I spent some of last week on business travel to Williamsburg, Virginia. Unfortunately I sat in a conference room for most of the time. However, I did manage to make it out to the historic sites for a few brief moments.
Geography made Williamsburg the capital of the Virginia Colony and geography later took that designation away.
Rise and Fall
Colonial Williamsburg is a historic reinterpretation. It marks the city that once served as the Virginia Colony’s capital from 1699 to 1780. Numerous iconic American thinkers walked these streets and occupied these buildings. Legends such as Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, James Monroe and Patrick Henry represented their constituencies back home. Here they discussed issues, debated philosophies and defined the concepts that influenced democracy throughout the Commonwealth and into the fledgling United States.
The capital moved to this spot originally to escape malaria and other diseases that bedeviled the Jamestown settlement. Then Williamsburg served its purpose for close to a hundred years. However its location eventually became a liability, and the capital moved once again.
Geographically, Williamsburg sits along the spine of the Virginia Peninsula a few miles from both the York and the James Rivers (map). So it was a great spot for removing oneself from the swampy, low-lying riverbeds that bred mosquitoes and harbored waterborne disease.
Marauding armies were a different story. The rebellious colonists feared invasion. British troops could sail up either river, march a couple of miles, and sack the Virginia capital during the Revolutionary War. For security reasons, Virginia moved its capital 55 miles west to Richmond and it never returned.
But Not Down For the Count
Time could have left Williamsburg behind, it’s role fading in the collective historical memory. That’s not entirely inconceivable. It’s has happened to other old capital cities including some I’ve described before: Kaskaskia, Illinois and Belmont, Wisconsin for example have all but fallen off the map.
Railways and commerce bypassed Williamsburg over later centuries. Many of its historic structures decayed during numerous decades of neglect. Williamsburg did have the College of William & Mary though, and that provided enough of a spark to hold the town together and keep it going after the capitol moved.
Rising Again
Imagine the collective shame if something so important, so historic disappeared forever. Fortunately many forward-looking people including members of the Rockefeller family realized the possibilities during the early 20th Century. They banded together to restore surviving buildings to their original condition, or as close as reasonably determinable. Other buildings were recreated from scratch to fill the gaps in accordance with historic architectural practices. Interpreters in colonial garb work throughout the area, anxious to educate the public. They designed everything to give visitors a sense of what it must have been like to live in Williamsburg in those years leading up to the Revolutionary War, when the ideas of democracy flowed freely among its inhabitants.
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