The legislature approved it soon after the war, but it took 100 years before the money was found to build it.
To complete the step back in time, travel a short distance to an archaeological dig displaying the ruins of an old pottery factory. To protect the dig, it has been covered with a building that houses examples of various products that had been made there. The factory had been developed despite the British forbidding any American industry to compete with the British industries.
The real treat in visiting Yorktown, however, lies in the two living history museums in the area, the Yorktown Victory Center and the Colonial National Historic Park.
The Yorktown Victory Center
The battle at Yorktown, Virginia, was one of those “minor events” that had a major effect on history because it was the final straw that caused Great Britain to accept the existence of our new nation.
The Yorktown Victory Center, a newly renovated museum devoted to the American Revolution uses state-of-the-art exhibits to acquaint visitors with the Yorktown of Revolutionary days.
We were moved by the displays using the words of those who lived through the last major battle of the war in 1781, as recorded in their diaries, letters and other records. Visitors can gain an understanding not only of the events leading up to the Revolutionary War but its impact on ordinary men and women. For example, the visitor center’s movie on the battle has re-enactors speaking directly into the camera representing the experiences of the soldiers.
The Road to Revolution, a walkway to the main museum, includes descriptions of the events that led to rebellion. The personal experience theme is repeated in the museum displays. In one gallery titled “Witnesses to Revolution,” plaster casts of 10 people of different ages and backgrounds are spread throughout settings in three rooms. One is an older man standing in a cornfield, and another is a woman with her daughter fleeing the battle. As a spotlight hits each figure, a voice relates that person’s experience during the battle.
Another gallery, “Converging on Yorktown,” focuses on the many nationalities involved in the siege and the surrender of the British. Downstairs is the story of the ships lost or scuttled during the siege. A third gallery, “The Legacy of Yorktown: Virginia Beckons,” details how a new nation was created through the drafting of the Constitution with the Bill of Rights.
Plaster casts of a woman and her daughter fleeing the Battle of Yorktown.
Behind the main buildings is a Revolutionary War encampment with tents and officers’ quarters staffed with re-enactors. We were especially interested in a presentation on medical equipment and procedures. We gathered doctoring had not changed much from what we had read about medical practices in the 14th century. Purging and bleeding seemed to be standard, and no one knew what a bacterium was.
Re-enactors gave demonstrations on musket and cannon loading and firing. The presenters in costumes knew their roles well and answered questions as if they were someone who lived during that period.
A demonstration of the state of medicine at the time of the battle for Yorktown
A short walk away is a reconstructed farm of the period with chickens and turkeys roaming about. Two small buildings housed people in period costumes. Two young girls in one house seemed bored. We suspect they had originally thought it would be a lark to be the center of tourists’ attention, but with none of the modern entertainments or a smart phone they were used to having, time must have hung heavy.
With so many exhibits in the museum anyone going through all of them should deserve credit for completing a history course. The center is funded by the Commonwealth of Virginia and the Jamestown-Yorktown Foundation, a state agency that operates it.
Colonial National Historical Park
For a memorable step back in time to 1781 we visited Yorktown, Va., where the last major battle of the Revolutionary War was fought. A 15-minute film at the Colonial National Historical Park, managed by the National Park Service, covers the early victories of the British general, Lord Cornwallis, over the southern section of the Revolutionary army. As he chased his opponents around the colony, he kept losing troops until his army was markedly reduced.
A National Parks ranger prepares a group of children to load
a cannon to illustrate an aspect of the Battle of Yorktown.
Meanwhile, Gen. George Washington fooled Gen. Henry Clinton into believing he was planning to attack in New York while he instead sent his army 450 miles south to attack Yorktown. Half the troops who helped us win at Yorktown were French, led by Comte Jean-Baptiste de Rochambeau with the assistance of one of the planners, young Marquis de Lafayette. Without the French navy to prevent the British from bringing in more troops, the battle could not have been won. We owe much to the French in gaining our freedom.
The 50-minute guided tour around the battlefield clearly indicated the earthworks and siege lines marking the positions of the two armies and emphasized the use of the cannons on display. The Americans and French had better cannons than the British, an important factor in our victory.
A second tour focused on how the cannons were loaded and fired. After a brief introduction to cannons and the equipment necessary to make them work, our guide assigned roles to six children and took them out to a cannon to demonstrate how to fire it. She did one run-through, and then had them perform the procedure with no further guidance to see how fast they could work. It took them 1 minute and 40 seconds—a bit longer than the 40 seconds a seasoned cannoneer could do but still impressive for a group of children.
The small museum in the visitor center includes part of a ship rebuilt to show cannons and crew quarters, one tent used by Washington as an office and another used as sleeping quarters, and a field command table used by Cornwallis. Other buildings at the park were well-designed, with impressive displays.
8. American Village
Montevallo, Alabama
At American Village near Montevallo, Alabama, we ran into the unexpected. Our guidebook suggested it would give us an opportunity to experience what times were like as our country grew.
However, when we got there, we found the public tour had been canceled because of an influx of fifth-graders—five buses with 50 to a bus. We were given permission to take the tour with one of the groups of pupils.
We started our walk through history with the “pilgrimage to the new world.” As the students entered the meeting hall, each was given a “passport through the centuries” with a page of questions about each experience they would be having and a small card assigning each of them a role to help increase their sense of being back in a historical time.
After we seated ourselves on benches, a man and a woman in 17th century costumes told us stories and asked questions. He indicated we had been in Holland for the past three years and that some of us had just been given permission to sail to America on the Mayflower. He described the hazards we were about to undergo. The cards the students
