Trend & tradition Winter 2024

THE MAGAZINE OF COLONIAL WILLIAMSBURG

POWER of PLACE

No one wakes up wealthy.

Unless, of course, they went to bed that way.

That doesn’t mean life can’t change on a dime, because we’ve all seen that it can.

We may be waking up in a new world, but one thing hasn’t changed: Wealth rarely happens by accident. You likely get there on purpose.

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Amazing Stories.

Beautifully Told.

Behind every collection in the Art Museums of Colonial Williamsburg is an amazing story, beautifully told. Travel back in time as you experience the religious and patriotic wooden workings of Ulysses Davis, inspired by traditional African sculpture.

Discover the origins of rare historic furnishings and more at the DeWitt Wallace Decorative Arts Museum and uncover the history behind colorful and whimsical American folk art in the Abby Aldrich Rockefeller Folk Art Museum. The Art Museums, Museum Store, and Café are open daily.

Visit the “I made this…” exhibition – Now Open.

OPEN DA ILY

For tickets, visit colonialwilliamsburg.org/art or call (855) 838-2765 301 S Nassau St, Williamsburg, VA 23185 @ArtMuseumsofCWF

WINTER 2024

Table of Contents

BUILDING ON A FOUNDATION

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ON THE WEB

About Town 8

INVESTIGATE AND COLLABORATE

17

SANDRA DAY O’CONNOR 18

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PHILANTHROPY AT WORK

The Power of Place

IN RETROSPECT

A 1960 speech in Williamsburg warns of threats to democracy 22

Rich reservoir of expertise makes Foundation unique

By Paul Aron WINTER 2024 VOLUME 9 • NUMBER 1

IN REMEMBRANCE:

CHRONICLES OF THE COLLECTION

American Indian child’s sampler offers a reflective message

By Paul Aron 26

BEHIND THE SCENES

A frame fit for a king

ON THE COVER: The sky over the iconic Governor’s Palace is the backdrop for a map that represents Williamsburg’s past.

The map appeared in the April 1776 issue of The Pennsylvania Magazine — on Page 12. PHOTOGRAPH BY BRIAN NEWSON, OVERLAYED MAP: COLONIAL WILLIAMSBURG COLLECTIONS, MUSEUM PURCHASE

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TREND & TRADITION • WINTER 2024

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COLONIAL WILLIAMSBURG FOUNDATION TRUSTEES Carly Fiorina, Chair, Mason Neck, Va. Cliff Fleet, President and CEO, Williamsburg, Va. Kendrick F. Ashton Jr., Arlington, Va. Frank Batten Jr., Norfolk, Va. Geoff Bennett, Fairfax, Va. Catharine Broderick, Lake Wales, Fla. Mark A. Coblitz, Wayne, Pa. Walter B. Edgar, Columbia, S.C. Neil M. Gorsuch, Washington, D.C. Antonia Hernandez, Pasadena, Calif.

Conrad Mercer Hall, Norfolk, Va. John A. Luke Jr., Richmond, Va. Walfrido J. Martinez, New York, N.Y. Leslie A. Miller, Philadelphia, Pa. Steven L. Miller, Houston, Texas Joseph W. Montgomery, Williamsburg, Va. Steve Netzley, Carlsbad, Calif.

Walter S. Robertson III, Richmond, Va. Gerald L. Shaheen, Scottsdale, Ariz.

Larry W. Sonsini, Palo Alto, Calif.

Sheldon M. Stone, Los Angeles, Calif.

Y. Ping Sun, Houston, Texas John C. Thomas, Richmond, Va. Jeffrey B. Trammell, Washington, D.C. Alex Wallace, New York, N.Y.

73 The Stuff of Legend

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AT THE MUSEUMS

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THE BARD OF WILLIAMSBURG

St. George Tucker captured the times in rhymes

By Paul Aron 39

MODERN HISTORY

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COMING UP

CHAIRS EMERITI Colin G. Campbell, Williamsburg, Va. Charles R. Longsworth, Royalston, Mass.

Thurston R. Moore, Richmond, Va. Richard G. Tilghman, Richmond, Va. Henry C. Wolf, Williamsburg, Va.

Conferences and events for the coming seasons

Live & Learn

TREND & TRADITION EDITOR-IN-CHIEF

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Navigating seas of contradictory coverage

By Jordan E. Taylor 54

NEWS CORRESPONDENTS

Opining the news of the day

By Paul Aron 60

HIS NATURAL WORLD

The science books that influenced Thomas Jefferson

By Lee Alan Dugatkin

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Catherine Whittenburg

SPREADING THE NEWS

BOOKS

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DO-IT-YOURSELF: GILDED FRAME

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GARDEN-TO-TABLE: ARTICHOKES

ART DIRECTOR

MANAGING EDITOR

PRODUCTION MANAGER

Katie Roy

Jody Macenka

Angela C. Taormina

DESIGNERS

CONTRIBUTING EDITORS

PUBLICATIONS

Katherine Jordan Lauren Metzger

Paul Aron, Ronald L. Hurst, Eve Otmar, John Wallace, Rachel West

COORDINATORS

PHOTOGRAPHER

COPY EDITORS

Brian Newson

W. Hewlett Stith, Amy Watson

Diana Caron Grenda Greene

MEDIA COLLECTIONS Tracey Gulden, Jenna Simpson, Brendan Sostak, Wayne Reynolds RESEARCH Carl Childs, Erin Lopater, Marianne Martin, Douglas Mayo

DONORS Please address all donor correspondence, address changes and requests for our current financial statement to: Signe Foerster, The Colonial Williamsburg Foundation, P.O. Box 1776, Williamsburg, VA 23187-1776 or email sfoerster@cwf.org, telephone 888-293-1776.

Donations support the programs and preservation efforts of The Colonial Williamsburg Foundation, a not-for-profit, tax-exempt corporation organized under the laws of the Commonwealth of Virginia, with principal offices in Williamsburg, Virginia.

Address changes & subscription questions: gifts@cwf.org or 888-293-1776 Editorial inquiries: editor@cwf.org Advertising: nfrey@cwf.org or 757-259-5907

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PUZZLES AND PRIZE

Trend & Tradition: The Magazine of Colonial Williamsburg (ISSN 2470-198X) is published quarterly in winter, spring, summer and autumn by the not-for-profit Colonial Williamsburg Foundation, 301 First Street, Williamsburg, VA 23185. A one-year subscription is available to Foundation donors of $50 a year or more, of which $14 is reserved for a subscription. Periodical postage paid at Williamsburg, VA, and additional mailing offices. POSTMASTER: Send address changes to Trend & Tradition: The Magazine of Colonial Williamsburg, Attn: Signe Foerster, P.O. Box 1776, Williamsburg, VA 23187-1776. © 2024 The Colonial Williamsburg Foundation. All rights reserved.

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PARTING SHOT

NOTE Advertising in Trend & Tradition does not imply endorsement of products or services by The Colonial Williamsburg Foundation.

By Barbara Rust Brown

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Building on a Foundation

A Campaign for Action

Our Calling to Write Colonial Williamsburg’s Next Chapter

Even in these hectic times of endless distraction, defining moments arise for all of us. How we respond makes all the difference — for us today and for generations to come.

The launch of The Power of Place — The Centennial Campaign for Colonial Williamsburg is one such moment. This ambitious $600 million fundraising initiative, which we announced publicly on Oct. 28, is a clarion call to action. With this campaign we can ensure together that our educational work reaches many more Americans, at a time when our nation needs it most.

As we look toward the 250th anniversary of our nation’s founding, Colonial Williamsburg has a great opportunity to lead the entire nation in the commemoration in 2026, the same year the Foundation will reach its centennial. We are committed to meeting this historic moment by deepening our work in Preservation, Education and Civic Engagement — the very pillars of our efforts to discover and share a more complete history of America’s founding.

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The timing could not be more vital. Significant national declines in the teaching and learning of U.S. history and civics are further complicated by widespread misinformation. The resulting seeds of division threaten our great American experiment, which has so many of its origins in Williamsburg. Now more than ever, Americans need a trusted source of fact-based history through which they can better understand one another and the important role that each of us has to play in upholding our democracy.

Now more than ever, Americans need Colonial Williamsburg.

We’re very grateful, then, that The Power of Place campaign launched from a position of remarkable strength thanks to the support of many friends.

Already, we have raised more than $330 million for the campaign, which we aim to complete in early 2027.

Reflecting on the past several years, this progress seems almost unimaginable. We began the campaign’s leadership phase in January 2020,

TREND & TRADITION • WINTER 2024

Building on a Foundation

our important work of revealing — and sharing — a mere few months before the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic that forced the shutdown of the evidence of America’s remarkable origin story.

Colonial Williamsburg’s operations. Yet our staff We have long been the place where the power of and our donors — as they have done for nearly a stories comes alive through historic interpretation, a method of telling stories that was innovated in century — stepped forward to advance our work in Williamsburg. This campaign will enable our new many powerful ways.

Innovation Studios to engage many In 2020, when we announced more citizens, teachers and students plans to excavate and reconstruct with inspiring and critical lessons the site of the Historic First Baptist that are so essential to making a Church’s original structure, more lasting and positive difference. than 300 donors made first-time Williamsburg is the place where gifts to the Foundation. In 2021, so many history-altering events the Colonial Williamsburg Fund — took place — and the Revoluwhich is among our largest and most important sources of revenue — had tion continues here today. From 18th-century conversations in the a record year. In fact, we set a record Raleigh Tavern about revolution in 2021 for overall fundraising, and Cliff Fleet that profoundly influenced the 2022 was our second-best year. As I struggle for independence to the write this in early December 2023, unlikely partnership between the Rev. Dr. W.A.R. we have already surpassed totals reached in 2022, Goodwin and John D. Rockefeller Jr. to restore Wilthanks to your help. liamsburg, this place, which has grown to become Members of our Board of Trustees have paired the world’s largest U.S. history museum, has always a passion for our work with a wealth of expertise synthesized big dreams and bold action. to help guide our way. That enthusiasm was on full Together, we can demonstrate for the world display as many of them joined us in November once again that Williamsburg is the place where for our firing of the bricks, an annual process that powerful events happen and reverberate across over the past few years has produced thousands of the globe. Now more than ever, we are grateful for bricks for the Historic First Baptist Church, Wilyour support, which inspires us all to seek new liamsburg Bray School and Magazine reconstrucdiscoveries that help us tell even more stories of tion and restoration projects.

America’s beginnings.

Our trustees and others have also made significant philanthropic commitments, providing general funding as well as financial support for specific Sincerely, projects like our Colin G. and Nancy N. Campbell Archaeology Center. This state-of-the-art facility, which is scheduled for completion in 2025, will showcase some of our incredible collection of 60 million artifacts and draw our guests directly Cliff Fleet into the process of discovery. With the support President & CEO of our donors, this new home for our world-class Colin G. and Nancy N. Campbell Distinguished archaeology program will dramatically advance Presidential Chair

TREND & TRADITION • WINTER 2024

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On the Web

Rare Breeds Explore Colonial Williamsburg’s focus on the animals that helped sustain English colonists benfranklinsworld.com/ Episode 369

The Brafferton Learn about the school established in Williamsburg for American Indian students

Colonial Crafts 18th-century practices are the inspirations for these projects colonialwilliamsburg.org/learn/colonial-crafts/

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T O P A ND L E F T: BR I A N NE W S O N

colonialwilliamsburg.org/locations/ the-brafferton-indian-school/

About Town EXPLORE COLONIAL SITES AND HISTORY . PEEK BEHIND THE SCENES . PURSUE AND PLAN

p. 26

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A Frame Fit for a King

C R E DI T T K

INVESTIGATE & COLLABORATE

Sharing expertise in different fields makes Colonial Williamsburg’s research uniquely effective

O P P O SI T E PAG E : BR I A N NE W S O N; T HIS PAG E : CO UR T E S Y O F ME R E DI T H P O O L E

by Paul Aron When a 2022 dig at the Historic First Baptist Church site uncovered a few lone bricks at the center of where the building once stood, Colonial Williamsburg archaeologists wondered what they were doing there.

They did not have to go far for the answer. It came from Foundation colleagues in a different discipline.

The Foundation’s architectural historians looked at the bricks’ location and at floor plans of other buildings from the period. Then the purpose of those bricks became clear: They raised the floor joists just enough to prevent the wood from touching the low-lying and seasonally wet land on which the church was built.

The collaboration among experts from different departments, in particular archaeologists, architectural historians and curators, makes Colonial Williamsburg’s research unique. The information yielded about the church changed the understanding not only of the church building but also of how it was constructed — and who did the work.

“We have the ability to play off each other,” said Director of Archaeology Jack Gary. “Nobody else has the ability to bring all these kinds of information together.

It’s a real advantage.”

The revelations do not always emerge instantly. Sometimes bits of information come together like pieces of a puzzle. The bricks under the floor joists, for example, were a clever solution for erecting a building on a difficult site.

TREND & TRADITION • WINTER 2024

WORKING TOGETHER

The church had been built along what was then a steep-sided ravine. Silt started to fill in the ravine around the 1770s, about the time a hurricane hit Williamsburg. At that point, the ravine barely drained and was essentially a swamp. This terrain explains why the congregants built the church in a corner of the property where the ground was slightly firmer.

It may also explain why Jesse Cole, the white landowner who according to oral

Bricks uncovered at the site of the church were used to support the floor joists of the original building.

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tradition gave the land for the church, was willing to do so. His motives may have been partly altruistic, but the land did not have a lot of value.

It was all the more remarkable, therefore, that the congregants were able to create a level foundation and build on it.

“Enslaved or free, they had very limited resources,” said Matt Webster, executive director of the Grainger Department of Architectural Preservation and Research.

“They took what they had and succeeded.

We can see the struggle to build the church and ultimately the success and establishment thanks to the information the archaeologists have discovered.”

The first church building, which was erected in 1804 or 1805, was small — about 16 feet by 20 feet. Sometime during the early 19th century the congregants expanded the building to about 16 feet by 32 feet. That structure stood until a tornado destroyed it in 1834.

The range of expertise will ultimately help Colonial Williamsburg reconstruct the church as it looked in the early 19th century.

“We can look at the same thing and get different information out of it,” Gary said,

“and then it all comes together to create an accurate interpretation.”

COLLABORATIVE DISCOVERIES

The combined work of Colonial Williamsburg researchers has been equally revelatory at the Bray School, where hundreds of enslaved and free Black children were educated during the 18th century.

The building that housed the school was assumed to be long gone, but, as Webster noted, it was hiding in plain sight on the William & Mary campus.

The building’s 18th-century construction had largely been hidden by additions over time, but continuing research by architectural historians revealed much about its original state. To the surprise of historians, a structure that had been thought to be in disrepair in 1765 was actually a well-built middle-class home.

“We can’t operate independently,” Webster said. “We weren’t connecting the information until we all sat down and looked at the documents, the building, the archaeology. Then the story became clear.”

Most recently, the collaboration of

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G R A ING E R DE PA R T ME N T O F A R C HI T EC T UR A L P R E S E R VAT IO N A ND R E S E A R C H, CO L O NI A L WIL L I A MS BUR G FO UNDAT IO N

Shirley and Richard Roberts Architectural Historian Jennifer Wilkoski prepared a CAD (computer-aided design) model of the soon-to-be reconstructed Bray School chimney. Architectural historians combine data from archaeology and architectural investigations to guide the design and restoration of buildings.

About Town COLLABORATION

archaeologists and architectural historians has revealed the existence of a large privy that served the school. When the building’s original site was excavated, archaeologists found two 3-foot-square pits, side by side, against the fence line that was the property’s boundary. They first thought these were postholes, perhaps from building a fence. After studying the layers of soil and artifacts back in the lab, it became clear these were the pits inside the privy.

The debris from the privy, dating from the time when the school operated, may provide additional clues about the lives of the students and their teacher, just as artifacts from the church site can reveal much about the lives of its congregants.

A white salt-glazed creamer found in the privy may have been on a table in the school. Animal bones may indicate the kinds of food the students were eating while at school. And soil samples from the privies may reveal the presence or absence of parasites, providing some indication of the health of the children.

At the church site, fragments of 12 ceramic vessels turned out to be, after being studied at the lab, cash boxes — like piggy banks — that may have been used to raise money for the church. Artifacts such as ceramics will be of tremendous use to the curators who will furnish the house and the tradespeople who will reproduce some of those furnishings.

In the recent excavation, archaeologists found clay roofing tiles, unlike the wooden shingles that were used during the 1930s reconstruction. Clay tiles were less flammable, and the colonists who built the Magazine were certainly conscious of the danger of fire in a building that stored ammunition.

Webster noted that the tiles were an unusual shape not commonly found in those made in England. They probably came from the Netherlands or Germany.

The exterior of the Magazine may ultimately look different in a number of ways. Recent excavations indicate that the original wall was not as tall as the reconstructed one. Architectural historians have corroborated that finding with a document that describes the wall measuring between 5 feet and 7 feet tall. The reconstructed wall measures 10 feet tall.

Architectural historians also turned to archaeological excavation drawings from the 1930s to help define the gate size.

“This is another example of using the various disciplines at Colonial Williamsburg to put all of the pieces together and present history accurately,” Webster said.

(Below, left): Fragments of ceramic vessels found at the church site have been identified as cash boxes. (Below, right): Archaeological Field Technician DeShondra Dandridge helped examine the church site, shovelful by shovelful.

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LEARNING MORE

The understanding of the Magazine, too, has benefited from collaborative efforts.

The iconic building, where the spark was struck that ignited the Revolution in Virginia, housed weapons and ammunition.

It was restored in 1934-1935. At the same time, the perimeter wall and guardhouse, which had been pulled down in the 19th century, were reconstructed.

TREND & TRADITION • WINTER 2024

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the

POWE of PL ACE An early American town divulges its history, story by story

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The Historic Area has 301 acres of stories — of courage, persistence and revolutionary ideas. And they are everywhere — in the 89 original buildings, in the structures reconstructed through ongoing research and in the facts that continue to reveal themselves to those who see history as unfinished work. These are the underpinnings of Colonial Williamsburg’s mission and the foundation for a fundraising campaign whose aim is to tell even more of the stories central to America’s beginnings.

The George Wythe House

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his stately brick home was a place of learning for George Wythe, a man who loved to teach. He built an extensive library here, studied the sciences and argued politics, and perhaps conceived the idea of a moot court, where students argue imaginary cases.

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c. 1752-1754

Young Thomas Jefferson, a future president, and young John Marshall, a future chief justice of the United States, studied here. Gen. George Washington set up military headquarters in the parlor, mapping strategy against the British at Yorktown, winning the independence that

ORIGINAL

Wythe had so ardently supported.

The house in which Wythe lived for 30 years is filled with clues of what he contemplated as a member of the House of Burgesses, a signer of the Declaration of Independence and a supporter of the ratification of the U.S. Constitution.

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The Magazine C

ommissioned by Lt. Gov. Alexander Spotswood in 1714, the Magazine served as a storehouse for military supplies and, most notably, gunpowder.

On April 21, 1775, the royal governor Lord Dunmore, sensing increasing tensions, ordered the removal of the gunpowder from the Magazine, which incited angry Virginians to action. The Gunpowder Incident

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sparked open rebellion. Townspeople gathered to demand the return of the gunpowder. Patrick Henry, who was assembling a militia to march on Williamsburg, called for the return of the gunpowder or payment for its value. Henry received the latter. But anger remained high, prompting Dunmore to write: “I shall remain here until I am forced out . . . as I cannot expect to make any effectual

ORIGINAL

resistance in this place against the numbers that are said to be moving against me.” Indeed, Dunmore fled on June 8.

A project begun in 2021 aims to restore the interior and exterior of the building to its original appearance. This work is scheduled to be completed in 2025, in time to commemorate the 250th anniversary of the Gunpowder Incident.

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BR I A N NE W S O N

c. 1715

About Town

GR AINGER DEPARTMENT OF ARCHITEC TUR AL PRESERVATION AND RESE ARCH, COLONIAL WILLIAMSBURG FOUNDATION

PHILANTHROPY AT WORK

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he story of one of the nation’s earliest Black Baptist churches began in 1776 in a shielded outdoor setting — a brush arbor where enslaved and free Black worshippers met in secret, defying laws that forbade them from gathering. After a year of excavation, archaeologists found evidence in 2021 of the church’s first permanent structure, which dates to the early 1800s. Tax records from 1818 show that the congregation was gathering in a building called the Baptist Meeting House. The

building, located on a sliver of land on Nassau Street, was destroyed by a tornado in 1834, and the congregation built a brick church that stood until it was purchased by The Colonial Williamsburg Foundation in the 1950s.

The archaeological work to locate the original church’s footprint is the beginning of an effort to reconstruct the church’s earliest building.

The archaeological dig revealed the 16-by-32-foot brick foundation, on which once rested a frame structure.

Evidence suggests that congregants

constructed the building themselves.

A surviving brick step indicates the location of the front door, and brick pavers dating to the early 1800s provided a path to the church over what then was swampy terrain.

Reconstruction of the church’s original building is slated to be completed in 2026, when the church celebrates its 250th anniversary.

Funding for the First Baptist Church project includes a $3 million grant from the Lilly Endowment, Inc.

First Baptist Church scheduled to open 2026

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RECONSTRUCTED

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Charlton’s Coffeehouse I

RECONSTRUCTED

n the 18th century, coffeehouses were places where gentlemen met to discuss and debate the news of the day. Richard Charlton’s establishment, located just steps from the Capitol, was also a place for protest. Its front porch became a place of safety for stamp collector George Mercer, newly arrived from London in October 1765 and greeted by angry Virginians who wanted nothing to do with London’s latest tax. “This Concourse of people I should call a Mob, did I not know that it was chiefly if not altogether composed of Gentlemen of property in the Colony some of them at the Head of their Respective Counties, and the Merchants of the

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Country,” recalled Lt. Gov. Francis Fauquier, who became Mercer’s protector. The crowd demanded Mercer’s resignation, which he tendered the next day.

In 2009, Charlton’s Coffeehouse was reconstructed at the location where it once stood. Extensive research, including archaeology that uncovered thousands of artifacts, informed the details of the project.

Daily tours offer a glimpse into an 18th-century world where news was exchanged, business was transacted and politics were debated.

A generous gift from Deborah and Forrest Mars Jr. helped make the reconstruction of the coffeehouse possible.

How You Can Help Preservation, education and civic engagement are vital to the Foundation’s mission to provide tools for an informed citizenry.

The Power of Place, a multiyear campaign, aims to protect, strengthen and enhance the Foundation’s ability to create engaging American history content.

Gifts to the Foundation support this campaign — and the work of promoting American history education and encouraging civic participation through the power of place that Williamsburg represents.

To contribute to Colonial Williamsburg and advance its mission, please visit cwpowerofplace.org. If you would like more information on how you can support this work, contact us at campaign@ cwf.org.

TREND & TRADITION • WINTER 2024

BR I A N NE W S O N

completed in 2009

IN REMEMBR ANCE

TOM GREEN

Sandra Day O’Connor Retired Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor, a champion of civics education and civic engagement during her tenure on the high court and on The Colonial Williamsburg Foundation Board of Trustees, died Dec. 1. She was 93.

O’Connor, the first woman to serve as an associate justice of the high court, was a Foundation trustee from 1988-2001. After her retirement from the court, she founded the Sandra Day O’Connor Institute for American Democracy. She also founded iCivics, an organization centered on civics education that Colonial Williamsburg partners with today to provide educational resources to inspire lifelong civic engagement.

“Her work on behalf of Colonial Williamsburg grew out of her belief that civil discourse, civics education and civic engagement were crucial elements of American democracy,” said Colonial Williamsburg President and CEO Cliff Fleet. “We continue that legacy through our mission to share a complete story of our nation’s founding and its origins here in Williamsburg.”

While education was decidedly a priority for O’Connor, her service on the board extended to all areas of the Foundation.

“Justice O’Connor was a remarkably engaged trustee,” said Ronald L. Hurst, senior vice president

for Education and Historic Resources. “Her interests covered everything from education to preservation to hospitality. She brought vision and insight to her role as a trustee, and the Foundation was a better place for her presence.”

President Ronald Reagan nominated O’Connor to the Supreme Court, where she served from 1981-2006.

As a member of the court, she built a reputation for consensus building through civil discourse. When no consensus was possible, she often based her opinion on a case on narrow grounds to avoid further divisiveness.

O’Connor’s interest in Virginia’s Historic Triangle extended beyond Williamsburg. In 2006 she became chancellor of William & Mary, and she chaired the Jamestown 400th anniversary commission in 2007.

In 2011, O’Connor was awarded the Churchill Bell, the Foundation’s highest award given to those who exemplify what it means to be active, engaged citizens.

“For Sandra Day O’Connor’s work, it takes knowing that her exemplary life and career marked a turning point — after more than 200 years — when the highest court of Earth’s greatest democracy began to benefit from the perspectives of half its citizens,” said thenFoundation President and CEO Colin Campbell during the ceremony.

‘Can the Future Redeem the Past?’

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n “iron curtain has descended” across Europe, former British Prime Minister Winston Churchill told a Westminster College audience in Fulton, Missouri, in 1946. Fourteen years later, on June 11, 1960, a diplomat and educator named Charles Malik also gave an anti-communist speech, warning of the growing threat to democracies. The speech, delivered in Colonial Williamsburg’s Historic Area on the eve of the 184th anniversary of the Virginia Declaration of Rights, outlined an intellectual and spiritual struggle.

The first Lebanese representative to the United Nations, Malik rose to become president of the U.N. General Assembly and

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advocated arresting communism “on every level — militarily, politically, economically, and above all, theoretically and spiritually.” Newspapers and magazines across the country reported on the speech, sometimes comparing it to Churchill’s “Iron Curtain” speech. The July 4, 1960, issue of U.S. News & World Report called Malik’s words a “warning that has jarred high officials in Washington.”

Anti-Communism at Williamsburg Williamsburg had been a bastion of anticommunism for more than a decade before Malik’s speech. John D. Rockefeller 3rd, the son of Colonial Williamsburg’s original benefactor, became chair of the board

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S P ECI A L CO L L EC T IO NS , JO HN D. R O C K E F E L L E R JR . L IBR A RY

A speech given in Williamsburg drew comparisons with Churchill’s “Iron Curtain” address

About Town

T O P : CO R P O R AT E A R C HI V E S , JO HN D. R O C K E F E L L E R JR . L IBR A RY; B O T T O M: S P ECI A L CO L L EC T IO NS , JO HN D. R O C K E F E L L E R JR . L IBR A RY

IN RETROSPECT

in 1949 and appointed a “Special Survey Committee” whose assignment included researching ways to teach Americans about democracy. Committee members, especially John Goodbody of Colonial Williamsburg’s publications department and Kershaw Burbank of the public information department, spent more than a year interviewing prominent figures ranging from the historians Arthur Schlesinger Sr. and Arthur Schlesinger Jr. to Jawaharlal Nehru, the prime minister of India.

Goodbody and Burbank traveled throughout Europe and Asia, including in communist countries, making no secret that the thrust of their recommendations would be how Colonial Williamsburg might combat communism abroad and at home.

“I am sure you have noticed,” Colonial Williamsburg President Kenneth Chorley wrote to Rockefeller 3d in March 1950, “that throughout all the memoranda which we receive from the Special Survey Committee, reporting on interviews held, there appears again and again, in one form or another, the indication that ‘the great threat to our Democratic way of living is Communism.’” When the committee submitted its report in February 1951, the first section discussed concepts of freedom, and the remaining three sections discussed how to combat communism.

Rockefeller retired in 1953, but, as the Cold War showed no signs of thawing, Colonial Williamsburg’s efforts to promote democracy did not wane.

In 1952, exiles from 10 Eastern European countries came to the Historic Area and signed a “Williamsburg Declaration,” pledging to restore human rights and political liberties after the overthrow of communist governments.

The Foundation carried its anticommunist message abroad in 1955 by awarding its first Williamsburg Award to Churchill. At a lavish presentation cer-

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emony in London, Winthrop Rockefeller, who had succeeded his brother as Colonial Williamsburg’s chair, described Churchill as “the symbol of a free world in time of terrible danger.”

Malik’s speech was part of Colonial Williamsburg’s “Prelude to Independence” program, which launched in 1951. The program commemorated crucial dates in 1776: May 15, the day delegates to the Virginia Convention instructed their representatives in the Continental Congress at Philadelphia to move for independence; June 12, when the Convention adopted its Declaration of Rights; and July 4, when the Continental Congress approved the Declaration of Independence.

Speeches tied 1776 events in Williamsburg to current events, often highlighting threats to democracy. Notable speakers other than Malik included U.N. SecretaryGeneral Dag Hammarskjold in 1956, former Secretary of State Dean Acheson in 1959 and Secretary of State Dean Rusk in

(Above): Charles Malik, a Lebanese diplomat and philosopher, outlined the dangers of communism during a 1960 speech that was part of a Colonial Williamsburg program called “Prelude to Independence."

(Below): U.N. SecretaryGeneral Dag Hammarskjold was among the dignitaries who spoke at “Prelude to Independence” programs.

19

About Town

(Above, left): Exiled European leaders met in the Capitol for a Human Rights Day observance on June 12, 1952, the 176th anniversary of the adoption of Virginia’s Declaration of Rights.

(Above, right): Colonial Williamsburg distributed more than 70,000 copies of Malik’s speech.

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1964. None of the speeches generated the response Malik’s did.

A Flood of Responses

The first press reports came from James Kilpatrick of the Richmond News Leader and Carl Andrews of the Roanoke WorldNews, both of whom had heard Malik speak in Williamsburg. The speech was later discussed in newspapers and magazines throughout the country, including the Christian Science Monitor, ScrippsHoward newspapers and Reader’s Digest.

Conservative columnists were especially enamored. A Scripps-Howard columnist wrote that “the entire Malik speech ought to be mandatory reading for all Americans.” Kilpatrick later called it “the greatest speech I ever heard.”

Colonial Williamsburg was flooded with hundreds of requests for the speech that came from 41 states and from England, Australia and Saudi Arabia. The Foundation printed more than 70,000 copies of a booklet that included both Malik’s words and Winthrop Rockefeller’s opening remarks. U.S. Steel Corporation alone took more than 30,000 copies to

distribute to managers and to put in reading racks at its plants.

Winthrop Rockefeller reminded the speech’s attendees that the motto his father had chosen for Colonial Williamsburg — “That the future may learn from the past” — applied not only to America’s future but also to the future of the world.

Of his father, he wrote: “He believed that there is something of value to be learned here by men of all nations as we continue our search for peace and international understanding based on justice.”

Malik himself referred to that motto: “I have been led to this undertaking partly through the inspiration of the whole concept of Colonial Williamsburg and its majestic execution, whose purpose is so perfectly expressed in its motto.”

“Can the future redeem the past?”

Malik asked. “I believe it can. Will the future redeem the past? That depends on four things: on depth, on wisdom, on daring, and on leadership. I believe without high leadership daring to act in wisdom and depth the future will not learn from the past. These are things for which we should yearn and work.”

TREND & TRADITION • WINTER 2024

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Sampler

ARTIST Christeen Baker

MEDIUM Silk embroidery threads on linen

DATE 1830

DIMENSIONS 11 ₁ ⁄₂ inches by 16 ₁ ⁄₄ inches

PLACE Mayhew, Mississippi, which was then part of the Choctaw Nation

About Town

CHRONICLES OF THE COLLECTION

‘When Shall We All Meet Again’ AMERICAN INDIAN GIRL’S SAMPLER CONVEYS A POWERFUL STORY

O P P O SI T E PAG E : CO L O NI A L WIL L I A MS BUR G CO L L EC T IO NS , GI V E N IN ME M O RY O F S A R A H B. Mc G E HE E

BY HE R DAU G H T E R , MIL LY McG E HE E

BY PAUL ARON PHOTOGRAPHY BY JASON COPES

Embroidering samplers was part of many an American girl’s education during the 18th and early 19th centuries. Most surviving examples come from middleand upper-class white girls who lived in New England and the mid-Atlantic states. Samplers from the Deep South are rare, and those by American Indian girls even rarer. Christeen Baker, a 12-year-old Choctaw girl, created this sampler while a student at a female mission school in Mayhew, Mississippi.

Despite the rarity of such samplers, it is not entirely surprising that a Choctaw girl would be educated in the ways of white settlers. Many Choctaws, like many members of the Cherokee, Muscogee, Chickasaw and Seminole nations, fused European-American traditions with their own. They learned English, established Christian churches, intermarried with whites and wore Western clothing. Some even grew cotton on plantations worked by enslaved people.

Some Americans referred to these nations as the “Five Civilized Tribes.”

Missionaries to Choctaw country established their first school in northeast Mississippi in 1818, and a second was opened in Mayhew in 1821. Christeen Baker attended the Mayhew school in 1829 and 1830. Students there were taught reading, writing and geography as well as Bible verses and needlework skills.

To some extent, learning settler ways was a survival strategy. The Choctaws hoped that it would enable them to better protect their homelands. For decades after America declared its independence from Great Britain, American Indians in the South remained independent of the United States. The Choctaws, along with the Muscogees and Cherokees, controlled large sections of the Deep South.

Still, white settlements continued to infringe on the lands of Indigenous peoples. In May 1830, prodded by President Andrew Jackson, Congress passed the Indian Removal Act, which called for moving Indigenous peoples, including Choctaw people, to territories west of the Mississippi River. In September 1830, less than four months after Christeen Baker finished her sampler, Choctaw leaders, under pressure from the United States, signed the Treaty of Dancing Rabbit Creek which called for them to turn over 10 million acres in return for land in what is now Oklahoma.

TREND & TRADITION • WINTER 2024

About the Artist Christeen Baker was the white name given to a 12-year-old Choctaw.

Indigenous children were assigned new names when they arrived at mission schools. The maker of this sampler may have been renamed after Christian Baker, a Boston woman who regularly sent gifts to the school in Mayhew.

23

Many Choctaws died en route to their new lands. All the more poignant and perhaps prophetic, therefore, is the verse embroidered on the sampler: When shall we all meet again When shall we all meet again Oft shall glowing hope expire Oft shall weried [sic] love retire Oft shall death and sorrow reign Ere we all shall meet again.

When the dreames [sic] of life are fled When its wasted lamp is dead When in cold oblivions shade Beauty power and fame are laid Where immortal spirite [sic] reign There may we all meet again What happened to Christeen Baker after she left the school in 1830 is not known.

In seeking to tell more complete stories, Colonial Williamsburg has broadened its collecting philosophies, said Kimberly Smith Ivey, the Foun­ dation’s senior curator of textiles. “Samplers powerfully illustrate stories of women’s education, settlement patterns and cultural assimilation,” she said. “Schoolgirl samplers are like a scrapbook of the past — a scrapbook that we can enjoy today.”

24

TREND & TRADITION • WINTER 2024

CO L O NI A L WIL L I A MS BUR G CO L L EC T IO NS , GI V E N IN ME M O RY O F S A R A H B. Mc G E HE E

BY HE R DAU G H T E R , MIL LY McG E HE E

Making samplers helped girls master stitching skills and also learn the alphabet and numbers.

THE POW E R O F P H I L A NT H RO PY THE POW E R O F P H I L A NT H RO PY

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A 60 year old couple SAMPLE BENEFITS FOR A who $5,000 GIFT gives $5,000 would receive a A 60 year couple who $1,400 taxold deduction* and an gives $5,000 would receiveyield. a approximate 5.0% annual $1,400 tax deduction* and an *Please consult your tax advisor. approximate 5.0% annual yield.

income life, while alsoPooled providing a meaningful gift to The Williamsburg Colonialfor Williamsburg’s Income Fund provides you Colonial with tax savings and Foundation.

What better way to make history and provide for your future.

Contact income for life, while also providing a meaningful gift to The Colonial Williamsburg us today or reply theway attached card to getand started.

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Please consult professional advisors before making a charitable gift. Colonial Williamsburg cannot render tax or legal advice. Colonial Williamsburg is a registered trademark of The Colonial Williamsburg Foundation.

Please consult professional advisors before making a charitable gift. Colonial Williamsburg cannot render tax or legal advice. Colonial Williamsburg is a registered trademark of The Colonial Williamsburg Foundation.

Fit for a

KING Conservators created a new frame for an old portrait of William III

O P P O SI T E PAG E : K ING WIL L I A M III P O R T R A I T WA S A PA R T I A L GIF T O F E LT O N M. H Y DE R A ND MU S E UM P UR C H A S E

PHOTOGRAPHY BY BRIAN NEWSON

able silver because “silvering” — the 18th“A historic frame,” said Christopher Swan, senior conservator of wooden artifacts, “is a century term for silver gilding — went out of bridge between the past and today. It is the style early in the 18th century. Many that did line you cross when you go from a gallery to survive had been regilded with gold. another world.

“This was our chance to dig in,” Swan said.

“I love historic frames.”

So in 2019, when Colonial WilliamsBlending Art and Science burg acquired a 1697 portrait of WilDigging in was no small matter. The liamsburg’s namesake, King William III, unframed portrait measures nearly 8 feet Swan’s eyes immediately turned to the in height, so the frame required quite a frame. It was clearly wrong — an underlot of carving.

Like Colonial Williamsburg’s tradespeosized 20th-century intrusion on a 17thple, conservators study the matecentury painting. rials and techniques that were What was needed was a frame (Opposite page): used in the past. Fortunately, the in the Baroque style, and Swan It takes a team of conservators, Foundation has in its collection a and his fellow conservators saw curators and art model from which the team could an opportunity to learn by doing. handlers to install the portrait of King work: an early 18th-century Few intact examples of William in the gallery. silver frame with all of its origiBaroque frames have survived, The framed artwork nal materials including the top especially in highly fashionis nearly 9 feet high.

TREND & TRADITION • WINTER 2024

27

The project required multiple steps and sketches, including tracing an overlay of a historic frame (top, right) and applying gesso (above).

WATCH THE PROCESS! colonialwilliamsburg.org/frame

28

varnish. This British frame once hung on a wall at Blandfield, a plantation in Essex County, Virginia.

Analysis confirmed that the materials and construction matched the practice of the period and that the frame was unrestored. The materials include preparatory chalk and glue layers called “gesso,” a white burnishing clay called “bole,” pure silver leaf and a protective clear natural resin varnish. The type of varnish used indicated that the silver leaf was to be presented as silver and not tinted to look like gold, as was sometimes the case, especially in the 19th century.

Consulting with Laura Barry, the Juli Grainger Curator of Paintings, Drawings and Sculpture, conservators created a design based on the Blandfield frame as well as other frames for royal portraits.

“It was a bonus to have in the collection a British-made frame with a strong Virginia history fashioned in a style commonly seen on royal and aristocratic portraits of the period,” Barry said. “This frame provided us with the perfect prototype to study and reproduce for our likeness of King William.”

Since the project began during the pandemic, the frame became a sort of

kitchen-table project. Sometimes Swan took the project home. Then it might go to Senior Conservator Albert Skutans.

Sarah Towers, an assistant conservator, and intern Caroline Shaver also got their turns carving the four individual wooden moldings that would constitute the frame.

The work on the frame, like much of the work conservators do, required a knowledge of art history and of material science — and some artistic abilities.

Period techniques were defined by 18th-century treatises, especially Robert Dossie’s Handmaid to the Arts, which has a chapter entitled “Of Silvering.”

“A conservator’s work is multifaceted, incorporating analysis, historic and condition assessments, treatments and the occasional informed reproduction,” Swan said. “We like to say, or pretend, that we’re Renaissance people.”

A Public Project

The undertaking was a chance not only to do research and construction but also

TREND & TRADITION • WINTER 2024

About Town BEHIND THE SCENES

“A historic frame is a bridge between the past and today.”

CO L O NI A L WIL L I A MS BUR G FO UNDAT IO N

— Christopher Swan

to demonstrate the work. The final stages took place in the DeWitt Wallace Decorative Arts Museum, where between May and August 2023 Swan and his colleagues talked with and worked in front of about 2,300 people.

The public stages of the project included a process called “recutting,” from the French reparure. The numerous coats of gesso and bole fill in and obscure the intricate carvings. Recutting, an important aspect of the craft, redefines the shapes. The craftsmen who did the recutting in the 17th century were among the most skilled workers involved in producing the decorative arts of that period.

After the recutting, conservators applied silver leaf to the tops and outsides of the moldings and then patinated them with tinted varnish to make them look older and better integrated with the old canvas portrait. Then the moldings were joined into a single frame.

Finally, the painting was fitted into its new frame. In addition to being in a

TREND & TRADITION • WINTER 2024

Baroque style appropriate for the painting, the sturdy new frame provides the necessary long-term support for the old canvas portrait.

The painting currently hangs in the British Masterworks gallery of the DeWitt Wallace Museum.

Just before silvering, the surface was wet with water and alcohol.

Who was William III? A member of the Dutch royal family,

restoring Protestantism to the British

William of Orange was born in 1650

Crown. Theirs was the first joint

at The Hague. In 1677, William mar-

English monarchy.

ried his cousin Mary, daughter of the

During their reign, Parliament

Duke of York who later became King

passed laws limiting the power of the

James II of England.

monarchy. The couple granted a char-

William was a Protestant and James

ter for the College of William and Mary

a Catholic. In 1688, William and his

in 1693, and Williamsburg was named

army landed in Devon and marched

after William when it was estab-

to London, dethroning his uncle and

lished in 1699. Mary died in 1694 and

father-in-law. James fled to France,

William in 1702.

and the invasion succeeded largely without bloodshed.

In 1689, William and Mary were proclaimed king and queen,

William III’s likeness portrays him in his royal regalia. He was painted by the studio of Sir Godfrey Kneller, principal painter to William and Mary.

29

SUPPORTING AMERICAN HISTORY THROUGH MODERNIZED EDUCATION. Helping our future learn from our past is the driving mission of The Colonial Williamsburg Foundation.

That’s why we’re proud to introduce a new web portal aimed at helping teachers and educators across the country – the Bob & Marion Wilson Educator Resource Library!

Made possible by our gracious donors, the Bob & Marion Wilson Educator Resource Library provides teachers with relevant, engaging, and inclusive American history and civics classroom tools developed by historians and educators. Now multimedia content, lesson plans, and primary sources are more accessible for teachers – and that means students and scholars of all ages will benefit from it.

SCAN TO LEARN MORE.

Rare Forms Works highlight the beauty and craftsmanship of utilitarian objects PHOTOGRAPHY BY JASON COPES

CURRENTLY OPEN

American Folk Pottery: Art and Tradition Abby Aldrich Rockefeller Folk Art Museum Elizabeth M. and Joseph M. Handley Gallery

The larger-than-life wooden watermelon by Virginian Miles Carpenter is familiar to many visitors to the Art Museums. Carpenter had used the carving to advertise his produce stand, and he enjoyed the incredulous reactions of passing motorists who mistook it for real fruit. Today, it evokes the same reaction as guests enter the Bob and Marion Wilson Family Gallery. A recent acquisition adds to the Foundation’s collection of monumental fruit. This one, ceramic and reaching 17½ inches high, is a cooler in the shape of an apple complete with a leafy twig handle. It is one of several known examples but the only one

TREND & TRADITION • WINTER 2024

with the signifier “BALDWIN’S CIDER” advertising the contents. With origins dating to 1740 in Wilmington, Massachusetts, the Baldwin apple was heralded in the last quarter of the 19th century to be among the best for cider. This stoneware cooler was made in New York around 1890.

The American Folk Pottery exhibition was made possible through the generosity of Sen. and Mrs. John D. Rockefeller IV. The wooden watermelon is part of the Introduction to the Art Museums exhibition that was made possible by Catharine and Kevin Broderick.

31

About Town AT THE MUSEUMS

CURRENTLY OPEN

DeWitt Wallace Decorative Arts Museum Nancy N. and Colin G. Campbell Gallery Few works by enslaved potters working in early America can be specifically traced to the maker.

Work created by David Drake is an exception. Drake created ash-glazed stoneware storage vessels, some distinguished by inscribed verses. In addition to the four pieces by Drake in the collection, Colonial Williamsburg is fortunate to have on loan from William and Susan Mariner a jug with an inscribed verse. It reads: “Lm [Lewis Miles] says this handle will crack.” Today — 170 years later — the unbroken handle bears witness to Drake’s skill and self-confidence.

He signed and dated the inscription almost as if sealing a wager between himself and the kiln. (A potter never knows the outcome of his work until the kiln is unloaded.) But the inscription was also likely a statement of resistance and defiance. It memorializes Drake’s skill at creating beautiful and lasting work despite criticism from his enslaver, Lewis Miles. This jug, along with two other works by Drake, are on display.

Just Arrived Ever alive to opportunities for profit, Revolutionary War-era British manufacturers produced goods for the American market that advanced American political sympathies at Great Britain’s expense. Less well known in this country are British products that criticized Americans. This creamware tankard, made in Staffordshire about 1780, is such a product. Prominently featured on the front are the words “GOD Save the KING” and a rhyming verse: “Prithee Tom Paine, why wilt thou meddling be / In others Business which concerns not thee, / For while thereon thou dost extend thy Cares / Thou dost at home neglect thy own Affairs.”

English Quaker turned political propogandist Thomas Paine immigrated to Philadelphia in 1774. He served as editor of the Pennsylvania Gazette and authored controversial pamphlets such as Common Sense and The American Crisis, the latter outwardly inciting revolution. Paine’s egalitarian and democratic messages garnered friends and enemies on both sides of the Atlantic, but British distaste for his writings became especially strong during the American Revolution. Sometimes humorous and sometimes aggressive, such sentiments appeared on tokens, prints and ceramics made for the British market.

Purchase of this tankard was underwritten by the Friends of Colonial Williamsburg Collections. It will be exhibited at the Art Museums.

32

THE POW ER O F GI V I NG

HISTORY

in MOTION It Happens in Williamsburg

Your Gift Keeps Us Moving Forward.

Now, more than ever, we must preserve the actual places where our THE WILLIAMSBURG BRAY SCHOOL

as it appeared in the 19th century. It was rediscovered in 2020 and moved back to the Historic Area in February 2023.

nation’s history took shape. The Colonial Williamsburg Foundation is committed to never ending discoveries that advance our educational mission: That the future may learn from the past.

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The Bard of

WILLIAMSBURG ST. GEORGE TUCKER CAPTURED THE TIMES IN RHYMES

T HE NE W YO R K P UBL IC L IBR A RY

by PAUL ARON

About Town

ST. GEORGE TUCKER POETRY

S

t. George Tucker, whose house stands just a few steps from Palace Green, was renowned as a judge and as the author, in 1803, of the first major work on American law. He was also an inventor who built a steam-powered water pump.

He was less known as a poet, though John Adams greatly admired one of his poems.

“I know not which to admire most, its Simplicity, its Beauty, its Pathos, its Philosophy, its Morality, its Religion, or its Sublimity,” Adams wrote in 1813 after reading Tucker’s poem Resignation. “Is there in Homer, in Virgil, in Milton, in Shakespeare, or in Pope, an equal number of Lines, which deserves to be engraved on the Memory of Youth and Age, in more indelible Characters?”

Their literary value aside, Tucker’s poems offer a window into Williamsburg during and after the Revolution.

HEROES AND VILLAINS

An ardent patriot, Tucker extolled the virtues of George Washington in a 1780 poem:

Triumphan t as Mars, in the glorious field,

Triumphant as Mars, in the glorious field, While Minerva shall lend him her wisdom, and shield: And Liberty, freed from the shackles, shall own, Great Washington’s claim, as her favorite son.

While Minerva shall lend him her wisdom, and shield:

Benedict Arnold, in contrast, was:

Impelled by motives of the basest kind, Which mark the vicious, mean, degenerate mind.

And Libert y, freed from the shackles, shall own,

Tucker often satirized those he wanted to cut down to size. In 1776, when he noticed the name of Wilson Curle carved in a corner of the Capitol where the burgesses sat, Tucker jotted down these lines:

Great Washingt on’s claim, as her favori t e son.

Here Henry spoke, and rose to deathless fame: Curle in the corner sat, and carved his name.

Later, as a supporter of Thomas Jefferson, Tucker satirized Jefferson’s nemesis, Alexander Hamilton, and his Federalist supporters in Congress, whom he compared to powerful and disciplined troops in the Ottoman empire:

Whilst on your paper throne you sit With solid gold beneath your feet Fear not a regicide!

Your faithful Janizaries all Shall muster thick in Congress Hall To guard their leader’s side.

Tucker also mocked Adams and his desire to give the president a regal title: Adams had suggested Washington be called “highness.” This did not sit well with many who had just fought a revolution against a king. Tucker suggested Adams’ title be “most superfluous

TREND & TRADITION • WINTER 2024

35

About Town

ST. GEORGE TUCKER POETRY

highness.” Tucker’s verses insulting Adams were published anonymously, so Adams — who was known for holding a grudge — never learned that the stinging words were written by the poet he later so lavishly praised.

THE WORLD OF WILLIAMSBURG

N ow the season for mirth and good eat ing advances,

Many of Tucker’s poems portrayed the social world of Williamsburg, albeit from the perspective of a man who was very much a member of the gentry.

His poem Christmas Verses for the Printer’s Devil, 1784 went on at length about the season’s feasting:

Plays, oys t ers andNowsheldrakes, balls, mince pies and dances; the season for mirth and good eating advances, Plays, oysters and sheldrakes, balls, mince pies and dances; Fat pullets, fat turkeys, and fat geese to feed on, Fat mutton and beef; more by half than you’ve need on; Fat pigs and fat hogs, fat cooks and fat venison, Fat aldermen ready the haunch to lay hands on; Fat wives and fat daughters, fat husbands and sons, Fat doctors and parsons, fat lawyers and duns.

Fat pullet s, fat t urkeys, and fat geese to feed on,

Fat mutt on and beef; more by half th an you’ve need on;

A 1796 poem, filled with what today would be considered sexist stereotypes, described the excitement of the town’s ladies on learning about the delivery of new goods for sale.

Fat pigs and fat Nohogs, fat cooks and fat venison, language, dear Fanny, can tell you the rout Fat aldermen ready the haunch to lay hands on;

The women so frighten the shopkeeper that “she slammed . . .the door of her shop in their faces.”

The Belles of Williamsburg, on another hand, written in 1777 by Tucker and his friend James McClurg, admired the beauty of young women of the town.

In some cases, however, Tucker’s admiration of women is downright bawdy. A Dream on Bridecake, written in 1777, pictured the drunken poet at a wedding, dreaming of being approached by “my Flora”:

Fat wives and fat daugh t ers, fat husbands and sons, Fat doct ors and parsons, fat lawyers and duns.

Her balmy lips to mine she pressed, And leaned her bosom on my breast, Her fingers everywhere were gadding, And set my soul a madding.

Many of Tucker’s poems have been preserved in letters or in some cases on scraps of paper. On General Washington is included in a book of handwritten poems authored by Tucker and others.

36

Tucker could also be very serious about his love. In 1788, six days after the death of his wife, Frances, he wrote To Sleep, which included these lines:

This bed the scene of all my joys and woes Awakes Remembrance with her busy train, Where Bliss unrivalled used to court repose, Unrivalled Sorrow wakes to endless pain.

TREND & TRADITION • WINTER 2024

O P P O SI T E PAG E : S P ECI A L CO L L EC T IO NS , JO HN D. R O C K E F E L L E R JR . L IBR A RY

That in sweet little Williamsburg lately fell out, Occasioned, good luck! by the wonderful news, Of a cargo of ribbons, and gauzes, and shoes.

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Modern History NEWS AND EVENTS of The Colonial Williamsburg Foundation

To Educate, Preserve and Engage Foundation launches new campaign

BR I A N NE W S O N

I

n October, The Power of Place — The Centennial Campaign for Colonial Williamsburg was launched with a goal of raising $600 million to support numerous projects in the lead-up to the 250th anniversary of the nation’s founding as well as the Foundation’s centennial in 2026.

“Colonial Williamsburg is the world’s largest U.S. history museum and one of the nation’s most trusted cultural institutions,” said Cliff Fleet, the Foundation’s president and

TREND & TRADITION • WINTER 2024

CEO. “The power of this place, which was home to many of the events leading up to the American Revolution, provides us with the opportunity to offer a more complete, researchbased understanding of our collective history.”

In addition to preserving such iconic buildings in the Historic Area as the Capitol, Governor’s Palace and Raleigh Tavern, the campaign will also support the construction of the Colin G. and Nancy N. Camp-

Colonial Williamsburg Foundation Board of Trustees Chair Carly Fiorina speaks during a kickoff event for the new fundraising campaign.

bell Archaeology Center. Other projects include the restoration and reconstruction of the Williamsburg Bray School, the only remaining colonial-era building in the country that was dedicated to the education of enslaved and free Black children, and the Historic First Baptist Church, which was founded in 1776 by enslaved and free Black worshippers.

The campaign focus extends to virtual spaces that will equip the

39

About Town MODERN HISTORY

Guests gather outside the Courthouse for a campaign kickoff reception.

Foundation to become the world’s largest digital U.S. history museum.

The Colonial Williamsburg Innovation Studios will share America’s founding history with students,

educators and other audiences through a range of digital programs, including the Ben Franklin’s World podcast and the relaunched history.org website, which will include content from a consortium of history museums.

The leadership phase of the campaign began in January 2020 and has already raised over $330 million.

“The work being done at Colonial Williamsburg today is truly inspiring and is already resonating with donors and visitors alike,” said Carly Fiorina, chair of the Foundation’s board of trustees. “The early success of this campaign proves that there is an appetite for history told completely and truthfully, and no organization is better positioned to provide that than Colonial Williamsburg.”

participate in hands-on activities.

Historic Preservation.

Work Starts on New Archaeology Center Construction has begun on the Colin G. and Nancy N. Campbell Archaeology Center, which is scheduled to open to the public in 2026. The Archaeology Center will be located across the street from the Art Museums of Colonial Williamsburg.

Recent excavations, including of the Bray School, the Historic First Baptist Church and Custis Square, have added to the Foundation’s collection of more than 60 million artifacts from providing storage space, the Archae-

Colin Campbell, chairman emeritus

ology Center will house laboratories

of The Colonial Williamsburg Foun-

The Colin G. and Nancy N. Campbell

where guests can observe and interact

dation, served as the organization’s

Archaeology Center is possible thanks

with staff and a public archaeology

president and CEO from 2000 to

to a lead gift from the late Forrest E.

lab and classroom space where guests

2014. Nancy Nash Campbell is chair

Mars Jr. Additional funding is still

can learn more about archaeology and

emerita of the National Trust for

needed to complete the project.

40

TREND & TRADITION • WINTER 2024

BR I A N NE W S O N

archaeological digs. In addition to

About Town MODERN HISTORY

Williamsburg Institute Organization offers immersive leadership programming

BR E NDA N S O S TA K

T

he Williamsburg Institute, a collaboration between leaders of Colonial Williamsburg and William & Mary, held its first public program in October with a discussion at the Raleigh Tavern that featured portrayers of three 18th-century leaders — Thomas Jefferson, James Madison and the Rev. Gowan Pamphlet.

The Institute’s offerings include immersive programming aimed at three groups: high school seniors and college undergraduates seeking leadership skills; business professionals and community leaders navigating

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the challenges of leadership in a rapidly changing world; and lifelong learners interested in exploring the rich history and principles of American leadership.

“The Williamsburg Institute is a first-of-its-kind and unique learning organization,” said Chris Caracci, the Institute’s executive director. “With Williamsburg as its context, it will act as a bridge connecting our rich historical leadership heritage to both the present and future, informing the way for more effective leadership and civic engagement.”

Caracci said programs will take place in Williamsburg because that is where American representative government was born.

In keeping with the Institute’s goal of educating and preparing individuals for effective leadership while promoting civic engagement, the portrayers of the two presidents and the minister discussed, among other subjects, the nature of leadership, both then and now. They were interviewed by Carly Fiorina, the Institute’s executive chair. Fiorina also serves as chair of The Colonial Williamsburg Foundation Board of Trustees and as the national honorary chair of the Virginia American Revolution 250 Commission.

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About Town MODERN HISTORY

Florida: Registration #CH10673. A COPY OF THE FOUNDATION’S OFFICIAL REGISTRATION AND FINANCIAL INFORMATION MAY BE OBTAINED FROM THE DIVISION OF CONSUMER SERVICES BY CALLING TOLL-FREE 1-800-HELP-FLA WITHIN THE STATE. REGISTRATION DOES NOT IMPLY ENDORSEMENT, APPROVAL, OR RECOMMENDATION BY THE STATE. Maryland: THE FOUNDATION’S CURRENT FINANCIAL STATEMENT IS AVAILABLE ON REQUEST AT THE ADDRESS LISTED ABOVE. FOR THE COST OF COPIES AND POSTAGE. DOCUMENTS AND INFORMATION SUBMITTED ARE AVAILABLE FROM THE SECRETARY OF STATE, STATE HOUSE, ANNAPOLIS, MD 21401 New Jersey: INFORMATION FILED WITH THE ATTORNEY GENERAL CONCERNING THIS CHARITABLE SOLICITATION MAY BE OBTAINED FROM THE ATTORNEY GENERAL OF THE STATE OF NEW JERSEY BY CALLING (973) 504-6215. REGISTRATION WITH THE ATTORNEY GENERAL DOES NOT IMPLY ENDORSEMENT. Pennsylvania: THE OFFICIAL REGISTRATION AND FINANCIAL INFORMATION OF THE COLONIAL WILLIAMSBURG FOUNDATION MAY BE OBTAINED FROM THE PENNSYLVANIA DEPARTMENT OF STATE BY CALLING TOLL FREE WITHIN PENNSYLVANIA 1-800-732-0999. REGISTRATION DOES NOT IMPLY ENDORSEMENT. Virginia: A FINANCIAL STATEMENT IS AVAILABLE FROM THE STATE DIVISION OF CONSUMER AFFAIRS IN THE DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE AND CONSUMER SERVICES UPON REQUEST. Washington: ADDITIONAL FINANCIAL DISCLOSURE INFORMATION MAY BE OBTAINED FROM THE CHARITIES DIVISION, OFFICE OF THE SECRETARY OF STATE, OLYMPIA, WASHINGTON, BY CALLING 1-800-332-4483. West Virginia: WEST VIRGINIA RESIDENTS MAY OBTAIN A SUMMARY OF THE REGISTRATION AND FINANCIAL DOCUMENTS FROM THE SECRETARY OF STATE, SOLICITATION LICENSING BRANCH, AT 1-800-830-4989, STATE CAPITOL, CHARLESTON, WEST VIRGINIA 25305. REGISTRATION DOES NOT IMPLY ENDORSEMENT.

preparing individuals to lead, solve problems, engage with others and advance society. Now more than ever, particularly as we approach the 250th commemoration of our founding as a nation, we need leaders who will create a more effective, engaged, civil and inclusive society.”

The Williamsburg Institute’s board of directors includes Cliff Fleet, president and CEO of The Colonial Williamsburg Foundation; Jeff Trammell, former rector of William & Mary and former member of the William & Mary Board of Visitors; Peggy Agouris, provost of William & Mary; and Kendrick Ashton, co-founder and co-CEO of The St. James and member of the William & Mary Board of Visitors.

For more information on the Institute, visit williamsburg institute.org

California: THIS IS NOT LEGAL ADVICE. ANY PROSPECTIVE DONOR SHOULD SEEK THE ADVICE OF A QUALIFIED ESTATE AND/OR TAX PROFESSIONAL TO DETERMINE THE CONSEQUENCES OF HIS OR HER GIFT. Annuities are subject to regulation by the State of California. Payments under such agreements, however, are not protected or otherwise guaranteed by any government agency or the California Life and Health Insurance Guarantee Association.

New York: Upon request, a copy of the latest annual report may be obtained from the address listed above for the foundation or from the Charities Bureau, Department of Law, Attorney General of New York, 120 Broadway, New York, NY 10271.

North Carolina: Financial information about the foundation and a copy of its license are available from the State Solicitation Licensing Branch at (919) 807-2214. The license is not an endorsement by the state.

Oklahoma: A charitable gift annuity is not regulated by the Oklahoma Insurance Department and is not protected by a guaranty association affiliated with the Oklahoma Insurance Department. South Dakota: Charitable gift annuities are not regulated by and are not under the jurisdiction of the South Dakota Division of Insurance.

The Foundation does not issue charitable gift annuities in Alabama, Arkansas, Hawaii and Washington state.

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TREND & TRADITION • WINTER 2024

BR E NDA N S O S TA K

Fiorina asked each of the leaders to define leadership.

Madison, as portrayed by Bryan Austin, stressed that when you are called to do something, “it may

not be to stand as president of the United States, it may be to show up on Election Day, advocate for your neighbor, enlighten yourself, change your mind.”

Pamphlet, portrayed by James Ingram, led a congregation that included enslaved and free Black people in the 18th century. He said that role sparked fears that he might be hanged for his preaching, adding: “You have to look at the only one that’s going to see you through, and that’s our Father, God in heaven.”

Jefferson, portrayed by Kurt Smith, stressed that leaders understand that they do not choose themselves but are chosen by the people around them.

“We choose them,” he said, “and if they do ill, it is up to us to mitigate that ill, to choose new leaders.”

The Institute, Fiorina said, will play a critical role “in education and

About Town MODERN HISTORY

New Trustees Named Broadcast journalist Geoff Bennett, social justice advocate Antonia Hernández and retired Virginia Supreme Court Justice John Charles Thomas have joined The Colonial Williamsburg Foundation Board of Trustees. The appointment of three new trustees expands (From left): Jacqueline Delisle, Steve Delisle, John B. Swain and Wendy Swain at the installation dinner in London.

the board’s membership to 25.

“Colonial Williamsburg is fortunate to have an engaged board of trustees who are deeply committed to the Foundation’s evidence-based approach to telling a more complete story of America’s founding generation,” said Cliff Fleet, the Foundation’s president and CEO. Bennett serves as co-anchor of PBS NewsHour. He joined PBS in 2021 from NBC News, where he was a White House correspondent and part of the NBC team that won the prestigious

L E F T: G E R A L D S H A R P P H O T O G R A P H Y; R IG H T: BR I A N NE W S O N

Tinsmith Named to London Livery Company

M

aster Tinsmith Steve Delisle has been accepted as a member of the Worshipful Company of Tin Plate Workers alias Wire Workers of the City of London.

More than 100 of such livery companies, or trade associations, exist today, many descended from medieval guilds that set regulations for their respective types of work.

Some companies can trace their origins to the 13th century.

Delisle, who joined Colonial Williamsburg in 2013, was in London this summer doing research funded in large part by a grant from the Mary and Donald Gon-

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Edward R. Murrow Award for Overall Excellence.

Hernández spent more than four decades advocating for social justice

zales Field Experience Fund. His interest in becoming a freeman, he said, stemmed from his belief that “the company was a continuous link to the past tin plate workers that they represent.”

“During my visit I had a few discussions with then-Master Erica Stary, who wanted to understand my interest and stressed that joining the company was a lifelong commitment,” Delisle said.

“I explained that as a historic tin plate worker, I practiced my trade as an 18th-century tradesman, which was a time when our working traditions were shared.”

Stary presented Delisle with a faceted crystal ball engraved with the company’s coat of arms as a gift for the Williamsburg tin shop.

and improving the lives of underserved communities in Los Angeles County and beyond. She is nationally regarded for her expertise in immigration, civil rights and philanthropy.

Thomas, who served from 19831989, was the first Black judge and youngest person to sit on the Virginia Supreme Court. A retired senior partner at Richmond-based Hunton & Williams, LLP, he served as chief of the appellate practice group.

“Colonial Williamsburg is fortunate to have Geoff Bennett, Antonia Hernández and John Charles Thomas join its board of trustees. As America approaches its 250th anniversary in 2026, their deep expertise and visionary leadership will help position Williamsburg at the epicenter of activity during this historic time in our nation’s history,” said Carly Fiorina, chair of the board of trustees.

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About Town EVENTS

COMING UP CONFERENCE S AND SPECIAL E VENTS

From the Ground Up: Ceramics in Context

Antiques Forum

furnishings and fashion.

Feb. 1-29

colonialwilliamsburg.org/annual-

Celebrate stories from the Historic Area’s

antiques-forum/

African American programming. colonialwilliamsburg.org/black-history-

Homeschool Days

month/

Feb. 24-March 3 Homeschoolers and their families are

Presidents Weekend

invited to experience history

Feb. 17-19

brought to life.

Discover the roles George Washington,

colonialwilliamsburg.org/homeschool/

Thomas Jefferson and James Madison played in early Williamsburg.

Women’s History Month

colonialwilliamsburg.org/presidents-

March 1-31

weekend/

The sometimes-surprising role of

From the Ground Up: Ceramics in Context Conference March 22-23 Colonial Williamsburg hosts the biannual conference that delves into new findings and discoveries in the worlds of pottery and ceramics. colonialwilliamsburg.org/ceramicsconference/

women in early America is examined

Antiques Forum

all month.

For more information on programs and

Feb. 23-27

colonialwilliamsburg.org/womens-

events, please visit colonialwilliamsburg.

The 76th annual event explores

history-month/

org/events-calendar/

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L E F T: BR I A N NE W S O N; R IG H T: CO L O NI A L WIL L I A MS BUR G CO L L EC T IO NS

Black History Month

Live&Learn CHALLENGE YOUR PERCEPTIONS . DISCOVER FOOD FRESH FROM THE GARDEN . GET TO THE ART OF IT

p. 60

TOM GREEN

Applying Science

Spreading the News Even with the growth of newspapers in the 18th century, early Americans were navigating a sea of contradictions

by Jordan E. Taylor

American independence, so the background noise of her childhood was the roar and whir of political tumult. In an era when men often claimed current events for themselves, Susanna was fascinated by every hint of news about the revolutions rippling across the globe. Her wealthy Quaker family gave her the time and the resources to look beyond her dull New Jersey life to other colonies, other empires and other continents.

Since local news was available on the street before the press could catch up, America’s earliest newspapers focused on faraway events, especially in Europe and its colonies.

The Age of Revolutions produced so much information that only a newspaper could organize it all. In a piece of self-promoting prose, Philadelphia newspaper printer and poet Philip Freneau wrote, “This age is so fertile of mighty events / That people complain, with some reason, no doubt; / Besides the time lost, and besides the expence, / With reading the papers they’re fairly worn out.”

Looking back on recent events, Freneau concluded that readers had been “launch’d . . .on the ocean of news,” and they would need a newspaper to navigate it.

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CO L O NI A L WIL L I A MS BUR G CO L L EC T IO NS

SUSANNA DILLWYN WAS A CURIOUS WOMAN IN A BUSY WORLD. She was born seven years before

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Live & Learn NEWS COVERAGE

EDITORIAL VOICE

A satirical print drawn after the Boston Tea Party illustrates New England colonists’ response to the event. It shows a variety of voices, including Britannia — shown in the upper left — who is saddened by the conduct of rebellious colonists. The print also includes depictions of East India Company officials who are distressed about the destruction of their tea and a group of Tories who are upset by the loss of income — and political clout — because of the boycott of British goods.

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THE PRINTING PRESS

While newspapers made information more available to some colonists, skepticism and mistrust often caused them to doubt what they had read.

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Live & Learn NEWS COVERAGE

Susanna was eager to swim in this ocean of faraway news. Perhaps her fragmented family stirred this interest. Her mother, Sarah, had died a month after she was born, and her father, William, had remarried and relocated to London, leaving Susanna with relatives for most of her childhood.

An ocean apart, William and Susanna wrote each other often to share news, gossip and anecdotes about “public and private trouble.” As the sagas of the American, French and Haitian revolutions unfolded around them, they exchanged the latest news — some of which Susanna considered “too dreadful to be read,” but which she read anyway.

Susanna sometimes faltered, suggesting that she had nothing worthwhile to write.

But William always insisted that “nothing thou can communicate is uninteresting in my Eyes.” He wanted family news, local news and regional news, but he also wanted her to think of herself as more than a passive observer of this news.

“Thou can never, in thy communications with me,” he insisted, “be too much the Heroine of thy own Tale.”

“Thou can never, in thy communications with me, be too much the Heroine of thy own Tale.”

L E F T: DAV E D O O DY; R IG H T: L IBR A RY CO MPA N Y O F P HIL A DE L P HI A

Fact or Rumor

Before newspapers, news was impossible to separate from rumor. One heard about the death of a monarch thousands of miles away the same way one heard about the death of a neighbor a hundred yards away — through conversation. Talk about the latest news flowed in all directions. Enslaved people, women and even children could receive, overhear and repeat news on equal terms.

The leaders of colonial society feared the democratic nature of rumor. In 1685, Virginia’s royal governor, Francis Howard, groused that the peoples’ “vain imaginations and conceit” were “esteemed as news.” Once it was “on foot,” false rumors “infused into the giddy headed multitude, which afterwards becomes the rule and square of their actions.” All the disorder in the colony, Howard explained, could be traced back to the unchecked flow of rumors. At first, Virginia and several other colonies dealt with this threat by passing laws to punish the spread of false news.

The growth of newspapers in 18th-century America did not end the wild flow of rumors, but it allowed leaders like Howard to influence the flow of news. Early newspapers usually did everything they could to win the colonial government’s favor. As Thomas Jefferson later recalled of the Williamsburg Virginia Gazette of his youth, “nothing disagreeable to the governor could be got into it.” Printers who ran afoul of colonial authority could be prosecuted. Some took the safe route of running their content by the governor’s office before it was published.

Cost of Information

The spread of newspapers introduced new inequalities into information consumption.

Most people could not afford the luxury of a newspaper subscription. Not long before he moved to London, William Dillwyn paid 10 shillings to subscribe to the Pennsylvania Journal. Another family could have used those 10 shillings to purchase around 30 pounds of meat, three bushels of corn or a month’s rent. On the subscription list for the Pennsylvania Journal, the only such surviving list, William’s name appears alongside numerous doctors, attorneys and merchants, but almost no farmers or laborers, let alone women, people of color or Indigenous people. In the early stages of the American Revolution, only about one in every hundred Philadelphians subscribed to the Journal. Most people likely did not read

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The 10 shillings that William Dillwyn paid to subscribe to the Pennsylvania Journal was a high price that many colonists could not afford.

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Live & Learn NEWS COVERAGE

Like a web browser with a hundred open tabs, this uncle’s bedroom burst with an excess of interesting news and ideas.

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newspapers on a regular basis.

Among merchant families like the Dillwyns, though, newspapers were inescapable.

Just as almanacs helped farmers predict weather, newspapers helped merchants and other businessmen predict market needs. Susanna once described visiting an uncle whose bedroom “looked like the apartment of a Batchelor, for we were sometimes obliged to sit upon the bed every chair being loaded with newspapers, books and pamphlets, which are on no account to be displaced.” Like a web browser with a hundred open tabs, this uncle’s bedroom burst with an excess of interesting news and ideas.

The Dillwyns might have hoped that their newspaper subscriptions would make them more well-informed about global events. But newspapers did not always enlighten readers. If anything, they often made readers more anxious and uncertain about the world.

William and Susanna’s correspondence is full of concerns about “groundless Rumours” and false news.

News of questionable veracity arrived constantly in early North America. Despite a lack of verification, few observers could bear the anxious uncertainty of awaiting a consensus. Some trusted their own judgment, perhaps for reasons they only dimly understood. Others trusted the judgment of the well-informed and the overconfident. In the 1790s, Susanna frequently heard unreliable rumors about the French navy’s seizure of American merchant ships, which threatened the family business. In one letter, she described how her attitude toward such a report evolved with time. When “unwelcome news” about a French attack on an American ship arrived yesterday, no one had doubted it. Today, this report was “mention’d in the papers,” but “nobody seems to have heard anything new, so that I think it may possibly be a false rumor.”

News and Politics

During the American Revolution, this process of evaluating news became political.

Whereas colonial newspaper printers usually left it to “our Readers to Judge” what was true, patriot printers began to take it upon themselves to decide what was true, which was usually news that supported patriot mobilization. Likewise, the first political parties in the early United States came to opposite conclusions about American policy and politics largely because they disagreed about the nature of events in France, SaintDomingue and elsewhere.

The political schisms of the late 18th century were arguments not just about the future but also about the very recent past. As newspapers became organs of political factions in the last three decades of the century, they assembled a political reality that aligned with and explained their party’s political actions. Newspapers existed not just to inform their readers but also to organize and reflect back readers’ own ideas about the world.

As news became more political, a rising tide of contradiction created problems.

Some false accounts were potentially disruptive to the social order. In 1792, Virginia’s General Assembly revived a long-dormant colonial law that levied a hefty $40 fine on those “busy-headed people,” including newspaper printers, who “forge and divulge false rumours and reports.” While it is difficult to tell exactly how this law was applied, its timing indicates that it was probably meant to discourage white Virginians from sharing rumors about the Haitian Revolution that would inflame the commonwealth’s enslaved population.

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CO L O NI A L WIL L I A MS BUR G CO L L EC T IO NS

THE DEBATES

A few years later, members of the Federalist Party in the U.S. Congress passed the Sedition Act, which aimed to punish newspaper printers sharing “false, scandalous, and malicious writing.” Though the Virginia government had seen fit to regulate news in 1792, its Democratic-Republican leaders rejected the Federalists’ Sedition Act that was billed as an attempt to deter the spread of falsehoods.

Like many others navigating this sea of contradiction, William confidently followed his own instincts for truth. In 1792, for example, he reported to Susanna, “Good accounts from Sierra Leone arrived this Day, giving an agreeable Contradiction to some wicked reports lately spread to discredit the settlement.” Hopeful about the colony of Sierra Leone, where thousands of Black Loyalists had recently resettled, William described positive news about the colony as “Good accounts” and negative news, which would harm global abolitionist efforts, as “wicked reports.” Lacking the means to verify news directly, William and Susanna relied on their own judgments and feelings. Likewise, when he heard that yellow fever was near his daughter’s family, William wrote, “I knew not how wholly to credit, or disbelieve this imperfect Report — but I feel the

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Coffeehouses in the 18th century became places where news could be consumed and discussed.

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Live & Learn NEWS COVERAGE

probability of its Truth.” When it was not known, the truth could be felt.

The Sedition Act of 1798 made it a crime to print “false, scandalous, and malicious writing” about the American government.

Jordan E. Taylor is a historian of the American Revolution and author of Misinformation Nation: Foreign News and the Politics of Truth in Revolutionary America.

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In rural America, where most people lived, information was scarce. Seldom encountering newspapers or letters from afar, Americans often relied on the word of those neighbors who seemed most well-informed. If only a few families in a farming community subscribed to a newspaper, printed accounts could nevertheless spread quickly if those subscribers were postmasters, tavernkeepers or preachers who were at the center of conversation and exchange. Accessing an abundance of uncertain information did not necessarily make such Americans more well-informed, but it could not help but make subscribers appear to be knowledgeable about public affairs.

The first American newspapers placed a high price on being informed.

But this cost was borne largely by those excluded by newspapers. After she married a man named Samuel Emlen, Susanna’s letters to her father (which Samuel began to write and sign along with her) spoke less of politics and global news. In one letter composed while her husband was “too much engaged to write,” Susanna explained to her father that she did still care about the world beyond her household. “We talk sometimes,” she wrote, “or at least they do, of politics.”

Often viewed as a democratic medium and tool of populism, America’s first newspapers probably did more to concentrate power in the hands of the few rather than to diffuse it among the many. In an age of screens, it is easy to become nostalgic about the newspaper: the quiet thrill of collecting it from the door, the peaceful routine of perusing it with breakfast.

It is also easy to romanticize the newspaper’s role in the American Revolution. Many narratives of the American Revolution imagine a broad public using the newspaper to learn about and debate the great issues of the day. In the PBS animated children’s series Liberty’s Kids, for example, viewers follow several children who travel around the colonies as reporters for Benjamin Franklin’s Pennsylvania Gazette. “The people count on us for their news!” they urge each other. As if to underline the newspaper’s legitimacy, Walter Cronkite voices Franklin — one of the most admired newsmen in American history speaking for another.

The reality behind the first American newspapers little resembles the legend of Walter Cronkite. At their birth, American newspapers reached only a select few. The Dillwyns and other wealthy Americans who had the means to pay for newspaper subscriptions received a stream of unverified, contentious news.

But still they read on. Preferring certainty to doubt, they found news they could believe in, narratives that did not challenge them too much. They had to choose, so they did. Cast away in an “ocean of news,” they rowed on toward a hazy horizon.

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S P ECI A L CO L L EC T IO NS , JO HN D. R O C K E F E L L E R JR . L IBR A RY

A News Deficiency

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CLEMENTINA RIND published letters opining about the events of the day in her Virginia Gazette

by Paul Aron

S P ECI A L CO L L EC T IO NS , JO HN D. R O C K E F E L L E R JR . L IBR A RY

NEWS CORRESP

ONDENTS L BR I A N NE W S O N

etter writers to newspapers in early America found an important platform to influence opinions. When Clementina Rind took over her husband’s Williamsburg printing business after he died in August 1773, she printed government documents and material from other newspapers. And like other publishers of the day, she chose to print letters.

The letters in Rind’s Virginia Gazette were generally sympathetic to the patriot cause. Examples can be found in three issues that were recently added to the collection at Colonial Williamsburg’s John D. Rockefeller Jr. Library.

“The Virginia Gazette is an invaluable tool for researching and teaching history here at Colonial Williamsburg,” Associate Librarian Doug Mayo said.

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Live & Learn NEWSPAPER LETTERS

“TENACIOUS of their Liberty” The June 2, 1774, issue includes a letter from “Raleigh,” who describes himself as having lived some years in America. Raleigh’s was an open letter to Lord North, the British prime minister. A year and a half before the Boston Tea Party, Raleigh implored North to repeal duties on tea “to prevent perhaps the total defection of the colonies.”

Of the colonists in general, Raleigh wrote: “They are a polite, well improved people, justly tenacious of their liberty, and thoroughly sensible of its value. From the cradle they are taught to boast their privilege, nor will they ever patiently endure the yoke of oppression.”

In words that call to mind the colonists’ famous cry of no taxation without representation, Raleigh wrote: “Is it possible an English parliament, even if the members of which it is composed were wholly disinterested, should know properly how to levy contributions on a country at so great a distance, and with which they are in general so little acquainted? Have not the Americans representatives of their own?. . .Why then will you not grant them the privilege . . .of raising their money in a mode they most approve?”

When events occurred in Williamsburg, Rind reported on them herself.

In the same June 2 issue, she offered “No tax can be imposed on the subject details on a day of “fasting, humiliation, and prayer” in support of Bostonians without his consent, expressed by himself, whose port the British had closed: “It or his representative.”

“VIRGINIUS” is with pleasure we assure our readers that every inhabitant of this city, and numbers from the country, testified their gratitude, in the most expressive manner, by attending the worthy and patriotic SPEAKER at the courthouse, and proceeding from thence, with the utmost decency and decorum, to the church, where prayers were accordingly read, and a sermon, suitable to the important occasion, was delivered.”

“A MINISTERIAL Snare”

Reports and letters in Colonial Williamsburg’s recently acquired Virginia Gazettes from 1774 highlight sympathy for Massachusetts patriots.

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The June 16, 1774, issue featured a letter from “VIRGINIUS,” who reiterated the injustice of taxation without representation: “One of the most valuable maxims of the British constitution is that no tax can be imposed on the subject without his consent, expressed by himself, or his representative. This is the palladium of one branch of the legislature, the great charter of its existence, and without which it would have been sunk in the most abject slavery. In open violation of this maxim, the commons of Great Britain have assumed the right of giving and granting away the property of others.

They have denied us a right; a right which they themselves immemorially have most tenaciously adhered to.”

The same issue included a letter from a “British American,” who was living in Virginia, though at a “great distance from Williamsburg.” The British American was less strident than Virginius. Despite “the present alarming state of affairs,” he urged his

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Speci a l Co l l ec t io ns, Jo hn D. Ro ck efel l er Jr . L ibr a ry

S P ECI A L CO L L EC T IO NS , JO HN D. R O C K E F E L L E R JR . L IBR A RY

Live & Learn NEWSPAPER LETTERS

fellow Virginians not to act rashly and to “be careful that your honest indignation against the two houses of the British parliament does not hurry you into any discreet expressions against, or corrupt your loyalty to, your sovereign.”

Concluded the British American: “Wait therefore with patience, my fellow citizens, a few weeks longer.”

Rind liked to include poetry in her Gazette, and the June 16 issue included verses “written by a LADY, on receiving a handsome set of TEA CHINA” that take the tea taxers to task:

S P ECI A L CO L L EC T IO NS , JO HN D. R O C K E F E L L E R JR . L IBR A RY

Still, alas! thou might’st have been Chiefest fav’rite of the fair; Now thou art with horror seen As a ministerial snare.

“CORDIALLY Unite” By the July 14, 1774, issue (the third of Clementina Rind’s Virginia Gazettes recently acquired by the Rockefeller Library), the British American was losing patience.

“Be not deceived,” he wrote, “by imagining that the submission of Boston . . . is the ultimate end of the British aristocracy. No, it is only a part of the general plan they have formed for enslaving all America, by attacking each colony singly; for as every colony have refused to submit to the duty imposed upon tea, they will all, one after another, feel the resentment of, and be called upon for, the same submission to parliament, if you do not cordially unite in supporting the first sufferer.”

Through the generosity of donors, the John D. Rockefeller Jr. Library has added more than 100 issues of the Virginia Gazette to its collection, bringing the total number of the newspaper to more than 500. Approximately 2,500 issues were printed in Williamsburg during the 18th century.

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(Opposite): Though Rind’s masthead proclaimed her newspaper was “OPEN TO ALL PARTIES,” letters regularly expressed support for the patriot cause.

(Above): Contributors could express their opinions in poems as well as letters.

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JEFFERSON’S

NATURAL

WORLD THE BOOKS THAT INFLUENCED HIS SCIENTIFIC INTERESTS AND ENDEAVORS

By LEE ALAN DUGATKIN

Live & Learn

JEFFERSON’S SCIENCE LIBRARY

I

O P P O SI T E PAG E : CO L O NI A L WIL L I A MS BUR G CO L L EC T IO NS

t was not hyperbole when, in June 1815, Thomas Jefferson wrote John Adams: “I cannot live without books.”

A self-proclaimed bibliomaniac, Jefferson sold his personal library of 6,487 books to the U. S. Congress in 1814 — for the undervalued price of $23,950 — so that Congress could “recommence” its own library that had been burned to the ground by the British near the end of the War of 1812.

Jefferson cataloged his library, and under “History, Natural” he had various subsets dealing with science. More than 600 of the volumes that he sold to Congress were categorized as “Natural Philosophy,” “Zoology,” “Chemistry,” “Medicine” and “Geography.”

While these do not capture every aspect of Jefferson’s interest in science, the categories are representative of a man who wrote his daughter Patsy from France: “I have changed my circle here according to my wish; abandoning the rich, & declining their dinners & parties, and associating entirely with the class of science.”

A few key books offer a deeper sense of how books impacted what Jefferson did, both proactively and reactively, with what he learned.

On one shelf of Jefferson’s library sat both volumes of the 1802 edition of Scotsman Alexander Mackenzie’s Voyages From Montreal Through the Continent of North America to the Frozen and Pacific Oceans in 1789 and 1793. Mackenzie, a fur trader with the North West Company, first tried to reach the Pacific Ocean by land in 1789. Unsuccessful, on May 8, 1793, he and nine others boarded a large canoe and set sail along the Peace River, near Fort Fork in Alberta, Canada, to try again. This time they made it to the Pacific, and Mackenzie, using a mixture of grease and vermilion, painted this message on a rock near Bella Coola, British Columbia: “Alex Mackenzie from Canada by land 22d July 1793.” The 2,800-mile roundtrip expedition took less than one year.

In the summer of 1802, Jefferson read his Mackenzie volumes, as did his personal secretary, Meriwether Lewis. Jefferson had long been interested in an expedition to the Pacific. He worried that the British would move in if the United States did not.

But Jefferson was also interested in the potential treasure trove of natural resources for a growing nation, and he was curious about the natural wonders that surely would be uncovered.

Indeed, he and the American Philosophical Society had sponsored French botanist and explorer André Michaux for an expedition to the far west in 1793, but a diplomatic debacle canceled that trip before it ever began.

Voyages From Montreal relit a fire under Jefferson to see an American-led expedition to the Pacific. There are tantalizing hints that Jefferson and Lewis made some of the logistic decisions about the expedition after reading Mackenzie and that Lewis and William Clark used Mackenzie’s Voyages as a sort of trip template.

TREND & TRADITION • WINTER 2024

(Opposite page): In his Notes on the State of Virginia, Thomas Jefferson answered arguments to claims that America had not produced important men of science.

61

A map outlines Alexander Mackenzie’s route from Montreal to Fort Chipewyan in northern Alberta and on to the North Sea and the Pacific Ocean.

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Few authors garnered as much space on Jefferson’s bookshelves as the world’s leading natural historian of the time, Georges-Louis Leclerc, the Comte de Buffon. Among the count’s work in Jefferson’s collection were 32 volumes of a 1752 edition of Buffon’s encyclopedia Histoire Naturelle, Générale et Particuliére (Natural History, General and Particular) alongside a 12-volume supplement on birds.

Jefferson referred to Buffon as a “celebrated zoologist, who has added, and is still adding, so many precious things to the treasures of science.” Buffon’s works were listed on Jefferson’s “must read” lists to young men seeking guidance on building their personal libraries.

But there was a problem, and that problem resided in volumes 9 and 14 of Histoire Naturelle. Jefferson became obsessed with fixing this problem.

In volumes 9 and 14, Buffon laid out what has come to be known as his theory of New World degeneracy. Because the New World was thought to be colder and wetter, Buffon posited that all life in America was small, weak and feeble — in a word, degenerate — compared to life in the Old World.

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T HE NE W YO R K P UBL IC L IBR A RY

Like Mackenzie, Lewis brought a dog along with him, and the “iron boat” canoe used on the Lewis and Clark expedition appears to have been built with a solid understanding of the pluses and minuses of the canoe Mackenzie and his team used.

And though he carved it in a tree, rather than painting it on a rock, Clark also chose to leave a note that “here Capt Lewis myself & Severl. of the man marked our names day of the month & by Land &c. &c.”

Some historians have even argued that members of the expedition had a copy of Mackenzie’s book with them. If correct, it demonstrates how a book from Jefferson’s library shelf could lead to tangible consequences.

Live & Learn

JEFFERSON’S SCIENCE LIBRARY

S P ECI A L CO L L EC T IO NS , JO HN D. R O C K E F E L L E R JR . L IBR A RY

“Animated nature,” Buffon wrote “is less active, “THE TRUTH IS, THAT A PIGMY AND less varied, and even less vigorous; for, by the A PATAGONIAN, A MOUSE AND A enumeration of the American animals, we shall perceive, that not only the number of species is MAMMOTH, DERIVE THEIR DIMENSIONS smaller, but that in general, they are inferior in FROM THE SAME NUTRITIVE JUICES.” size to those of the old continent.”

— THOMAS JEFFERSON Not satisfied with such sweeping generalizations, the count next argued that the Indigenous people of North America and South America were degenerate as well. Native Americans, Buffon claimed, were “a kind of weak automaton, incapable of improving or seconding her [Nature’s] intentions . . . . [They have] no vivacity, no activity of mind . . . . Their heart is frozen, their society cold, and their empire cruel.”

If all of that was not enough, when Jefferson pulled two other volumes from his library shelves — the Abbé Guillaume-Thomas Raynal’s L’Histoire Philosophique et The books of GeorgesPolitique des Etablissements & du Commerce des Européens Dans les Deux Indes (A Louis Leclerc, the Comte Philosophical and Political History of the Settlements and Trades in the East and West de Buffon, were on Thomas Jefferson’s list Indies) and the Abbé Cornelius de Pauw’s Recherches Philosophiques sur les Américains of “must read” volumes (Philosophical Researches on the Americans) — he learned that Buffon’s followers had for young men building taken the degeneracy argument to even greater lengths. These authors hypothesized personal libraries.

TREND & TRADITION • WINTER 2024

63

Live & Learn

JEFFERSON’S SCIENCE LIBRARY

that those who immigrated to North America, and the generations to follow, would degenerate themselves.

PHILOSOPHERS SEEM TO WRITE Now fuming, Jefferson read de Pauw’s claim that those “descending from Europeans and born in America . . . have ONLY FOR ONE ANOTHER.” never produced a single book” and Raynal’s outlandish barb — THOMAS JEFFERSON that America has not yet produced “one able mathematician, or a man of genius in a single art or a single science.”

The Buffon, Raynal and de Pauw books elicited a two-pronged response from Jefferson. The first was a literary one: He devoted the majority of the longest chapter in his book Notes on the State of Virginia to debunking the degeneracy hypothesis. Both sides of the globe, he noted, were warmed by the same sun, and the chemical composition of the soil for both was capable of producing the same rich result.

“The truth is, that a Pigmy and a Patagonian, a Mouse and a Mammoth, derive their dimensions from the same nutritive juices,” Jefferson wrote.

Jefferson next inserted a series of tables from data that he and his friends and associates had collected, which systematically refuted all of Buffon’s claims. Finally, Jefferson dismantled Buffon’s proposition that Native Americans were degenerate, in part by retelling the story of Logan, whose family was killed in a vicious attack by settlers.

Jefferson recalled Logan’s eloquent lament in which he declared that he remained in his cabin, “an advocate for peace” during the Seven Years’ War. “I may challenge the whole orations of Demosthenes and Cicero, and of any more eminent orator, if Europe has furnished more eminent, to produce a single passage, superior to the speech of Logan, a Mingo chief, to Lord Dunmore, when governor of this state [Virginia],” Jefferson wrote.

Jefferson also procured the skeleton of a giant moose, which he shipped to France to show Buffon that American animals were as grand and powerful as those found anywhere.

“THE COMMON HERD OF

Thomas Jefferson’s collection of volumes by the Comte de Buffon included depictions of many types of birds, including this pair of cranes.

64

It was not just the natural history and geography books that drove Jefferson to action.

His books on chemistry and medicine did as well.

A friend of Joseph Priestley, one of the leading chemists of the day, Jefferson kept up with the latest ideas in the field. Though interested in theories being developed in chemistry, Jefferson was more attuned to the practical implications.

In 1805, he bemoaned to a friend, chemist Thomas Beale Ewell, “how far a general work on chemistry is yet to be desired you are more able to judge than I am . . . . The common herd of philosophers seem to write only for one another. The chemists have filled volumes on the composition of a thousand substances of no sort of importance to the purposes of life.”

A few years later, Jefferson was more sanguine about the practical aspects of chemistry after reading chemist Thomas Cooper’s 120-page Introductory Lecture, of Thomas Cooper, Esq., Professor of Chemistry at Carlisle College, Pennsylvania.

“I have just entered on the reading of it and percieve that I have a feast before me,” Jefferson wrote Cooper, a friend of Priestley’s. “You know the just esteem which

TREND & TRADITION • WINTER 2024

S P ECI A L CO L L EC T IO NS , JO HN D. R O C K E F E L L E R JR . L IBR A RY

Lee Dugatkin is an evolutionary biologist and historian of science in the department of biology at the University of Louisville. His newest book is The Well-Connected Animal: Social Networks and the Wonderous Complexity of Animal Societies. His Trend & Tradition article on the diplomatic debacle that canceled André Michaux’s expedition can be found at colonialwilliamsburg.org/ trend-tradition-magazine/ the-botanist-and-a-plot/

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T HE NE W YO R K P UBL IC L IBR A RY

Books on the subject of inoculations against disease were prominent in Thomas Jefferson’s collection.

The topic was covered in satirical caricatures like The Cow-Pock-or-the Wonderful Effects of the New Inoculation published in 1802.

attached itself to Doctr Franklin’s science, because he always endeavored to direct it to something useful in private life. The Chemists have not been attentive enough to this. I have wished to see their science applied to domestic objects, to malting, for instance, brewing, making cyder, to fermentation & distillation generally, to the making of bread, butter, cheese, soap, to the incubation of eggs Etc. and I am happy to observe some of these titles in the syllabus of your lecture. I hope you will make the chemistry of these subjects intelligible to our good housewifes.”

Jefferson himself used the books on applied chemistry in his library. In 1813, he read an advertisement in the Aurora newspaper for Joseph Coppinger’s forthcoming book, The American Practical Brewer and Tanner, and immediately “engaged a bookseller to send it to me as soon as it should come out.” He was not disappointed: Two years later he wrote Coppinger, “I am lately become a brewer for family use, having had the benefit of instruction to one of my people by an English brewer of the first order. . . .

We tried [your method] here the last fall with perfect success, and I shall use it principally hereafter.”

Jefferson’s library also housed books on a wide array of medical topics, but he had an especially keen interest in smallpox. Only a few years before riots broke out in Norfolk over the issue of smallpox inoculation in 1766, 23-year-old Jefferson traveled to Philadelphia to be inoculated, and a decade later, he implored Martha, to no avail, to come to Philadelphia to be inoculated. It is not clear whether his wife was ever inoculated, but only two months after her death, Jefferson had both their daughters go through the inoculation procedure, grueling though it was, and in 1801 he instructed that his sonsin-law and all of the enslaved people at Monticello be inoculated.

Jefferson’s library shows that he kept a keen eye on advances in smallpox inoculation. His shelves were stocked with 10 books and pamphlets about Edward Jenner’s studies on using the much less dangerous cowpox virus for inoculation.

Two of those books were by Dr. Benjamin Waterhouse, a physician and professor of medicine at Harvard, and an early proponent of the cowpox vaccine, also called the kinepox vaccine. “I . . . read with great satisfaction your pamphlet on the subject of the kine-pox,” Jefferson wrote Waterhouse. “I had before attended to your publications on the subject in the newspapers, and took much interest in the result of the experiments you were making.”

As a result of Waterhouse’s pamphlet and the books and pamphlets on Jenner’s studies, Jefferson, together with Waterhouse, spearheaded a kinepox vaccination program

Live & Learn

JEFFERSON’S SCIENCE LIBRARY

soon after becoming president. So convinced was he that inocula“BOOKS WERE AT ALL TIMES tion was important that in his June 20, 1803, set of instructions HIS CHOSEN COMPANIONS.” to Meriwether Lewis, Jefferson directed Lewis to “carry with you —ELLEN WAYLES RANDOLPH some matter of the kine-pox; inform those of them with whom you may be, of it’s efficacy as a preservative from the small pox; and instruct & encourage them in the use of it.” As a result of all his efforts to promote the vaccine, the Royal Jennerian Society for the Extermination of Small-pox wrote Jefferson, thanking him for “promoting the Vaccine Inoculation, and the progress which it has made there under Your Auspices.”

It was not without cause that Jefferson’s granddaughter Ellen Wayles Randolph recalled that “books were at all times his chosen companions.” In 1814, Jefferson wrote a long letter to Samuel Harrison Smith about selling those chosen companions in his library to the Congress of the United States:

T H O M A S JE F F E R S O N T O JO HN A DA MS , JUNE 10, 1815. T H O M A S JE F F E R S O N PA P E R S , M A NU S C R IP T DI V ISIO N, L IBR A RY O F CO NG R E S S , WA S HING T O N, D.C .

You know my collection, it’s condition and extent. I have been 50. years making it, & have spared no pains, opportunity or expence to make it what it is. While residing in Paris I devoted every afternoon I was disengaged, for a summer or two, in examining all the principal bookstores, turning over every book with my own hands, and putting by every thing which related to America, and indeed whatever was rare & valuable in every science. Besides this, I had standing orders, during the whole time I was in Europe, in it’s principal book-marts, particularly Amsterdam, Frankfort, Madrid and London . . . . because it is hardly probable that the same opportunities, the same time, industry, perseverance, and expence, with some knolege of the bibliography of the subject would again happen to be in concurrence.

This was no gentleman’s library for show, but one in which Jefferson could indulge, and act on, his seemingly infinite interests. Certainly the sagacious way he used his personal science collection is unlikely to be repeated.

After Thomas Jefferson sold his book collection to Congress in 1815, he began rebuilding a smaller personal collection.

He noted in a letter to John Adams, “I cannot live without books.”

Live & Learn BOOKS

Title Page Native America: New books on Indigenous history

NED BLACKHAWK, a member of the

More generally, Blackhawk widens the

Te-Moak Tribe of Western Shoshone Indians

focus of early 19th-century U.S. history

and a historian at Yale University, argues

to include more than the eastern part of

that U.S. history can best be understood —

North America. “American history devel-

indeed, can only be understood — in the

oped out of the epic encounter between

context of Native American history. By

Indians and European empires and out

interweaving the two, he shows how often

of the struggles for sovereignty between

the latter changed the former. He recounts,

Native peoples and the United States,”

for example, how at the start of the Seven

Blackhawk writes. “American Indians were

Years’ War the French victory over forces

central to every century of U.S. historical

led by the 21-year-old George Washington

development.” Synthesizing much scholar-

resulted from Washington overesti-

ship from recent decades, Blackhawk’s

The Rediscovery

mating the support he would receive

work covers more than 500 years,

of America: Native

from American Indian allies. Similarly,

including not just the struggles of Native

Peoples and the

Blackhawk shows how the Constitution

American nations but also their ultimate

Unmaking of

arose in part out of efforts to establish

resurgence in the 20th century as a new

U.S. History

the supremacy of federal authority over

generation of leaders, despite continu-

BY NED BLACKHAWK

American Indian affairs and how the

ing challenges, was “positioned to ensure

Yale University Press

Louisiana Purchase evolved from treaty-

that their communities never again faced

making practices with Native Americans.

elemental threats to their existence.”

GIFTING MEDALS was an important part

UCLA and now president and CEO of the

of early U.S. diplomacy. When Meriwether

Autry Museum of the American West,

Lewis and William Clark headed west, they

focuses on the periods when, however

took with them medals with an image of

briefly, peace and friendship prevailed.

President Thomas Jefferson on one side

Daniel Boone, for example, was adopted

and on the other side the clasped hands

into the family of the Shawnee chief

of an American officer and an American

Blackfish. Lewis and Clark generally

Indian — and the inscription “Peace and

avoided violence with the Indians they

Friendship.” U.S.-American Indian relations

met, and they traded with them for what

were, of course, not generally character-

they needed. Aron rejects feel-good stories

ized by either peace or friendship, and

of peace and friendship like Disney’s

most histories of those relations have

Pocahontas, which he calls “wishtories”

Peace and Friendship:

focused on the violence that accompanied

and not history. But his history “does

An Alternative History

what earlier generations called the winning

push into view times and places where

of the American West

of the West and what some more recent

people unexpectedly got along.” And

BY STEPHEN ARON

historians have likened to ethnic cleans-

perhaps, he suggests, “they prompt us

Oxford University Press

ing. Stephen Aron, professor emeritus at

to ponder anew how we might, too.”

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TREND & TRADITION • WINTER 2024

DIY: GILDED FRAME

Prettying Your Picture Silvering a frame adds the look of precious metal A PROJECT FROM THE ART MUSEUMS PHOTOGRAPHY BY BRIAN NEWSON

A

n elegant frame displaying a small portrait of King William III is part of the collection at the DeWitt Wallace Decorative Arts Museum. The silvered frame dates to between 1675 and 1700 and suggests status, power and wealth for both the sitter and the portrait’s owner.

Picture frames, books, furniture, ceramics, glass, sculpture and leatherwork were embellished using various gilding metals and processes. It was a highly fashionable decorative choice reserved for the wealthy.

The method used for this project is called mordant gilding. It involves the application of thin sheets of metal leaf, in this case imitation silver, to a picture frame that has been coated with an adhesive. The frame is then polished to remove excess leaf and sealed to protect the surface.

This technique works on other objects such as wooden boxes, glass vases and even plastic bowls.

What You Need

Dust rag

2 Paintbrushes (round and square head)

Silver leaf

5• x 7• Frame (wood, plastic or metal)

70

Work surface protection (we used bubble wrap)

TREND & TRADITION • WINTER 2024

T O P : CO L O NI A L WIL L A MS BUR G CO L L EC T IO NS , GIF T O F A BBY A L DR IC H R O C K E F E L L E R

Metal leaf adhesive

Topcoat sealer

Live & Learn DIY

The Process STEP 1 Plan to work in a place where there is no breeze or draft.

Remove the frame backing and glass. Wipe the frame with a soft cloth to remove dust. Lay the frame face up on a flat work surface. If necessary, use something to protect the work surface.

1

2

STEP 2 With the square-head brush, apply a thin coat of adhesive to the front, sides and inner edges of the frame. Allow it to dry for 30 minutes until it feels tacky. Clean the brush with warm soapy water.

STEP 3 With your finger, lift the leaf from its booklet and place it onto the adhesive-coated frame. Cover the entire frame with leaf, overlapping pieces as you work. The leaf will wrinkle and fold — that is normal.

Use any of the small excess flat pieces of leaf, even the scraps you make as you work.

3

4

STEP 4 With the clean and dry round-head brush, gently press the leaf onto the frame.

Continue until all the leaf has adhered. Then brush the leaf surface using light, circular strokes to remove excess silver. There will be areas without silver leaf, so repeat Steps 2-4 in those spots. If you want to silver the back of the frame, this would be the time to turn the frame over and repeat Steps 1-4.

STEP 5 With the square-head brush, apply a thin layer of sealer and let dry for 1 hour or whatever time the product label specifies. When the sealer is dry, the glass and photograph can be placed inside the frame.

5 TREND & TRADITION • WINTER 2024

NOTE: Clean brushes between steps.

71

THE POW E R O F P H I L A NT HRO PY THE POW E R O F P H I L A N T H RO PY THE POW E R O F P H I L A NT H RO PY

THE WINDS THE WINDS THEOF WINDS CHANGE OF CHANGE OF CHANGE CAN AFFECT YOUR IRA CAN AFFECT YOUR IRA CAN AFFECT YOUR IRA

ARE YOU OVER AGE 701/2?

ARE YOU OVER AGE 701/2?

Call us toAGE help you make ARE YOU OVER 701/2?

Call us tothe help you make most of your gift. helpgift. you make theCall mostusoftoyour the most of your gift.

Harness the power of your IRA Harness the power of your IRA Harness the power ofrollover. your IRA with a charitable with witha acharitable charitablerollover. rollover.

Gifts from your Individual Retirement Account (IRA) can be given to an eligible Gifts from your Individual Retirement Account (IRA) can be given to an eligible charitable organization, including The Colonial Williamsburg Foundation. Your IRA Gifts from your Individual Retirement Account (IRA) can be given to an eligible charitable organization, including The Colonial Williamsburg Foundation. Your IRA distributions go directly to the Foundation and are not subject to federal income charitable organization, including The Colonial Williamsburg Foundation. Your IRA distributions go directly to the Foundation and are not subject to federal income tax. The distributions, up to an annual limit established by the IRS, count toward distributions go directly to the Foundation and are not subject to federal income tax. The distributions, up to an annual limit established by the IRS, count toward your required minimum distribution. Could a Charitable IRA Rollover work for you? tax. The distributions, up to an annual limit established by the IRS, count toward your required minimum distribution. Could a Charitable IRA Rollover work for you? your required minimum distribution. Could a Charitable IRA Rollover work for you?

YOUR GIF T KEEPS US MOVING FORWARD YOUR GIF T KEEPS US MOVING FORWARD YOURCall GIF US MOVING FORWARD usTatKEEPS 1.888.293.1776 or email legacy@cwf.org

Call us at 1.888.293.1776 or email legacy@cwf.org Call us at 1.888.293.1776 or email legacy@cwf.org

Please consult professional advisors before making a charitable gift. Colonial Williamsburg cannot render tax or legal advice. Colonial Williamsburg is a registered trademark of The Colonial Williamsburg Foundation.

Please consult professional advisors before making a charitable gift. Colonial Williamsburg cannot render tax or legal advice. Colonial Williamsburg is a registered trademark of The Colonial Williamsburg Foundation.

Please consult professional advisors before making a charitable gift. Colonial Williamsburg cannot render tax or legal advice. Colonial Williamsburg is a registered trademark of The Colonial Williamsburg Foundation.

The Stuff of Legend Artichokes have a rich history

BY BARBARA RUST BROWN

VARIETY

PHOTOGRAPHY BY BRIAN NEWSON

Green Globe CULTIVATION Start seeds indoors in time for spring planting and transplant the most vital seedlings.

Plant in rich soil that has been hilled up to accommodate deep taproots. Top dress with compost once the plants are growing and again in late summer.

NOTE Artichokes are considered annuals in the North and perennials in the South. Overwintering the perennial produces the artichoke flower bud.

Choose the correct variety for your growing area.

Live & Learn GARDEN-TO-TABLE

ccording to Greek myth, the god Zeus

Artichokes were first identified in

woman named Cynara, whom

Sicily, although ancestors of the plant

he transformed into a goddess and brought to Mount Olympus.

Some artichokes grown in the Historic Area are prepared in the Governor’s Palace kitchen.

74

Cynara scolymus.

became enamored with a mortal

were seen earlier in Greece.

By the end of the 16th century

But Cynara became homesick for

in England, artichokes were a well-

her family on an Aegean island and

known luxury reserved for the

would, from time to time, sneak away

aristocracy, just as they had been

for a visit. When Zeus discovered

in Italy. The demand for them has

this, he became enraged and trans-

increased in North America in recent

formed Cynara from a goddess to

years, however, as more people

an artichoke.

have become interested in plant-

She is forever connected to this

based diets.

toothy-leafed member of the thistle

Master of Historic Gardening Eve

family through the scientific name

Otmar noted that in the 18th century

TREND & TRADITION • WINTER 2024

3 onions, sliced 2 garlic cloves, chopped (optional) 2 tablespoons clarified butter 1 tablespoon flour 2 cups chicken stock 1 anchovy, chopped (or Virginia ham, chopped, or 1 tablespoon fish sauce or Worcestershire sauce) salt and pepper to taste 2 egg yolks ½ cup cream 1 can artichoke hearts, drained

Artichokes Provost or Sheriff Fashion Historic Foodways Adapted from George Dalrymple, The Practice of Modern Cookery. . . (1781)

SERVES 4

TREND & TRADITION • WINTER 2024

1 cup breadcrumbs 1 cup Parmesan cheese, grated 1. Fry the onions and garlic in the butter until they soften and turn golden.

2. Stir in the flour.

3. Add the stock and anchovies, salt and pepper and cook slowly on medium

heat for 5 minutes. Retain a small amount of liquid from this mixture.

4. In a separate bowl, combine the egg yolks and cream. Stir in the liquid from the onions.

5. Slowly add the stock mixture to the cream and egg mixture, stirring constantly.

Transfer the entire new mixture back to the pot and heat gently until it begins to thicken. Add the artichoke hearts and heat thoroughly.

6. In a bowl, combine the breadcrumbs and cheese.

7. Transfer the thickened sauce and artichoke hearts to a heat-resistant serving dish and cover with the breadcrumbs and cheese. Use a kitchen torch to slowly melt the cheese and toast the breadcrumbs until golden brown. (Or place under the oven broiler until the cheese is melted and the crumbs toasted.)

75

Live & Learn GARDEN-TO-TABLE

“They need lots of compost and rich soil.

We do grow them in our garden here, but they require quite a bit of attention.”

— Eve Otmar, master of Historic Gardening

artichokes were a rare and expen-

toric Foodways, reached back to an

sive delicacy that required a good

18th-century cookbook, which, typi-

deal of work and expertise to grow

cal of the period, has a very detailed

and prepare.

title: The Practice of Modern Cookery:

Artichokes had arrived in the

Adapted to Families of Distinction, As

colonies by the middle of the 17th

Well As to Those of the Middling Ranks

century. William Byrd II, a member of

of Life. To Which Is Added, a Glossary

the Governor’s Council and one of the

Explaining the Terms of Art.

wealthiest men in Virginia, wrote in

Author George Dalrymple was the

his diary in 1711 that he had dined on

cook for a Scottish noble. His cook-

pork and was angry at the cook “for

book features a variety of recipes

neglecting to boil some artichokes.”

with English and French names, includ-

Landon Carter, son of Robert “King”

ing some that seem to indicate for

Carter, grew hundreds of artichokes

whom the dish was being prepared,

on his Sabine Hall estate on Virginia’s

such as “Sheeps Tongues Dauphin-

Northern Neck.

fashion,” “Chitterlings Flemish-fashion”

Growing artichokes in Virginia is

and “Cod Capuchin-friar fashion.” This

not for the inattentive. “They need

artichoke recipe invokes the names

lots of compost and rich soil,” Otmar

“provost” and “sheriff,” both of whom

said. “We do grow them in our gar-

were French public officials. But

den here, but they require quite a bit

everyone will enjoy this dish, Clark

of attention.”

said: “Artichokes provost fashion are

For Artichokes Provost or Sheriff

really tasty.”

Fashion, Frank Clark, master of HisTHE WILLIAMSBURG INN’S Executive

Chef Julianne Gutierrez chose a recipe that is reminiscent of a Reuben sandwich. “The richness of the cheese and corned beef contrasts nicely with the rather bitter artichoke to create a yummy dish,” Gutierrez said.

Look for artichokes that are dense and compact, Gutierrez said, not light in weight, which indicates that they have dried out. She noted that artichokes are versatile and can be steamed, boiled or fried.

And don’t forget that the heart, peeled stems and leaves are all edible and can be prepared in a number of ways. “Only the choke is not fit for consumption,” she said.

Barbara Rust Brown is a freelance writer living in Williamsburg, Virginia.

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TREND & TRADITION • WINTER 2024

Corned Beef Stuffed Artichokes Williamsburg Inn SERVES 6

6 whole artichokes 2 lemons, juiced 1½ cups Gruyere cheese, shredded ¾ cup sauerkraut, drained ½ pound corned beef, diced 3 tablespoons Thousand Island dressing 1 carton chicken stock 1 bunch fresh thyme ½ loaf rye or pumpernickel bread, stale or oven dried 1 to 2 tablespoons butter for greasing the cooking pan 1. Preheat the oven to 325 F. 2. With a serrated knife, trim the tops of the artichokes by about 1½ inches and remove and discard the outer

TREND & TRADITION • WINTER 2024

leaves until the pale inner heart is reached. Trim the stems to the base of the head, peel the remaining green exterior with a vegetable peeler and remove the inner hairy choke from the artichoke heart with a melon baller.

3. Place the lemon juice in a bowl, add the trimmed artichokes and toss to combine. Set aside to allow the lemon juice to soak into the artichokes. The artichokes can soak for up to 1 hour to improve the taste and tenderness.

4. Cook the artichokes in salted boiling water until tender, about 10-15 minutes. Drain and allow to cool.

5. Prepare the filling by mixing together the Gruyere, sauerkraut, corned beef and Thousand Island dressing.

6. Stuff the cooked artichokes by gently pulling open the leaves and filling the center of the artichoke with the corned beef mixture.

Twine may be tied around the artichoke to keep the mixture from escaping.

7. Butter an oven-safe pan and place the artichokes snugly in the pan.

Pour about an inch of chicken stock into the pan and add the fresh thyme sprigs.

8. Cover tightly with foil and bake for approximately 1 hour.

9. Place the bread into a food processor and grind into crumbs. Toast the crumbs in a skillet with a little butter. When the artichokes come out of the oven, top with the breadcrumbs and serve warm.

77

WE’RE HERE!

BOOKSTORE From historic feats to historic trades, from art to archaeology, from scholarly books to kids’ titles, you can take the stories of America’s beginnings — and a bit of Colonial Williamsburg’s Historic Area — home with you.

440 WEST DUKE OF GLOUCESTER STREET, WILLIAMSBURG, VA 23185

Puzzles & Prize The the Sum ofcentury Its Parts Wordplay: From 18th to today

by Ben Swenson

THE SUM OF ITS PARTS Across

by Ben Swenson

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1. Mocassin or loafer 15 16 14 5. Body's middle 18 19 17 ACROSS 54. The apothecary teaches 10. Type of history or 1. Moccasin or loafer that 33-across + exam 20 21 22 5. Body’s middle 66-across = this 14. Breathe heavily 59. Ghostly white 10. Type of history or 25 26 23 24 15. Rage exam 60. First lady _ 14. Breathe heavily cheese Eisenhower 16. Crumbly 29 30 31 27 28 15. Rage 61. Rowboat necessities 17.

Run of the alphabet 16. Crumbly cheese 64. Tied 33 34 35 32 17. Run of Leaf the alphabet 65. Scent 18. pore 18. Leaf pore 66. Currency factory 36 37 38 39 19. Many 19. Many 67. Hester Prynne’s 20. Colonial craftsmen will 20. Colonial craftsmen will punishment 40 41 42 43 1-across + Meet 68- your _ (to die) telltell youyou thatthat 1-across + 68. across ==this this 68-across 69. Crafter’s website 47 48 49 44 45 46 23. French summer 23. French summer 52 53 50 51 25. Barbie’s bud DOWN 25. opposites Barbie's bud 26. Bases’ 1. Early season: abbr.

54 55 56 57 58 27. Mexican restaurant’s 26. Bases' opposites2. Possesses offerings 3. Running from law 27. Mexican restaurant's 59 60 61 62 63 29. Prepare to fire enforcement (3 words) offerings 31. “Spring forward” 4. Small ornamental case 65 66 64 29. Prepare to fire 5. Squanders letters 32. Layer of paint 6. Playwright Chekhov 31. "Spring forward" 68 69 67 33. Salt partner 7. Composer Stravinsky letters 36. The tailor knows that 8. 18-wheeler, briefly 32. Layer of paint 5-across + 32-across = 9. _ II (Gillette razor this brand) 33. Salt partner 40. French novelist Marcel 10. Joan _ 29. Calendar entry: abbr.

42. Maiden name 51. City in Tuscany 36. The tailor knows11. that 44. RV52.

66. byGooey another Up-to-the-minute factory 41. Pinta and Santa Maria Put down tileCurrency again 30. Hoppy beer,13. briefly preceder gunkname 5-across + 32-across = this partner 12. Disagreeing (2 words) 33. McCartney or Simon 43.music Deaf communication: 55.apart Mosque leader 45. Split 21.

67. Hester Jamaican genre Prynne's 44. Includes on an email: 13. Up-to-the-minute 34. Mini-albums, for short abbr.

56. Former capital of 40. French novelist Marcel punishment 46. Moved 22. More domesticated sideways abbr.

Jamaican music genre 35. Philosopher Descartes 44. RV by another name Japan 41. Pinta and Santa 21.

Maria 68.

Meet your ___ (to die) 48. Try57.again, in court Top-left45. comp. key 47. Wise bird 22. More domesticated 37. Campus org.23. for future Split apart Run _ (go crazy) partner Crafter's websiteensigns 48. Actor Keanu 23. Top-left69. comp. key 46.

Moved sideways 58.

Location of the 49. 180 degrees from 24. Chinese "way" 44.group Includes on an email: 50. Elite 24. Chinese “way” 38. Boar’s mate 48. Try again, in court WSW Colosseum 28. ___ in the right abbr.

52. D.C. pol.

28. _ in the right 39. Minnows and worms 49. 180 degrees from 62. OR staffers Down 51. City Tuscany direction 53. Slithery fish direction (2 words) WSW 63.inPig’s digs 47. Wise bird 1. Early season: abbr.

52. Gooey gunk 29. Calendar entry: abbr.

48. Actor Keanu 2. Possesses 55. Mosque leader 30. Hoppy beer, briefly 50. Elite group 3. Running from law 56. Former capital of Japan 33.town McCartney oraSimon We know that (3 in its heyday this old had quite cast, enforcement words) ANSWERS 52. D.C. pol.

57. Run ___ (go crazy) 34. Mini-albums, forthe short But since then, other stars have graced this window to past.

4. Small ornamental case 53. Slithery fish Check our 35. of The Philosopherhas Descartes Among the honored notables that Williamsburg beckoned: 58. Location Spring issue 54. The apothecary teaches 5. Squanders Colosseum Each line of this 18th-century 37. Campus for the answers Churchill, Truman, Dali and Elizabeth II. org. for future that 33-across + 66-across 6.

Playwright Chekhov wordplay puzzle offers a clue to 62. OR staffers to these puzzles. ensigns = this And just like we need down time, so, too, did these VIPs, a single answer of up to three 7. Composer Stravinsky 63.

38.

Pig's digs Boar's mate 59. Ghostly white words.

Can you solve it? Email A to take abriefly load off, grab a meal and catch some z’s.

8.place 18-wheeler, 39. Minnows and worms (2 your answer to puzzles@cwf.org 60. First Lady ___ Options abound but one hotel is a sensation; 9. ___ IIhere (Gillette razor words) for a chance to win Colonial Eisenhower brand) Williamsburg bookmarks.

Their home in Williamsburg was42. thisMaiden five-starname accommodation. preceder 61. Rowboat necessities 10. Joan ___ 43. Deaf communication: 64. Tied 11. Put down tile again abbr.

65. Scent 12. Disagreeing (2 words) TREND & TRADITION • WINTER 2024 79

Our Prize Enigma

AUTUMN 2023

PUZZLE ANSWERS IT’S THE LAW

U N C A P D C I A B H O R E L M D R A P E M O R R O S T A M P O F A P P R O V A L A B A C I W I D E E L Y D O L L S A N E S U G A R R U S H A R N A Z N I L E A L L E L E U P I G L A N D E G G S I S M S L O E B E A T T E M P O S T E A L E A V E S S T E A K M E N U A P R S T A S E A V E H E I D I A C T O F P A R L I A M E N T L I E V O L G A C H I E F U N O E V I A N T E R R E

PRIZE ENIGMA

The Apothecary Congratulations to Juliann Skalican of Verona, Pennsylvania, whose entry was chosen from a pool of correct answers to the puzzle in the Autumn issue. She received Bruton Parish Church Christmas cards.

Want to play, too? Here are the rules: NO PURCHASE NECESSARY. A PURCHASE WILL NOT INCREASE YOUR CHANCES OF WINNING. Sweepstakes ends 02/25/24.

For entry and official rules with complete eligibility, prize description, odds disclosure and other details, visit www.colonialwilliamsburg.org/trend-and-tradition-prizerules. Sponsored by The Colonial Williamsburg Foundation.

Void where prohibited.

BR E NDA N S O S TA K

The Apothecary

80

TREND & TRADITION • WINTER 2024

Parting Shot

The Usual Haunts Michaela Ghassemi lives in Williamsburg and is a frequent visitor to the Historic Area, capturing photographs of people and places there. She recently came upon Mel Horan, a storyteller who leads guests on a tour of historic buildings, sharing creepy tales in an evening program called Haunted Williamsburg.

THANK YOU TO EVERYONE WHO SUBMITTED PHOTOS. PLEASE KEEP THEM COMING! Send your favorite Colonial Williamsburg photo — a .jpg or .tif that is at least 300 dpi at 5" ×7", please — to partingshot@cwf.org. Tell us why you love the image, and we may choose it for “Parting Shot” in an upcoming issue. Don’t forget to include your hometown.

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