Colonial Williamsburg

In 1699, after nearly a century of famine, fevers, and battles with neighboring American Indian tribes, the beleaguered Virginia Colony abandoned the mosquito infested swamp at Jamestown for a planned city 6 miles inland and about halfway to Yorktown.  Williamsburg was named for the reigning British monarch, William of Orange and had served as the capital of Virginia from 1699 to 1780.  The population back in colonial times was about 1,800.

Responsible for Williamsburg's restoration, in part, is William Goodwin who arrived in Williamsburg in 1903 to become the pastor of the Bruton Parish Church.  Goodwin was struck by the number of still-standing 18th century buildings in this new community and was inspired to restore his church in time for the 300th anniversary of the establishment of the Episcopal Church in America at Jamestown in 1907.  Goodwin then left to minister to a church in Rochester, New York.

He returned to Bruton Parish in 1923 and was dismayed at the changes that had occurred to Williamsburg in his absence, the deterioration and loss of the antique buildings was rampant.  Goodwin hatched a scheme not just to save and restore a building here and there but to bring its 18th century appearance back to Williamsburg.  He found perhaps the best ally in the country to pull off such an audacious plan - John D. Rockefeller, Jr.

Bruton Parish Episcopal Church:  The church and state were one under the Church of England in the colony of Virginia when the Bruton Parish Church was raised in 1712 - 1715 to replace an earlier Church on this spot.  The church was named in honor of Colonial Governor Sr. William Berkeley whose ancestral home was in Bruton, England.  This is the oldest Episcopal church of uninterrupted use in America.

The churchyard has been the Bruton Parish ground since the 17th century.  In addition to the gravestones, there are hundreds of unmarked burials since only the wealthy could afford the remembrance of a stone marker imported from England.  

Bruton Parish boasts one of the finest collections of table tombs in the United States. 

The George Tucker house:  Bermuda-born St. George Tucker, a Revolutionary War officer and later a judge, acquired three lots on the Palace Green in 1788 from Edmond Randolph.  

His new property included William Levingston's home and the theater that he operated, the first in America.  Tucker moved the wooden Levingston house to its current location where it grew through the years to handle the growing brood of Tucker children - nine by his two wives and five stepchildren.  With such a family it is appropriate that the first Christmas tree in Williamsburg was displayed at the house in 1842.  Tucker descendants lived here until 1993.

The Courthouse:  An original building, the courthouse was the scene of proceedings ranging from criminal trials to the issuance of licenses.  Wife beating, pig stealing, and debtor and creditor disputes were among the cases tried here.  Convicted offenders were usually punished immediately after the verdict.  Punishments included public flogging at the whipping post (conveniently located just outside the courthouse) or being locked in the stocks or pillory, where the offenders were subjected to public ridicule.  Jail sentences were rare - punishments was swift and drastic, and the offenders then returned to the community, often bearing lifelong evidence of their conviction. 

Justice is swift indeed!  

Stu is taking his sentence pretty well, bring on the public ridicule! And me without my tomatoes!

The Magazine:  An original building, this building was constructed in 1715 to house ammunition and arms for the defense of the colony.  In Colonial Williamsburg, every able-bodied freeman belonged to the militia from the ages for 16 to 60 and did his part in protecting hearth and home from attack by local tribes, riots, slave uprisings, and pirate raids.The high wall and guardhouse were built during the French and Indian War to protect the magazine's 60,000 pounds of gunpowder. 

The Peyton Randolph House:  The Randolph's were one of the most prominent and wealthy families in Colonial Virginia.  Sir John Randolph was a respected lawyer, speaker of the house of Brugesses, and Virginia's representative to London, where he was the only Colonial-born Virginian ever to be knighted.  One of the oldest original houses in Williamsburg, the original part of the building was the west wing, constructed in about 1715.  Sir John Randolph purchased the house in 1721.  Sir John's son, Peyton, who would be Speaker of Virginia's House of Burgesses in the inflammatory years prior to the Revolution and president of the First continental Congress.

Williamsburg is laid out on a grid with public greens and a half-acre of land for every house on the main street.

The Secretary's Office: This single story Georgian brick building stands as the oldest archival structure in America, thrust into use after the Capitol went up in flames in 1747.  The Public Records Office was ready the next year.  Its records were moved to Richmond with the capital in 1780.  The building did duty afterwards as a school and was modified into a residence.

R. Charlton's Coffeehouse:  In the 1760s Richard Charlton opened this coffeehouse near the Capitol, where it soon became a stylish gathering place for the social elite, who read 3-month old newspapers from London and engaged in heated political discussion.  

The Capitol Building:  This was the original meeting place for the House of Burgesses, Virginia's Colonial legislature, and constructed between 1701 and 1705, It burned on January 30, 1747.  By 1753a second building was on the site, which lasted until it too perished in a fire in 1832.  Williamsburg played a major role as a seat of royal government and later as a hotbed of revolution until the  government moved to Richmond in 1780 to be safer from British attack.

Public Gaol (pronounced jail) Imprisonment was not the usual punishment for crime in Colonial times, but persons awaiting trial and runaway slaves sometimes spent months in the Public Gaol.  In the winter, the cells were bitterly cold; in the summer, there were stifling.  Beds were piles of straw; leg irons, shackles, and chains were used frequently; and the daily diet consisted of "salt beef, and Indian meal".  In its early days, the gaol doubled as a madhouse, and during the Revolution, redcoats, spies, traitors, and deserters swelled its population.  The gaol opened in 1704 and served as the city jail through 1910.

The Governor's Palace: Another reconstruction; the original 1722 building was consumed by fire while being used as a military hospital for soldiers wounded at Yorktown.  Lord Dunmore was the last of seven Royal governors to occupy the official executive residence before fleeing in 1775.  It also served as the executive mansion for the Commonwealth's first two governors: Patrick Henry and Thomas Jefferson, until the state capital was moved inland to Richmond in 1780.  

Stu marching on the Palace Green.

George Wythe House:  Built around 1750 and occupied by George Wythe (pronounced "with"), A former clerk of the House of Brugesses and ardent patriot.  Wythe was a brilliant thinker and signer of the Declaration of Independence.  Wythe lived into his 80th year when he was poisoned by a grandnephew in 1806.  The murdered escaped conviction, however, when the testimony of the only witness was considered invalid in the courts.  The witness was black, to whom the rights fought for in the Revolution did not extend.