Historical interpreters help visitors see how early visitors lived.
by hand—anything on the outside of the garment— including button and ornamentation stitching, because there were no sewing machines.” The museum building highlights the complete story of Jamestown and colonization through the 17th century, from departing England in 1606 until 1699, when the capital of Virginia moved from Jamestown to Williamsburg. With 900 or so original 16th- and 17th- century artifacts including portraits, muskets, tools, furniture, and more, the museum explains the cultural mixing and clashes of settlers, Powhatan Indians, and Virginia’s first Africans, followed by the development of trade and how tobacco became the cash crop. Key exhibits include an early 17th-century London street with living quarters—a tenement room with ordinary period jugs and plates, a shopkeepers’ space centered by a 17th-century desk, and a reconstruction to scale of the bow of the Susan Constant. “The illusion is you’re coming down a London street toward the docks and the ship is being loaded,” says the Jamestown-Yorktown Foundation’s Senior Curator Tom Davidson. “We were very careful to reconstruct everything the way it would have been.” One room includes original 17th-century portraits of
King James I and investors in the Virginia Company who sent the settlers as a business venture to find gold. Another exhibit highlights the chronology and southerly route of the first 1606-1607 voyage, following the winds down the coast of Africa and across the Atlantic to the Caribbean, and then finally on up to Virginia. And yet another explores the life and legend of Pocahontas. “She’s the one 17th-century Virginian everyone knows,” explains Davidson. “Pocahontas was the linking personality between the English and the Powhatan and becomes a kind of cultural emissary between the two peoples.” Similar to Jamestown Settlement’s outdoor living history, the American Revolution Museum at Yorktown, opened in 2017, recreates a soldiers’ camp—tents evenly lined according to Continental Army regulations. “We encourage our guests to crawl in the tents, pull things out and try things on,” explains Interpretive Program Manager Homer Lanier. “We’re a hands-on museum.” I follow his advice and use a quill pen to sign an army enlistment form. “You get a whopping $6.50 a month in pay, and if you agree to stay for three years, you’ll get a $20 bounty or bonus,” pitches historic interpreter Lee Ann Shelhorse, sporting simple colonial-style garb.
COLONIAL LIVING HISTORY
COAST TO COAST FALL MAGAZINE 2018
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