Jamestown Settlement (part 1)

We have an out of town visitor this week, my brother-in-law is visiting from Ohio.  Today we took him to the Jamestown Settlement Museum.  Of course we’ve been several times over the years since it is only about twenty minutes from the house.  My boys have even been there on field trips with their schools.  It never ceases to amaze me each time we go, because they are always adding to it.  The picture to the left is Beauty-berry I think behind the wattle fencing which I would love to duplicate in my garden.  I took so many pictures that I might have to do more than one post on this trip.   They have displays of artifacts from the Indians, Colonists, Europeans and Slaves that occupied this land during the 17Thcentury.  The tour starts off with a 20 minute film called “Witness 1607: A Nation Takes Root” which describes the first two decades of the Colony’s settlement in this area.  Then you proceed through a Powhatan Indian Village that has been re-created  to show how these early Native Americans lived.  They even had a vegetable garden with gourds growing like crazy on the handmade fence and what I think is squash and tobacco growing in the garden.  After that you will follow a wattle fence path down to the waterway named after the settler’s King James to see replicas of the Susan Constant, Godspeed and Discovery.  These ships were life lines and sources of supplies for the settlers to their homeland of England.  Along the riverfront is an area where canoe making is demonstrated using large logs, fire and shells.  They burn the wood to create the indentations and scrape away the cinders with shells which were primitive tools for the colonists.  The waterway provided a source of fishing, commodities and trade for the early settlers in Jamestown.   The trip was not only a big hit with our guest today, but the three teenagers we dragged along even enjoyed themselves.  My eldest son said it was more interesting than Colonial Williamsburg.  I have to agree that not only was it an educational outing but we had a fun time too.  When you can make history interesting to teenagers that’s a real feat!