During the Federal Occupation of Williamsburg during the Civil War a picket post and security perimeter was established around that area. People traveling towards Richmond where inspected to ensure no contraband was being smuggled. That is likely the "entrance" referred to.
Thomas Hay
Program Manager, Civil War Tour,
The Colonial Williamsburg Foundation
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-----Original Message-----
From: Discussion of research and writing about Virginia history [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Terry Meyers
Sent: Tuesday, October 08, 2013 9:39 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: [VA-HIST] an "entrance" (?) to antebellum Williamsburg
Several years ago in arguing that the W&M Alumni House might be an antebellum structure, I cited an 1862 depiction of the town by Robert Knox Sneden; I'm aware now of several errors I made in the article-- the major one being that I didn't recognize, as a reader told me, that the house was surely at the time Italianate, with a distinctive tower on a flat roof.
One of my guesses, also perhaps wrong, was that the tall, apparently wooden frame of some sort, just below and to the left of what is now the Alumni House (at the far right of the picture)
http://alumni.wm.edu/magazine-archive/wint_0708/pdf/alumni_house.pdf
was a gallows.
I've recently come across an account of antebellum Williamsburg that mentions an "entrance" to the city at roughly the place indicated by the "gallows" in Sneden's picture. The account also seems to situate at that location a Saturday market where free and enslaved blacks offered farm wares.
So.... can someone illuminate for me what an antebellum "entrance"
to a town like Williamsburg would look like and what its function might have been?
Many thanks.
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Terry L. Meyers, Chancellor Professor of English, College of William and Mary, Williamsburg Virginia 23187 757-221-3932
http://wmpeople.wm.edu/site/page/tlmeye/
http://www.ecologyfund.com/ecology/_ecology.html
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Have we got a college? Have we got a football team?....
Well, we can't afford both. Tomorrow we start tearing down the
college.
--Groucho Marx, in "Horse Feathers."
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