Williamsburg, Day 3.

[rivka]

Another awesome day in the historical area, this time with no freezing rain.

We had no trouble getting Alex up and moving this morning, because we had promised to rent her a costume at the visitor's center. Girls get a simple long white (linen?) dress, their choice of colors for a wide sash, and either a mob cap or a bonnet. The dress had several deep tucks at the hem so that it could be let out as a child grew - just as we'd seen in the milliner's the day before. That was a neat touch. Alex looked lovely, and she was radiantly happy. Extras at Colonial Williamsburg tend to be pretty expensive, but it was so worth a $20 rental fee to make her day perfect that way.

With the costume rental came a letter from an 18th century adult "friend," sprinkled with gossip and deportment advice and asking the child to undertake some minor errands around town. It was a nice extension of the costume experience.

We were on our way to the magazine first, because they were having a program where children (and, it turned out, adults) could sign up for the 7th Virginia Regiment. We got there a bit early, so we got pictures of ourselves in the pillory and the stocks and then (at the advice of Alex's costume letter) went by a milliner's booth so she could be taught how to curtsey properly. It was mighty chilly, so after that we went inside the magazine to warm up. An interpreter on the second floor was lecturing and answering questions about military defense of the colony. We didn't stay long, though, because it was time for the program to start.

It was run by a stout, gruff middle-aged man who introduced himself as a sergeant looking for good recruits of any age. Alex and Michael volunteered, and so did bosssio - I had Colin strapped to my chest, so I demurred. For about twenty minutes he barked orders, forming them into lines, marching them around, and having them drill with long sticks to represent muskets. At the end of the program, he actually fired his musket once, making a satisfying bang.

bosssio and family left at that point. After we said goodbye, we went back up the main street. Alex's letter of tasks directed her to the post office to pick up a letter and then to the printing shop to place an advertisement in the newspaper. We spent a fair amount of time watching the laborious process of printing book pages and hearing about the life and work of printers. Afterward Alex really wanted to visit the dressmaker again, so we did. This time the women staffing the shop were about thirty years older than the ones we'd seen the day before. They had some beautiful gowns spread across the counter and talked at length about 18th century clothing and the business of dressmaking.

We had lunch in a tavern again, and then visited the coffeehouse. We'd seen them building it when we were here last year. It was set up for guided tours. First we visited a private parlor while a young male interpreter explained what coffeehouses were, how they differed from taverns, and how the business was run. This one originally opened in 1774. He talked about the Stamp Act (from a period perspective) and told us that we were about to hear more about what happened when the Stamp Act tax collectors appeared in Williamsburg. Then we were brought into the coffee room, where a man acting the role of the coffeehouse owner's slave gave us a vivid eyewitness account of a near-riot aimed at the tax collector. Finally, we were brought down into the basement kitchen and given a small sample of either drinking chocolate (no milk, and much bitterer than modern hot chocolate; I loved it) or coffee.

We walked up to the Powell House, a family home set up with domestic and children's activities. The yard was set up with period toys: hoops and sticks, quoits, some kind of wooden bowling game. In the kitchen house, a woman was mostly finished preparing an elaborate meal, with several dishes lined up on the sideboard. The kids got to cut out some cookies. We also visited the hens and horses in the backyard. Finally, we came into the house, where the inhabitants were preparing for a daughter's wedding. A young woman lectured and answered questions about the education and home training of girls, romance, weddings, and marriage. In another room, kids could make decorations for the wedding - paper chains decorated with chalk and stuck together with flour-and-water paste. After a while, someone set a big table for an elegant dinner, and the kids were sent out to the kitchen to bring in all the food while she talked about manners and entertaining.

We detached Alex from the crafts at the house with difficulty and took the bus over to the other side of the historical area. She wanted to visit the hedge maze at the Palace again. While she and Michael did that, I sat in the sun and fed Colin and tried, to no avail, to get him to sleep. Then they came back and we walked over to the Great Hopes plantation, a small working farm that is in the process of being recreated. Most horrifying information we were presented there: in a couple of weeks, they're planning to butcher the farm's hogs and then cut them up for the edification of visitors.

We walked around looking at a corn-drying hut, a smokehouse, an outdoor kitchen (they haven't built the plantation house yet), the slave quarters, the animal pens, the slaves' and master's gardens, the tobacco drying house, the fields. We stopped and talked for a while to a young man in the slave quarters. Alex was definitely more keyed in to what was being discussed than she was last year. The interpreter talked about what work was done by slave children at different ages, and made reference to children being sold away. Alex really struggled with that. "What if no one wanted to buy the children? ...What if no one ever wanted to buy them, not ever? Then they could stay free." No, we explained gently. No.

The Williamsburg carpenters work up at the tobacco drying house on the plantation. Alex wanted to know why they were doing the same work "when one has brown skin and one has white skin." That question led to a fascinating amount of information about the work done by enslaved people, free blacks, and whites; the phenomenon of free blacks who owned slaves; the legal and practical difficulties of being a freedman in Virginia; and the fascinating story of a local enslaved man who had an Irish common-law wife who bore him two children, born free.

It was late afternoon by the time we left the plantation. We returned Alex's costume (she got to keep the bonnet), browsed a little in the gift shop, went out for dinner at a mediocre Asian buffet, came back to the hotel, and suffered the first Alex tantrum of the entire trip. (Why, no, you can't completely fail to follow my directives or listen to me, repeatedly, even after reminders of what is on the line, and then expect me to take you to the swimming pool.) We were all pretty sleepy, so it's hard to blame her for losing her cool. We packed the kids off to bed, and I don't think we're going to be too far behind them. Tomorrow, we head home.

It's been a wonderful trip. I love Colonial Williamsburg. I wish we were just a little closer.

Comments

[papersky.livejournal.com]

She's not totally wrong -- if no one had ever wanted to buy them, if everyone had, as a mass movement, refused to buy slaves, that would have changed things. I suspect it would have been Ghandi's answer.

[curmudgn]

I don't know whether anyone at the drying house mentioned it, since it's rather off the point, but Molly Welsh Bannaky/Banneker, whom I think is your interracial-marrige woman, was also the grandmother of Black astronomer and mathematician Benjamin Banneker. Alice McGill, who lives down in Columbia, wrote a children's book about Molly that Alex will be ready for soon, if she isn't quite yet.

[reonyea.livejournal.com]

It sounds really interesting (Hope you don't mind that I friended you, I came here from Metaquotes a few weeks ago, your posts about Alex's language development really interested me) - if I could afford a trip to the States it would be somewhere I'd love to go. There's a place called Beamish over here (England) which is a Victorian village, but I don't think it really touched on the more negative issues of life in the 19th century. I could be wrong though, I was only ten when we went to visit.

[mjlayman.livejournal.com]

I used to have a yearly pass every year before I got sick (it was just two hours from here) and it's changed a lot. Thanks for the descriptions!

I recently read a book called jarrettsville that is immediately post-Civil War and has a lot about slaved, freedmen, and whites. You might like it.