like. Then he tasted a couple of sweets, like the pink wine from California called white zinfandel. Ouch.

Saturday we went to Colonial Williamsburg. We bought three-day passes because it’s a big place. It claims to be the world’s largest outdoor museum.

Largest or not, it’s too big to see in a day or even two.

It’s fun just to sit on a bench and watch the carriages clop by. Besides visitors like us, the place is populated by performers in costume.

We got to the Governor’s Palace just in time to catch the noontime fife-and-drum parade. A troop of youngsters in white uniforms taking cues from a drum major marched up the street. They continued onto the green where they played “Yankee Doodle” before they broke up.

We entered the Governor’s Palace just as a tour was starting. We began in an anteroom whose walls were decorated with weapons—daggers, swords, muskets, and pistols.

It represented the power of the people in charge. That kind of threat could also backfire. The last Colonial governor, Lord Dunmore, fled that building in the middle of the night sometime in the early 1770s because someone was gunning for him.

Another highlight of the palace is a terraced garden on several levels. You can stand on a walkway at the top and see several earthen steps full of herbs and vegetables.

The George Wythe House not far from the palace was the home of a forgotten celebrity. We weren’t even sure how to pronounce his last name.

Wythe (which a docent pronounced “with”) was the lawyer who took on Thomas Jefferson as an apprentice. That, according to the docent, is how it was done before there were law schools in the colonies.

Wythe was also interested in the sciences, so the house is full of instruments including a telescope and a model of the solar system. 

Wythe eventually became a judge. Later, when Thomas Jefferson founded the law school at William and Mary University, the first in the United States, Wythe became its first professor.

We strolled up Duke of Gloucester Street. We sat from time to time in the shade. Here was a carriage; there was a lady telling stories to a group of students.

We eventually reached the King’s Arms Tavern, a modern reproduction of a public house originally opened in the 1770s.

This was better than the Cracker Barrel. 

Joanna started with peanut soup. Harry went for the Hoppin’ John risotto. Yes, really.

Harry, still behaving, passed on the two craft ales on draft and took a glass of sparkling soft cider instead.

The entree was a “chop of stoat”—a pork chop that could have weighed more than a pound. By luck, we had expected the portions to be big, so we ordered one to share. Even so, between the two of us, we couldn’t finish all of it.

We had left the car in the Visitors’ Center parking lot, so we took the short ride back on the shuttle bus and got home just fine.

The photo of the day is that snappy marching band outside the Governor’s Palace. 

Stay well, everyone, and don’t forget to sit in the shade once in a while to watch the horses stroll by.

Love to all.

Harry and Joanna