This is shocking and sad news, at least to some of us who have not been
aware of the difficulties.

The loss of the educational opportunity and achievement represented by
the restored slaves' quarters at Carter's Grove is particularly
appalling.   That is surely the place and reference point from which
any encounter with Williamsburg that is not pure Disney should begin.
(Move the visitor's center to Carter's Grove!  Put a big parking lot at
the entrance to the "country road" so everyone can leave their cars
there, and run shuttle buses along the road to the plantation grounds,
giving visitors a chance to begin to lay aside their 21st-century
preconceptions along with their automobiles.  And then, as they walk
from the shuttle bus drop-off to the plantation house, use the restored
slave quarters to confront them with slavery--which after all
undergirded everything else in colonial Williamsburg--before they even
buy their tickets.  Why not?)

And how, one wonders, is it possible for visitors to Colonial
Williamsburg to have any adequate sense of Williamsburg's 18th-century
dynamics unless they have a clear sense of the capital's historical
identity in the context of the surrounding plantation economies,
lifeways, and cultures on which it depended entirely?

For many reasons, this is a terribly shortsighted retrenchment.  And I
say that both as a historian and as someone with an abiding affection
for Colonial Williamsburg, inasmuch as it was a visit there in
childhood that first sparked my interest in 18th-century American
history.

--Jurretta J. Heckscher

On Dec 20, 2005, at 7:46 AM, R.S. Taylor Stoermer wrote:

> It appears that CW has made a decision to leave shuttered Carter's
> Grove plantation and its related
> historical and archaeological resources (reconstructed slave quarters,
> Wolstoneholme Town site,
> archaeology musuem, etc.).  One can assume that CW has solid financial
> reasons for doing so and, as
> a practical matter, it was probably always difficult for the
> Foundation to incorporate the site into CW's
> town endeavours.  However, as we approach 2007 (and don't forget the
> 400th anniversary of the
> creation of the Virginia Company in 2006), perhaps it is important to
> ask whether the time has come
> for a comprehensive census of historical resources in the commonwealth
> and the development of a
> plan for their protection, if not presentation.  Can we really rely on
> tourism to pay the bills for
> preservation and education at such places?  Martin's Hundred is an
> especially valuable location, given
> the insight it provides into the 1622 uprising and its implications
> for Anglo-Native relations, but how
> instructive can it be if no one visits it (except for the business
> developers who probably envision, and
> salivate over the prospect of, vast housing tracts on the site)?
>
> It might be a good topic for discussion at Brent Tarter's and Warren
> Hofstra's spring conference.
>
> Here are links to the articles through Archaeology magazine.
>
> http://www.archaeology.org/online/features/martins/index.html
> http://www.vagazette.com/news/va-news1_121705dec17,0,3972057.story?
> coll=va-news

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