Virginia

Virginia

We finished up Virginia today.  Monday we spent the afternoon at Mt. Vernon, George Washington’s estate south of Washington D.C.  It is a beautiful house and a huge farm.  It was interesting to find out that Washington was primarily a farmer – that was his true passion.  He designed most of the buildings on his property.  Both he and Martha are buried here.

From there we drove south to Williamsburg.  We spent three days exploring what’s called the “historic triangle” – which comprises Williamsburg, Yorktown, and Jamestown.  Colonial Williamsburg is a restored 18th town with over 500 original or restored building – many available to tour through with costumed guides.  (The Rockefeller’s financed most of the restorations.)  Several shops are functional today staffed by trades people using 18th century technology.  We saw a wigmaker, silversmiths, carpenters, a tailor, shoemakers, an apocatherist (pharmacist), and much more!  Some buildings were toured included the Governor’s Mansion, the old Capitol (Williamsburg was the capital of colonial Williamsburg before the capital was moved to Richmond), the church, the courthouse, and John Wythe’s home (he is a signer of the Declaration and the lawyer that taught Jefferson law).  We watched a minute danced and Chris learned a group dance.  We also attended two interactive performances of actors portraying the first two governors of the Virginia colony, Patrick Henry and Thomas Jefferson.  We would have seen George Washington today – but we wanted to see Jamestown and Yorktown before we had to leave.

I learned a bit of interesting trivia today – in the courthouse there is a railing that went across the room – spectators and the accused had to stay behind this rail (the accused would literally “stand for trial”) – only lawyers and judges were allowed to  “pass the bar” (of the railing) – thus the term of “passing the bar” originated from this old custom.  (

This afternoon we spent at Colonial National Park.  Our first stop was at Jamestown – one of the original English settlements (think, Pocahontas and John Smith).  There are archeologists still in the process of excavating this site and we were able to witness some live digs.  They had recently unearthed a fallen chimney – for artifact buffs, I guess this is a big deal! (  We had just missed a press conference about the remains they unearthed in June.  They are thinking it probably the remains of one of the three original ship captains (sorry, his name is escaping me right now!)  We took a quick drive over to Yorktown – the sight of the last major battle of the Revolutionary War.  This is where Washington’s army defeated the British into surrender.  We took a sunset drive around the different sights of the battlefield.  So much information to digest in this week’s adventures!