I had read that shipping was pretty much the main way the residents
supported themselves when the legislature was not in town- taverns,
ordinaries, inns, selling things the sailors and ships needed, etc.
and it could be a pretty wild place when the ships were in. Maybe the
definition of it being a "major port" was relative, esp. for someone
who had not seen a really big port.
Nancy
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I was never lost, but I was bewildered once for three days.
--Daniel Boone
On Mar 13, 2007, at 3:25 PM, Lyle E. Browning wrote:
> College Landing on the south side was the other "port" of
> Williamsburg. Neither was by any stretch of the imagination a major
> port. Check with any good map source and the physical/topographical
> limitations are glaring. Both were ports because Williamsburg was
> the Capital at the time. I can't think of a major VA port not on a
> large river, unless at a creek mouth providing some limited
> upstream access for boat traffic.
>
> Lyle Browning, RPA
>
>
> On Mar 13, 2007, at 3:20 PM, Henry Wiencek wrote:
>
>> In his 1873 newspaper statement about being the son of Thomas
>> Jefferson and
>> Sally Hemings, Madison Hemings stated that his ancestor Capt.
>> Hemings was
>> "captain of an English trading vessel which sailed between England
>> and
>> Williamsburg, Va., then quite a port." He is speaking about the
>> 1730s. Is
>> it correct to say that Williamsburg was "quite a port"? Though
>> Williamsburg
>> had a landing accessible from the York River by Queen's Creek, and
>> I found a
>> reference to a "Comptroller of the port of Williamsburg" in 1773,
>> I have
>> never heard Williamsburg described as a major port. This may seem
>> like a
>> trivial point, but it is one of several assertions in Madison
>> Hemings'
>> narrative that seem to be wrong and I am trying to pin them all down.
>>
>> I am not trying to launch a general Hemings/Jefferson discussion,
>> and if
>> anyone has any comments on that broader subject I will be happy to
>> receive
>> them off-list.
>>
>> Henry Wiencek
>> Charlottesville
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