Jamestown musketeer
We left Virginia Beach and headed up I64 towards Richmond, where we are staying tonight. On the way we decided to visit ‘Historic Jamestown’, one of the sites in the historic triangle of Jamestown, Williamsburg and Yorktown. We expected we would be in and out quickly, but in the end we spent nearly five hours there.
There’s an ‘interpretive display’ gallery which traces the history of Jamestown, the first permanent English settlement on the North American mainland from its foundation in 1607 to the beginning of its decline when the colonial capital (of Virginia) was moved to Williamsburg in 1699. These displays were interesting and involving. I was pleased to see that they didn’t just tell the story of the English at Jamestown but also cover the history of the native Americans, the Powhatan, and of the africans – the very first africans in British North America arrived in Jamestown in about 1617. One of them, a woman called Angelo or Angela, is the very first african in North America whose personal history can be traced back to Africa, i.e. who she was, where she originated, and how she came to North America.
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- The governor’s office
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- In a Powhatan house
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- The smith in his smithy
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- In the armoury
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- Part of the Powhatan village
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- On the Susan Constant
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- The storeroom
Then there’s also an outdoors area. This includes a recreation of the Jamestown Fort at a fairly early stage of its history; a dock, with replicas of several of the ships, including the Susan Constant, the largest of the ships that did the original voyage; an a recreated Powhatan village. The fort and the village are based on solid archaeological evidence.
This was an excellent visit, and was one of the highlights of the whole holiday.
Now we’re in our hotel on the edge of Richmond. We fly home tomorrow evening, so tomorrow morning and early afternoon will be our last hours in Virginia.