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| Quadricentennial Plaza |
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| Virginia's plaque on the plaza |
Friday we took Grandma and visited Jamestown Settlement near Williamsburg. Hannah had really been wanting to visit since she never got to go on a school field trip. This is the first English settlement in the new world, founded in 1607. The settlement contains recreations of the three ships the colonists arrived on, the settlement they built on the James River, and a Powhatan Indian village. It was opened in 1957, and in 1994 archaeologists located the site of the original fort about a mile down the road from the recreation. You can also tour the original site, but we did not have time for that excursion. I'll let the photos and captions explain what we saw and did.
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| The fountain out front with sail sculpture |
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| On board the Godspeed, one of the smaller ships |
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| Costumed characters were all around to tell us about life for the settlers |
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| View of the Susan Constant, the largest ship |
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| Preparing to fire the cannon |
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| Another view of the Susan Constant |
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| The Susan Constant |
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| The third ship was called the Discovery (on the right) |
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| Cannon below deck on the Susan Constant |
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| Storage area below deck, notice the plate armor and metal helmets |
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| Below deck on the Susan Constant |
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| Learning about navigation tools |
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| Peering out from the Susan Constant |
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| Sitting inside a dugout canoe, Sophie looks miserable because she'd been bitten by an ant on the log |
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| Looking out from inside a home inside the Jamestown settlement |
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| View of the settlement, the church is on the right |
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| A home |
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| Inside the guard house or armory |
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| View of the store house, one of three public buildings they were required to built (the others were the church and armory) |
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| Hannah atop the large pulpit in the church |
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| The altar |
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| The pews did not look comfortable at all |
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| Just your average churchgoers from the 1600s |
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| Inside the governor's house |
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| Outside of the governor's house. It had four rooms downstairs and sleeping quarters for the servants upstairs |
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| Fireplace / hearth |
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| Second bedroom in the governor's house |
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| Raised platform at one corner of the triangular fort |
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| Blacksmith at work |
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| Blacksmith's shelter |
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| Learning about food and rations in the settlement |
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| View of the church |
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| Trying on some of the armor |
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| Another home |
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| Investigating the platform |
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| Peering out through the cannon hole in the wall |
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| Totem poles outside the Indian village |
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| Learning about making arrowheads from flint |
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| Scraping the hair off the deer hide |
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| Basket weaving |
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| Lots of sizes and shapes of baskets |
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| View of the Powhatan Indian village |
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| Scraping out a dugout canoe, created by burning |
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| Playing an Indian dart game |
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| Inside an Indian house |
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| They were built with round ends to withstand the wind |
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| Lots of things were stored inside |
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| Many homes were clustered together |
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| Another inside view |
We were not allowed to take photos inside the museum area in the building, but we spent an hour or two exploring the various exhibits. It was organized as an interplay of three cultures: the Native American Powhatan Indians that were already living in the area, the English who came to settle, and Africans from Angola who were brought as slaves starting in the 1620s or so. These three cultures interacted with one another and were influenced by each other.
This entire settlement is very hands on and interactive learning, definitely engaging for kids (and adults!) of many ages.
