Colonial Williamsburg, Williamsburg, Virginia, USA

Last random sights from the Colonial town.

A colonist's garden.

OSHA would not be pleased with how this ladder is constructed.

The age of the specialist -  I guess this fellow would open your wine........

........and this fellow down the street would pour it into the glass.

The recreated Capitol building - the first in America in 1705.

The breezeway of the Capitol building.

Getting out of the old jail.

This is my final post from our Williamsburg visit. Time to head back home to New England and resume "real" life after three months on the road.  I doubt I'll continue to post daily as I have been, but on the other hand, each person's home area can be someone else's destination - new and different places to go and things to see are relative - thanks for traveling with me these past few months! 

Colonial Williamsburg People, Williamsburg, Virginia, USA

Random sights of people in the Colonial town.



Colonial Williamsburg, Williamsburg, Virginia, USA

Here are a few random sights from just wandering around the streets in Colonial Williamsburg.

Seven Royal Governors lived in this house at different times - including Thomas Jefferson.

Lots of benches for tired tourists to sit for a spell.

A colonial four hundred year old sheep basking in the late winter sunshine and warmth.



Wren Building, College of William and Mary, Williamsburg, Virginia, USA

The Sir Christopher Wren Building at the College of William and Mary in Virginia is the oldest college building in the United States and the oldest of the restored public buildings in Williamsburg. It was constructed between 1695 and 1700, before Williamsburg was founded, when the capital of the colony of Virginia was still located at Jamestown. Generations of William and Mary students have attended classes and lectures, enjoyed meals, and attended chapel services therein.

And this huge keyhole requires..........

.......a huge key to open the main door, shown here with a modern key for comparison.

Jamestown Settlement, Jamestown, Virginia, USA

Jamestown Settlement is the State of Virginia's living history museum and offers a recreation/reenactment of the 17th century life and events.

It includes a Powhatan Indian village recreation.

Inside view of one of the imagined living huts.

The structures were covered with woven marsh grasses.

A costumed re-enactor weaving a basket in the sunshine on a cold winter's day.

This is the style of the three ships that sailed from England in 1607. Following the prevailing ocean currents, they sailed from London via the Canary Islands, the Caribbean Islands, and then to Virginia. The Susan Constant was the largest of the three and carried 54 passengers and 17 crew. It was 116 feet long - for perspective that's about one and a half tennis courts long! The passengers were mostly kept below deck to stay out of the way of the working crew. Imagine that - stuck below deck in a VERY SMALL space in close quarters on a heaving, rolling ocean for four months. And today we complain about being uncomfortable on an airplane for a few hours - get a grip.

The colonists constructed the James Fort to protect themselves from raids by the Spanish or local native population. They used the typical thatch construction still in use in parts of England today.

And the pecking, squawking, scrabbling chickens were underfoot as well.

I always like to romanticize the "discovery" of the New World but, it was more accurately about making money. The colonies were principally economic ventures - to bring back goods to make money for the London companies who sponsored (paid for) the trip. Even the "passengers" were simply employees of the company.   It turned out tobacco was the mother lode of the New World for the Virginia colonies - not gold, gems, or other riches. Ironic that four hundred years later tobacco has become the evil weed in this country.
  Go figure.

Grommet Anyone?, Williamsburg, Virginia, USA

I'm not sure when the humble grommet came in to use - but it wasn't in old Willliamsburg.  Instead, folks placed small round stones along the edge of the canvas or fabric and and tied string/rope around it to be able to attach the fabric to something else. Who would have thought.......

I've always liked grommets, but mostly just Wallace and Gromits.

Jamestown, Virginia, USA

In December of 1606, three merchant ships left England and later landed in Virginia in Spring of 1607. The 104 men and boys on the ships chose to settle on the banks of the James River. This became Jamestown, the first permanent settlement in what would later become the United States. Note that was thirteen years, that's right, thirteen years! before the Pilgrims landed in Massachusetts in 1620. So how does Plymouth, Massachusetts get away with calling itself, "America's Hometown?" Clever of them, I'd say.

But why settle here in Jamestown? It was a disease-ridden, bug-infested swamp. Turns out though, it was on a defensible spit of land into the James River (named the Powhatan River by the natives) with good visibility of anyone approaching by water, it had a narrow isthmus separating it from the mainland that was submerged at high tide, there was deep-water adjacent for tying boats to the trees, it was unoccupied by natives, and the water was "sweet" (not brackish).  As it turned out, it was only temporarily sweet due to the winter runoff.

At that time, virgin forests covered the vast majority of the Chesapeake Bay watershed. It was a bountiful land and the natives already had systems of trade and commerce between their own scattered communities. After the long journey over the sea, the English settlers were astonished to see the abundance when arriving in May of 1607.  George Percey recounted that the land was" full of fine and beautiful strawberries four times bigger than ours in England."  Virginia was a paradise.

One of the earlier industries attempted by the settlers was glass-making since demand for glass in Europe was not being adequately met. Making glass was not easy back then.  Today, the mixture is heated to 2500 degrees Fahrenheit overnight. In 1608, it took up to two weeks to get the furnace hot enough. Glass is made of sand, soda ash, pot ash, and lime - sand from the beach, soda ash from burned seaweed or marsh plants, pot ash from burned wood ash, and lime from crushed oyster shells.

A demonstration glass-making house stands today nearby the original remains of the 1608 location.

High Dynamic Range (HDR) Painting, Williamsburg, Virginia, USA

This blog post is less about Williamsburg and more about me messing around with a newly discovered camera setting: it's called HDR Painting.  It is an in-camera setting. Very little post processing by me and that was mostly just cropping.  But first, a little local history..........

Williamsburg was originally Middle Plantation, a 1632 fortified settlement located on high ground on the peninsula between the James and York rivers. It was renamed Williamsburg after the capital of the Virginia Colony was moved there from Jamestown in 1698.

Today, Williamsburg, Virgina, is probably best known for "Colonial Williamsburg," an historic area restored to present the appearance of life in the18th century. Also very popular for tourism (and students) is the adjacent College of William & Mary. The college was chartered in 1693, and is the second-oldest university in the United States (behind Harvard which was chartered in 1650).

Bricks, bricks, and more bricks.............. bricks are popular in Williamsburg.

So are moss and lichens on the bricks.

And even curved bricks.

I'm not sure how the software works.  Sometimes it explodes the colors ..........

........and sometimes it captures just a hint of color.  Perhaps it's the angle of the light, or the falling rain, or just plain old magic?  I'll go with the magic.

Magnolia blooms.

A split rail fence.