Day 9

Day 9 Picture log with Pono and mom - Destination: Williamsburg and Jamestown
Easter Morning at the Ramada 1776 - our best breakfast ever (Pono loved the biscuits and gravy, mom loved the grits and bread pudding)
Williamsburg was the second capitol of Virginia (after Jamestown). Luckily, the capitol moved out of Williamsburg, so the village did not modernize as quickly as it would have if the capitol stayed in Williamsburg. The Rockefeller foundation fixed up the original houses in this area of Williamsburg in the 1920s and created a living museum. People dress up in clothes styled after the clothing in 1776 and they play act certain events that happened in Williamsburg in that year. The flag in the morning on the capitol building is the British flag. By the afternoon, the Virginia flag will fly on the capitol building to represent Virginia's vote for independence.
When felonies occurred, criminals were kept in the jail cells below the jailer's house. Courts only met twice a year, so criminals were often in jail for several seasons, sweltering in the summer and freezing in the winter. The cell on the left once held Blackbeard's crew of pirates.
If you are in the jail cell and you need to use the bathroom, climb up the stairs, open up the hole and top and "sit on the throne."
Visitors walk through the village and enter the different buildings which represent different businesses that were around in 1776. This is the apothecary where Virginians were able to get medicines of the day. Many of their medicines were set up like a chinese herbal shop.
Fashionable men and women wore hair pieces if they were in the upper middle class, but if they were part of the upper class, they had full head wigs made for them. Their heads were measured and a wooden "blockhead" was created especially for you.
The wigmaker was currently working on a women's wig made out of real hair that they would have imported from Europe. If you needed a cheaper wig or hair piece, it was made out of horse hair.
Next stop, the millinery where they sell millions of fashionable items, from shoe buckles, to underhoops, corsets, fabric for dresses, hats and stockings. The hot item of the day is an underhoop with pockets so that ladies can go to the market and put their items in their hoop pockets.
Three gentlemen riding through town were stopped by our guide and asked how the campaign for independence was going. They were optimistic about their chances, having just returned from the field.
Old fashioned ridicule - hanging out in the town square as part of one's punishment. The only thing missing is townspeople throwing rotten vegetables at us.
If the stockades were full, other prisoners were shackled and waited out in the town square.
Working in a living museum village means that the workers are always dressed in costume, even in the evening when most of the town is closed. If people that live in the village have a car, they must hide it in the barn, or closed storage garage. If they have computers or televisions that emit glows in the evening, they must install heavy blinds in order to hide the glow from passerby.

Off to lunch. We had a really good lunch at the Golden Corral. It was a buffet with steaks, chicken, salmon, pizza, mac and chees, desserts, and an ice cream bar. Pono and Rogan had about 4 bowls of ice cream.

Next stop: Jamestown, the first English settlement in the Americas, and home of the Powhaton nation. (Pocahontas, John Smith)
Three ships came to Jamestown and all three replicas are docked in Jamestown as part of their living museum. (No, this is not the Nina, Pinta and Santa Maria)

In the Powhatan village, interpreters show visitors how the Powhatans lived including the kinds of houses they lived in, the materials they used for utensils and containers, as well as how they make their canoes with very limited kinds of tools.
The English settlers built a fort near the water to protect themselves from the Spanish and the Algonquin Indians. Here an interpreter demonstrates the kinds of gun they used. He is carrying his gun powder in his shoulder strap and he has his lit wick in his hand.