good afternoon.

i'm dr. amy stallings. i'm an adjunct history professor at the college of william and mary. and today you find my class era of jamestown here in some special collections. that's our library on campus where they have pulled for us array of items relating to history of jamestown and my lecture for the day is also detailing how jamestown was lost and i mean that a physical geographical sense. i also wanted to examine how jamestown was, quote, lost too to memory and the ways in which

especially in the 19th century virginia, anne's and americans more broadly sought to to find jamestown reclaim jamestown in on the assumption that the physical location was gone. so that's the context and off we go so all semester we've been progressing through the of jamestown approximate one decade per week with some extra attention given to setting the scene for the contact and conflict that followed. we've learned, philip levy, that the palisade constructed in 1634 to demand kate to the bounds english territory became backbone for english settlement patterns, drawing well-to-do planters such the lug wells and pages out the capital city of jamestown to the area called middle plantation. and last week we briefly visited the foundations of the page and we've discussed the established of fruit in parish church in,

the 1670s and the college of william and mary, 1693, both of these features increased the appeal of middle plantation as a viable with the promise of future growth after the burning of first jamestown statehouse, along with the rest of the city in bacon's rebellion, 1676, the government met initially at green spring, the home of sir william barclay. this is a view green spring after it was remodeled significantly by the lovewell family and then the lee family. this watercolor done by benjamin henry latrobe in 1796. but this is one of the places where it all happened. but there was some question in the late 1670s over the reconsider section of the new state house and where to put it, it wasn't ultimately constructed until 1684 and on the same spot as the previous one, but being was familiar to the house of burgesses, who had never had

purpose built meeting space until 1665. anyway, the replacing it state house would meet a similarly fiery end in 1698. the victim of suspected arson because nothing ever burns just once in virginia before you give up it it has to burn at least twice and give up on it. they did in 1699 influence still members of the government such as ludwig and page plus reverend james blair, the president of new college of william and mary, where strong advocates for shifting the to middle plantation believe it or not the highest point of land in this part of the peninsula. joining them, the endeavor was governor frances nicholson, an eager amateur town planner, would design williamsburg in the baroque building ciphers of letters w and m into the road plan and you see a famous depiction of williamsburg as it would come to be known circa 1781. this is known as the frenchman's map, and it's hanging in my

office, not the real one, obviously, with the departure of government activity from jamestown, the population whose or social interests on a presence in the capital city began slowly to migrate six and a half miles down the road around 1750, for instance, the circa 1680s church that still stood at jamestown was discontinued as a separate parish. there weren't enough parishioners to make it worthwhile, and some of its features, such as the baptismal font, were transferred to bruton, where will be very happy to show you baptismal font from jamestown if you visit today as residents sold off their townhouse plots and farmsteads across the island between hundred and 1752 families consolidated to the land patents. the amblers and the traverses. the remainder of the 18th century saw the deliberate of james city and its surroundings so that the whole might be

converted to agriculture and the church building still standing but crumbling in july of 1781 became a makeshift for wounded soldiers had participated in the nearby battle green spring, an important clash between the forces of british general charles and those of the marquis de lafayette, wildly the americans under wayne marched in anyway with fixed bayonets before lafayette's call to retreat saved the army total annihilation. cornwall, meanwhile, was unsure whether american reinforcements might be following right behind wayne's assaults had given him pause. so rather than press his advantage and capture wayne, lafayette and some 4000 continentals, he ferried his men across the james river and took up a new position at yorktown. it was a brief and in some respects rather stupid engagement, but it set the stage for the eventual of cornwallis army in sometime between 1781

and 1805, the church was dismantled, with the exception of the 1680s tower. you'd think that this was an event worth a mention in somebody's letter or diary. so far, historians have yet to track down a more precise date of. but this view of the ruined tower was painted by frenchman louis girardeau. it appeared 1805 in a magazine called a many tatties graphic to forgive the mispronunciation of. lenin, he remarked in the same volume that when compared with those superb fragments of a bold and majestic architecture which europe, syria, greece and other regions present to travelers, the ruins jamestown are humble and, inconsiderable, but they were nonetheless the cradle of

virginia girardin also may have originated the rumor that the original fort site had eroded into the river a lamentation of loss that would resonate powerfully with 90 teens and early 20th century virginians and not be disproved until 1994, when a team archeologists headed by bill kelso did uncover the first of three palisade walls belonging to the original triangular james for. so when jihadi john's article, he observed that many yards of the palisade erected by the first settlers were still visible. an 150 pieces came off the shore oh, that was actually rewind. sorry, that was just me gesticulating wildly. i'll try to refrain. had jihad been local to the area, he might have been better prepared to interpret what he saw as what it probably was the decaying remains of old. the last reference to a palisade

id fort at jamestown dates to 1627, when it is said to be in a state of disrepair as it had ceased to serve any purpose. so subsequently it must have been taken down to make room for the new townhouse. lots that were popping up all along the city's main road. but the nostalgic of the swept away fort inspired the popular imagination. it was a jamestown from then in time, revered of what it had come to symbolize to the future, made a much prettier story than the logical truth that it was a casualty of progress in, a past where it had outlived its value. oh, that old thing. a 17th century town's person might have said. we demolished it because it was obsolete right. but late 18th and 19th century history, three lived on obsolescence, on fragments of a mythology, heroic age, gone by. some of this had been spurred on by the french revolution and a sense that the excesses of the

reign of terror, the republic of virtue, had gone too far in wiping away centuries of tradition in both religion and politics. jihadi john himself was a refugee from the french revolution. keenly sensitive to the disorienting rapidity of change in his home country, partly in response to the influx of french catholic refugees to england. it a popular pastime in england to travel, to and admire the dilapidated abbeys and monasteries that had been left to suffer the depredations of after the dissolution. more than 250 years before, this is how we get what is arguably william wordsworth most famous poem lines composed a few miles above tintern. so this philosophy he coincided with and reinforce a landscaping craze that encouraged grand estates to ruined temples, grottoes and castles as focal points of their grounds. and you?

my students knew i had to some kind of jane austen reference today. this is it. so this is an estate called stour head, which was one of the filming locations for the five pride and prejudice. but more importantly, for our purposes, you can see an example of a totally fake ancient temple across this. also, men very cultivated curated leek oak. so better yet, if had a property that already had a ruin on it, you could just use that instead. fountains abbey yet another one of these properties where you've got, you know, a genuine ancient abbey that's falling to bits made worse by the fact that the new owners of area rubs out stone to build their new manor house. but you know, then they went on to create again very manicured river here, which flows out of stream that originally ran behind fountains and set up on a

hill where there is another faux temple, where i was standing when i took this photo to look down this perfectly arranged avenue of trees is for the beautiful framing of the abbey ruins in the distance and decided to call this spot and boleyn's seat for reasons that make no logical sense was never there or you could even ruin your ruin a little more until it looks perfectly picturesque and romantically inspiration and on. this is scotney castle where they did precisely that. they just took down bits and pieces and said a little off the top until it was in a sufficient state of disrepair them to consider an attractive of their artistic landscape here. so this kind of romanticism in these kinds of images is, i think you will see reflected some of the depictions of the church tower at jamestown during this same period.

it's all being influenced by these same schools of thought and artistic practices. so our friend jihad dan gushed of jamestown that again the emotion is with the aspect of those national vestiges conveys to soul are powerfully enthusiastic rapturously melancholy and jihad. dan called upon americans preserve these rude national vestiges at jamestown and honor them in a similar manner to european again, we're not a total enclosure of so sacred a spot at national expense highly. he asked his readers, and two years later, other voices joined the call for action. so next you will read about the jamestown jubilees, a series of 19th century celebrations promoted to highlight the critical of jamestown in the foundation of the united states,

the first of these called the grand national, transpired in 1807 for the 200th anniversary of landing of the english colonists. newspaper accounts of the gathering report. as many as 2000 persons in attendance. a theatrical troupe from norfolk boats providing a cannon salute and a moving oration from james madison. what what they do not reveal is any significant attendance on the national level. these are almost all virginian who are coming to jamestown but still going to give it the title of grand national jubilee. the churchyard features prominently in these reports romanticized as a place where the patriotic spirits of the day could commune the dust of their glorious forebears, learning to imitate their virtues and carry on. the experiment in government begun in 1619, this sort language is characteristic of the broader propaganda of this

period, but it served a still more urgent purpose. it concerned jamestown. americans were seeking their own origin myths desperate as seeking, you might say, so much so that when english woman and novelist francis trollop made tour of the fledgling nation in 1828, she recounted the following it'll be to yeah once in ohio and once in the district of columbia. i had an atlas displayed before me that i might be convinced by the evidence of my own eyes. what a very contemptible little country i came. i shall never forget the gravity, which on the latter occasion a gentleman drew out his graduate pencil case and showed me past contra diction that the whole of the british dominions did not equal in size one of their least states, nor the heir, which, after the demonstration he placed his feet upon the chimney considerably higher than his head, and whistled yankee doodle

virginians at the turn of the 19th century lamented promoters of massachusetts had gained momentum hosting celebratory parades and speeches to mark the landing of the pilgrims in 1620, as though the jamestown adventure had not preceded that event by 13 years. some that patriotism, regional pride were waning in the storied old dominion, that the public paid no attention, its own history and pride was wounded among those who cared by the ascendancy of the pilgrim narrative to the detriment of john smith, christopher newport and their ilk. as the century marched on, historians and novelists alike engaged in a sort of proxy war over the comparative of jamestown versus the virtues and vices of each colony, the magnitude of their participation in the american revolution, and ultimately the legacy of foundational american principles belonging to each building on

the historical romance genre popularized by sir walter scott, northerners like washington, irving nathaniel hawthorne and james fenimore enthralled their with tales that wove regional events into their fiction. southerners responded with william gilmore sims leading, the pack. and if you cast your minds back to very first class of the semester, you'll remember that i discussed the press of value of fiction to late 18th and 19th century readers. that is to say was instructional and more entertaining perhaps than learning the same lessons in history books. a major aim of many novels was to highlight, exaggerate, heroic and villainous figures, encouraging readers to, imitate the positive and avoid the negative. as oscar wilde would quip, at the end of the century, the good ended happily and the bad. unhappily, that is fiction means through the medium of popular culture, then virginians were

able, envision and persuade others to envision their 17th century past as noble, courageous and providence. virginia was america insisted this narrative in the face of new england's challenge to the title paintings. the style. germantown established portrayed the lonely church tower and broken much like the ruins of ancient civilizations of the old world. and here is one such depiction by john chapman. he made several watercolors or paintings of things, a associated with jamestown. so. well, you may not seen this one before. you are very likely to have seen his depiction of the marriage of john ralston pocahontas, which becomes one of the foundational myths that is crucial to virginia's of itself. in the 19th century, and that shows up not just in imagery, but also in literature as early

as 1804. there appeared davises, the first settlers of virginia, one of a number of texts glorified pocahontas. suppose rescue of captain john smith, and elevated her to a sort of patron saint of virginia. my lady pocahontas, by john astin cook, followed in 1885 and lent fresh creepiness to the genre of courtly romance by depicting lonely english soldiers drawn to the beauty and dignity of a tween girl. similar airbrushing was applied to nathaniel bacon, the leader of the 1676 rebellion who burned jamestown the ground and dedicated himself to the extra of all virginia indians. however, instead of portrayal, literature enshrined him as chivalric hero. most notably in the cavaliers of virginia, 1834, by carruthers, the physical characteristics of jamestown, two became the subject of florid and prose,

sadly lacking the delicate touches of a wordsworth. in the winter, the shrill winds whistle through this memorial of another age, and in the summer, the poise and oak and the wild jessamyn mingle their thick leaves and intertwine their scarlet and golden flowers and the ivy green wreaths fantastic folds around and about it. the owl nestles and brings forth its young in its crannies and is answered its own wild echoes as it croons undisturbed ghostly serenade to the midnight moon. that tower is silent, the dead slumbering and the past can never return. it goes on. this just a small sampling of this entry by reverend john mccabe, an american ecclesiastical history. so. i picked the best for you, i

promise. this is of course in reference to that lonely church and into the midst of this search for a virginian came the civil war at its end, not only had virginia, the self-proclaimed of presidents, become the capital of a power hostile to united states, but it had been economically and physically destroyed. jamestown island, though it saw no actual combat. was first the sight of a confederate fort dubbed fort pocahontas in 1861. in fact, we know now what they did. that fort pocahontas was, situated precisely on the footprint of the 1607 james fort. many of the same strategic advantages that made it a desirable location in the early 17th century continued to influence 19th century military reminds. so we have here a map potentially created by a spy. and there is a facsimile here as

well. the original is currently conserved, but we'll be back. we're very excited to have it. you can see the extent of the confederate earthworks and encampment and is very much not to scale as a depiction of jamestown island, but it shows a lot of really cool stuff that our archeologists are now able to investigate with a little bit more exactness. so are very likely bits and pieces of james fort spread across the south in the attics of old homes taken as souvenirs by soldiers who fully comprehend what they signified. the soldiers garrisoned did write home to their families about ancient bits of arms and armaments and pipe stems and other relics that were being turned up by their shovels or eroding out of the banks. but the confederate presence here was short lived after troops occupied the area 1862. the island, a refuge for the formerly enslaved, had escaped

to union lines by the thousands and were considered contraband of war. so there was a contraband camp out there on jamestown island. the area would remain occupied by federal troops until 70. residents at the power of the soldiers they considered enemies. cynthia coleman, whose name you will hear again, wrote that she did not like these fat, slick yankees to come to spy upon our poverty. and there was hardship, devastation and loss. the battle williamsburg in 1862 had left more dead and soldiers needing care than there were citizens in the town, williamsburg and throughout. local women, especially lee felt a fierce loyalty to traditions, both real and imagined. meanwhile, production of history books shifted to the northeast to boston, new york and,

philadelphia and minimized role of jamestown and virginia in establishing america's founding principles. and this was both a natural outgrowth of regional bias and a more curatorial decision. virginia's past was no longer to laud at the national level as it had seemed to be prior to the civil war and out of this post bellum environment grew the lost cause mythology. but a variety of women's associations dedicated to rehabilitating and promoting the image of the past. they believed in and held dear. that past placed virginia its institutions at the heart of the american experience. and one such group championed cynthia coleman, lucy bagby and mary galt was the association for the preservation of virginia antiquities or founded in 1889. the degree which the women of the apvma supported lost cause

varied by individual. they consciously excluded that ideology from their public, though they espoused notions of social hierarchy and held a disdain for industrialize society that links the lost their unspoken support, their organization and the sites maintained were emphatically white spaces erasing and discouraging any discussion of. slavery. members of the were traditionalists part of the old elite intent on the remnants of colonial virginia because as they themselves opined that which is older is best a phrase that could equally be applied to their own family lineages. the ap managed in 93 to wrangle from a northern industrialist named e.e. barney. 22 and a half acres of land on the island. he had recently purchased jamestown island, the plot acquired by preservation society

contained, the iconic church tower and, its associated cemetery, which was swiftly eroding into the river. so here you have a view of the old cemetery area, the church foundations area, looking out the river. and actually, you can see pieces of what is the knight's tomb now, which is has been re put re not interred. but it's in the chancel now you can see here the position has has but they did conduct in the 1890s sponsor archeology to uncover the foundations of the three iterations of church buildings that had set on this site in the 17th century. and they also installed a seawall to prevent further loss of shoreline. you genuinely had skeletons tumbling out onto the beach, so the seawall helped to. mitigate that problem.

however, the process of interpreting the site was not as straightforward saving it. the society's members disagreed, some of them bitterly, over how best to respect the existing ruins, whether to refurbish or rebuild them. how to landscape the area. whether to erect memorials and whom and the bricks from a collapsed 17th century structure might in good conscience be sold as mementos to raise funds. you could get your own jamestown even in the 1890s. now we'll send you a stuffed animal. a possum is the latest offering. the construction of the memorial church in 1906 in preparation for the 300th anniversary of the founding the following year drew significant criticism from the organization. but here you it at sunset not the best time perhaps because it's backlit but it is modeled

on st luke's church over in smithfield which does date to the same period as the brick church at jamestown, the 1680s, the jamestown exposition, 1907 brought visitors to the island. yes, but the bulk of the effort was centered in norfolk, where goal was to replicate the success of the recent world's fairs. this was a miserable failure. construction lagged behind. exhibits were left uninstalled and the public did not throng promised. in some respects, 1907 was more a show of naval power, a reflection on past, and that didn't sit well with all attendees. it was clearly a display of force and the project suffered a severe financial despite the attendance of president theodore roosevelt in 1957. so we're now the 350th. the state of virginia tried again, but it return to norfolk

because the site of the 1907 exhibition had become the norfolk naval base. the rest of jamestown island in 1934 had been acquired by the national park service, so that too was unavailable. instead, the state purchased an area near jamestown, but on the mainland to host temporary museum called jamestown festival park. this around america was living through an era of prosperity and the great american road trip and the park's popularity soared. jamestown festival park became permanent. growing into the living history experience we now call jamestown settlement, aka the one with the ships, which i'm concerned asked about when i'm working on the island. last time i was here, you had ships. you're looking for our next door neighbors. but we're fortunate today in some special collections to. have access to materials written the 1907 and the 1957 commemorations of jamestown. side by side with other items

such as john smith's general history. so here you can trace for yourselves the evolution of jamestown's place in american memory from the earliest promotional of the virginia company of all, the way through to the color brochures offering, a sanitized white anglo-saxon protestant on the legacies of virtue, hard work and piety that jamestown supposedly embodied. and i'd like to devote the rest of this class period to that exploration. but first, i'm happy to take any questions you may have. this is a view of jamestown in the 1930s, by the way. yes. oh, hang on. i. when they originally built the statehouse and, you know, the square in williamsburg, did they then rebuild? well, that a bit of a fraught question because they don't have a purpose meeting place here

initially either. they're actually using what we now call the wren building for the government until the first house of burgesses so they can scrape together enough and and contractors to get that erected so the the wren building has a long history a multi-purpose space space. and there are complaints that there's more being paid to burgesses than to the governor in those early days. anyone else but your pastor. oh, i thought you should get the most authentic experience of my as possible for today. and i am a historic costumer in my spare time. so i do. first person and third person programing at jamestown island when i'm not teaching here at the college and for my first person programs, i make my own

attire. so outfit that i have on today is what i wear when i'm portraying lady frances barclay, wife of the governor sir william barclay, who put down bacon's rebellion. and i thought i could class it up today for you because the other two to first person characters i are both middling to status but i thought by i should put on a show. so that is the origin of my. it's as accurate as i could manage for the 1670s. there aren't too many patterns floating around for that decade. have there been any. i guess, efforts to track down maybe the survivors or maybe artifacts of confederate soldiers who were at fort on top of so out at jamestown island? we do have some people who are on the lookout for auction sites and estate sales and other places where, you know,

conceivably documents artifacts relating to jamestown pop up. usually if they pop up, it's actually documents and back in england. but we've got some ears to the ground for sure. but i would encourage anyone who has a southern background check attics folks please we would love to some of that stuff make its way back to us. but determining the provenance then would be very difficult unless you have accompanying saying, hey mama, look, this awesome pistol i just dug up at james down but you never know it can happen. okay. well, i know the excavation digs very frequent in jamestown. are there any plans? have there ever been any river excavations or do you guys just go like if it's important, it'll wash up. so. oh, boy. yes, there were before fort was uncovered on land land.

i think the national park service was actually the one who sponsored some exploratory sinking of clause and whatnot into the river to see what they pulled. and the result was honestly that they didn't find much. now, part of that may be the fort was actually on land the whole time, but there certainly been a lot of erosion. i it's a cost benefit analysis this point. you know, how much more we glean about the past by going to the trouble and the expense of conducting underwater archeology so far? you know we've got 87% of the forts on land and more than 4 million artifacts over the last 30 years. so we're not hurting for material. and there's still plenty of places left on land that our archeology are continuing to explore. so i think, yeah, underwater archeology may be in the future, but it's down the list of things want to do. but a side note corollary to

that more and more of our archeology is underwater these days. save jamestown, everyone it is sinking. yes. what in second? how long do we have until it's fully into the river? well, forever. there is a mitigation plan. we are fundraising for that right now. so there are designs, maps that that have been circulated. i don't know that. there's a public report yet, but we're working towards that, raising certain areas. and in the same in the process of doing that, we're also going to make it more accessible. because right now it's all gravel paths. it's very, very unwelcome. if you have mobility issues. but there is certainly a process of triage going on right now with the archeologists getting as much data as they can out of where they can before they put

in some additional dams or breaks for for the river or for the swamp, which is encroaching at an alarming rate. and then also making sure that all measures that have been supposed be implemented in order to reduce the runoff that into the swamp, making sure that those are in fact followed through. that has not always been the case, and that has made the problem worse. so cleaning drains, it's a very simple thing, but yet if it's not done and especially, you know, this of the year when it's just clogged with the falling leaves, everything that then can't go the drain and all runoff from the parking lots comes down onto our side of the island, into the swamp and it's just exacerbate what was already an issue because rising tides. so we're hoping that within the

next couple of years we'll begin implementing plan and then we'll see how far it can carry us. but the goal is that we're never going to lose jamestown and we'll never, i think lose the fort proper because they built it on the highest piece of land on the island. but all of that surrounding information is very much at risk and they're not living inside the fort. you know, not all of them all the time. it's a community of which the fort is the central defensive structure. so the domestic dwellings are outside the fort in that wealth here. there's some in this back feel. there's a domestic dwelling over here as well that the archeologists have just begun to uncover from the very earliest period. and the information in those in the the trenches that they have in those areas has been very scarce. and some of that scarcity is probably to the wet, dry cycle

that the artifacts there have been subjected to over time, which just contributes to their deterioration. but yeah, there's so much more that we can figure out. and it's a race against time at this point. i guess a similar. we know that the used to be much further out would you say that it would be have been a bit past those protruding seawalls there. oh yes i should think so. now at the point of the island here where the state was. there's considerable more erosion. erosion there than there is the. further, you get down into the national park service side. so over new town, they haven't actually lost that much shoreline. but up here they have 50 yards, maybe more, 75 yards off the point. and then sort of gradual decreasing as you go back. mm. east along the shoreline

shoreline because you quickly go over the difference between the preservation of do some and what kind of preservation is happening now to okay we no seal things with cement i'll start with that that was one of the early efforts to preserve church tower they just plastered the whole inside. and it made the problem worse because. it's trapping moisture and and then the bricks more. and unless match the ingredients of the mortar that was used at the time to ingredients that you're trying to repair that mortar with it doesn't they do not live in harmony together. it's like organ rejection. and i suppose so a lot of the measures that, you know, they were making a really good faith effort to preserve this stuff, 100 plus years ago. but we just have better technology now. so the church tower has been completely redone recently.

they put a roof on it, just a glass roof so you can still get the effect of looking up to the open sky, but it is somewhat more protected from the elements. what else do we do differently? quite, quite a lot. there decisions made now over you know they fill holes in again. they don't leave things exposed. obviously except for the kitchen cellar where they found the remains of the cannibalized female in 2012. but sometimes the best way to preserve artifacts is to to cover them up again. so that's something that they're very conscious of and leaving parts of, trenches or areas for later excavation with the assumption that in ten or 20 years, our ability preserve what's there will have increased

that more so i guess strategy has improved a lot. there's some irony too that well, previous digs that were done out here were extremely methodical in the thirties. in the fifties, a lot of digging. what's now the national park service side, the island, but also occasional forays onto our side of the island. and in 1949, actually, the archeologists the palisade wall but they didn't know they discovered it and. maybe it's for the best because had they uncovered entire palisade line in 1949, they have had a different attitude towards preserving than perhaps we have today and different capabilities. so the artifacts go through really rigorous conservation in. our lab building always with you know the latest best means of treating different types of objects metals or organics are treated very differently. so we've got a team of really

expert people to to figure out what the best of action is. and sometimes you get an artifact, the silver reliquary box that's sealed shut. they couldn't open it. and, you know, had they dug that up in 1949, someone might have forced it open and, destroyed the artifact in the process. but now we've got x-ray technol and all manner of medical tools actually that are able to assist us in the effort to see what's inside something having to damage the exterior. so that's the that the archeologists with that reliquary and it allowed us to figure out not just what was inside but also then to reproduce those things with a 3-d printer so that the guests visiting the art museum could see versions of the objects inside the reliquary without having to damage the box itself. so a variety of answers but i think a very good question

question. anybody else. if there was a if there was a holy grail of something you'd love to find at jamestown, what would it be. golly. i think every archeologist and historian have a different answer for that. and i'd have give it a good long think. part of the reason is that my interest as fascinated as i am by every aspect of the history of jamestown, i really like the later century because it's underrepresented in my view. so so the 1640s are really crucial decade and then the bacon's rebellion period. so so i personally see with my

bias you see bias i would love to find anything over at the green springs site, which is again, if you remember the site from the home of sir william barclay, lady francis barclay, his second wife, anything that could be linked with lady barclay wood for me would be the holy grail personally, because i have a a deep and abiding interest in her life and. her experience just a woman at the of virginia society and influential in the political world as well as the social world. anything that could help me flesh out who she was as a human being and what her relationship was with the people her specifically with sir william would be i would be in heaven if we found something like that. but that's part of the national service side of.

colonial national historical park. and there haven't been archeological excavations out of green spring for a number of years at this point. and what we do, although it was very exacting work at the time, it leaves much to be desired when we look back at it with a modern lens they were unable to determine, even chronology of the building pattern out there, let alone link artifacts with individuals. although they did find heck of a lot of pipe stems, which suggests certainly that this was a hub of political activity, especially during the years sir william barclay lived there and all of the surrounding. you bigwigs were coming to be wined and dined at green spring politics. all the while. so that's my answer to that. can you give us little like overview into the political space at the time when the state house was being moved to a middle plantation the political space.

oh oh. you'd had a series of short term governors after barclay and you've got frances nicholson being a mover and shaker. he he is not just responsible for designing and sort of overseeing the construction of williamsburg, but also of annapolis, maryland. that's his other project. they look very different geographically, but he is certainly a force to be reckoned with. james blair, although he's not, you know, ostensibly on the political side, he really is. he makes it his personal business several times to. get governors of virginia recalled. he wield political power even though he is a minister and the president of the college of william mary. so he is a major force to be reckoned with and certainly one of the most vocal proponents of moving the capital to williamsburg.

and i wouldn't say that factor. i don't want to give ourselves too much credit, but he does encourage and perhaps even write speeches to be delivered. william and mary students to convince the burgesses and the powers that be that move is a good idea and there's from the front of the building as now it is called and i don't know that i consider them terribly persuasive on the face of it. but they do make a series of semi logical arguments for moving the capital that would appeal to the government. and one of them is that this is an up and coming place where the community support the government and the government support the community. and it'll be a nice symbolic relationship because you've got a seat of education here, you've got a seat of here in bruton parish. you have all the and ingredients necessary to form a thriving community and that along with the fact that williamsburg is

not a port which the suggestion is made in these speeches, that that means it's better defensible. jamestown, being a port city, was also vulnerable to attack from sea. then or from river, rather. and during the anglo-dutch wars in, the 17th century, the dutch fleet does sail up the james river and burns the virginia tobacco fleet. so you know, when initially read those speeches, i thought, wow, that's a bit far fetched. you're pitching williamsburg because there is no river access. and that seems strange. but in light of more recent events that might have been in the minds of guys like the burgesses, that's maybe not a bad thing. and of course, they had been not necessarily the guys in 1699, but within living memory, bacon's rebellion essentially held hostage in their own state house by and an armed mob of 500 people all so you defense ability might been on their

minds in that regard as well jamestown you know there are some certainly military advantages of its position, but also some military disadvantages if you cut off that isthmus like bacon did. you know the only way is by boat. but if you're moving large force, that's not necessarily necessarily an advantage. could you discuss briefly the difficulty that memorializes an and the preservation of have co-existing within jamestown moved a really good question i warn you as all by now learned i do nothing briefly. so for many years at jamestown, the prevailing narrative certainly focused on the big

names that show up in the history books like john smith and christopher newport. john smith was i mean, there's a statue of him that was erected in 1909 and the statue pocahontas and there's no statues of anybody else out there. and that. is indicative of the style of commemoration and memory that was current really all the way up until the i could argue anyway, the nineties when there was something there that. pertained to the 17th century that people could look at learn from prior to for much of the 20th century, it had been largely driving park. so you came off the ferry from the the scotland side. it actually came off on a wharf that faced that tricentennial monument, that huge obelisk and then the road curved well the main road went, but you could curve off to the left and, go

through the gates to jamestown, and you your nickel or whatever it was, and it was a driving tour of a couple of statues and sign that said congratulations, the the fort is in the river and you were there mostly to reflect and imagine, i think, what you wanted jamestown to be, because it's very absence encouraged. you to give way to your own flights of fancy about it and that was much the intent of the original ap va. it was a site as far as they were concerned. this is a a civic religion that they're trying to inculcate within the population of virginia honor jamestown because these are your and this is your heritage and they did conduct annual pilgrimages to the church out at jamestown. the early years of the ap. now. and for a while, once the archeology took off. and i love the the depth and

breadth of archeology that we have out there, such a rich little time capsule. and i'm all for the archeology but that we we became so focused on the archeology a while that that became the prevailing to the exclusion of some of the broader context of those artifacts were coming out of the ground and you can't really properly those objects without what they meant to the people who. use them on a day to day basis. and that requires, i think informing the public of the broader history. so we now have archeology tours almost every morning, history tours in the afternoon. so there's a team really just off of three of us who do sort of the history tour side of things but we're very intense now on bringing attention as much as possible to as many themes about as possible. so my colleague mark leads

wonderful tours and in english talking the early interactions and the roller coaster ride of diplomacy and warfare between english and the poet and he leads the part in 1622 tours. he leads the first africans tour establishes not just just what we can glean of the of the 20 and odd african who are brought to virginia in 1619 but also what the backdrop that would have informed the english understanding about race and slavery. so what were they what were they bringing with them from europe that may have contributed or not? you know to the situation that these africans in the early days found themselves in. so that's a wonderfully informative tour. my colleague willie balderson, a lot of first person living history as one of john smith's

entourage. so it just a an ordinary soldier here who was a nobody back in england and what his experience was being you know, figures in the background when you've got these wonderful 19th century paintings, the central focal point is john smith or pocahontas or whomever, but filling in the edges is what we're now really committed to doing. so i just brought on board and indentured servant interpretation from the 1640 so i get to talk then also about the relationship between virginia and maryland which i think we need to talk about more. it's adversarial. they have a very porous border for many years and that leads to a lot of conflict. but there's the ideological battle of the supposedly dyed in the wool anglican colony in, virginia, being asked to and enable the creation of a catholic colony just to the north that cuts off some of the

land that had previously been under the virginia charter so there's a lot of ill will there, but also a lot of cross-pollination, if i may use that phrase, virginians who also property in maryland, marylanders who also property in virginia and sometimes serve in both governments over the course their lifetimes. so i think that's definitely worth exploring in more depth. and it also brings a lens of religious pluralism, not exactly. diversity, perhaps, but mark my colleague that i talked about a moment ago has also just introduced a a tour he calls holy ground, which is about the different flavors of religion that were present at jamestown in the early days to the best our ability to analyze that. how are people getting on and off the island because like green springs that's off the island and i know today we have

like foot bridges that we can walk on and there's like bridges that we can travel from, like where glass houses to the island was there. bridges at the time was down the river. the did exist. it's been periodically a true island multiple times through throughout its history because we're prone to hurricanes in virginia and we've had some really bad ones over the years. so hopefully it's not going to happen again. but the last time jamestown island was an island was 2003. after isabel and the if smith's the bridge there washed out and. yeah, it was cut off. so in 1907 for that commemoration, it was also a period of time when the the island an island for real and they were ferrying from the mainland over to the island. so certainly boat travel in the 17th century. in the 18th century is easier than foot travel. the roads aren't very good and

they would be crossing that back with regularity in order to get to the mainland. but they could also go via the isthmus. so the main road off the island called the old great road, the road that we basically go in on now, it's in that. and there are reports from very, very early 1607 even that summer that this was an old native trail and that the englishmen were exploring down at some five miles or so. so there you go go. if there was a if there was a friction that many of the general public have about jamestown, but would be the first one, the one you most like to raise. hmm. the presence of gentlemen. i think there is still somewhat of a negative flavor a bad taste

in people's, i guess about the number of gentlemen were recruited for the first voyage in 1606 who arrived in 1607. the the company has taken a lot of abuse for that decision but i think it's important to remember that the ordinary englishman during this period didn't know how to fire gun, didn't know how to hunt and fish is the who do all of that stuff. the gentlemen, who were the soldiers who had the experience of trying oust the spanish habsburgs from the netherlands in those wars who have participated in the subjugation of ireland prior to coming to virginia and because the company knows that they are risking causing international incident settling in territory that spain had already claimed and had had boots on the ground in 1570s before they were expelled or killed by the powers in there expecting the spanish army to descend any day. so you know.

yes didn't bring average laborers in kinds of numbers that it might have behooved them to do and the gentlemen are very averse to that manual labor that's really necessary for survival in virginia. but the flipside of that is the gentleman are crucial for, the defense of the colony. everyone can be taught how to use a gun but the gentleman in theory already have that background and can supervise the instruction of others and be the cool head because if you've got a bunch of you know frankly frat boys in a swamp never handled a gun before and ask them to defend this place, what's going to happen? you need guys who have years of experience to keep things in order to tell them, okay, hold your fire now you fire in just to generally prevent things from

going horribly awry. and many of the times when do go horribly awry in the early encounters i think it is function of the wrong guy was in charge really smith the guy you want want but the theory was a good one in sending the gentleman the fact that some of the gentlemen were absolutely rubbish soldiers was not what the virginia company had anticipated as the outcome. great i have exhausted your every query. i'm so satisfied. well, thank you so much for. this opportunity, this is really been a pleasure. and i appreciate all of the interaction, the questions you've thrown at me. and i know i haven't always precisely the answer you were looking for, but i hope that i was able to talk the swamp a bit

and expand upon what you already knew. so thank you so much. i'm. doing that. hello, everyone. i'm. good afternoon. thank you very much for being here. i so appreciate your attendance on this beautiful