Travels Into Our Past: America's Living History Museums & Historical Sites. Wayne P. Anderson
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 had been given indicated which of them were to go, and those students stood up, answered questions and told us what their fears and concerns were.
In our next stop in the walk, we found ourselves learning how to fire muskets with the Rhode Island Regiment during the middle of the Revolutionary War. A soldier explained how inaccurate the weapons were, and that was why soldiers fired as a group at another group; soldiers could count on someone getting hit if they fired enough bullets. We were given a lesson in marching and mimed loading, shooting and charging with fixed bayonets.
Next, we became spies. We were taken to an encampment where a Capt. Hamilton told us about a double agent who had been planted in a British camp pretending he had secret information from George Washington’s army. So we trooped over to the British camp, where Gen. Charles Cornwallis ranted on about how dumb the Americans were and how much they needed the leadership of a king and his people if they were to succeed in this country. We reported back to Hamilton to tell him Cornwallis had fallen for the false information.
Captain Hamilton tells us about thedouble agent planted in the British camp.
Another stop was at a large colonial church meeting, which resulted in the Declaration of Sentiments at Seneca Falls. A costumed woman explained the lack of rights for women and distributed handouts.
The children especially enjoyed Harriet Tubman’s story “Follow the Drinking Gourd.” The re-enactor told them about her history and how she was working to get slaves to freedom through the Underground Railroad. She said we would act as slaves, and she would help us escape. When we met in a darkened room, she taught us a song that would help us find directions. The drinking gourd is the big dipper and the North Star. We then escaped and were stopped by a white man looking for escaped slaves. He allowed us to go on but shot his black-powder revolver in the air to make us move faster. After all this adventure, the children were ready for the lunch provided.
The educational programs have been in operation since 1995. We appreciated this method of educating children about history. We suspect the regularly scheduled tour might not be quite as much fun as this one, but we especially enjoy watching kids enthusiastically learn.
Gen. Charles Cornwallis ranting on about
how dumb the Americans are
9. Moss-Adorned History
Savannah, Georgia
Savannah joins our list of world-class gem cities along with cities such as Heidelberg, Germany; Kyoto, Japan; Edinburgh, Scotland; and St. Augustine, Florida. Each is a perfect example of whatever it should be.
What we found in Savannah was a historic American city with beautifully restored structures, making the whole area a living museum.
At least three companies run tour trolleys that let riders get on and off at 15 stops as often they like during the day. The first day there we parked our car at the visitors’ center, and we used the trolleys. The drivers are also the guides, commenting on what we were seeing and telling stories about former famous and infamous citizens.
There was so much information about the history of the city and the sites we were passing that after the fourth stop, the information was sliding across our memory banks. We took several rides through some sections of the city and found that although some of the information was the same, the drivers used different approaches in their narrations.
In 1733, Gen. James Oglethorpe brought a select group of settlers to found Savannah, which was to be England’s 13th and final colony. Oglethorpe and a Col. William Bull laid out the new settlement in a series of 24 public squares, 21 of which still exist today. The commercial and residential buildings were arranged around these squares, which are unusually striking with their giant oaks, fountains and statues.
A guide on one of our walking tours noted that Savannians are a contrary lot; they have placed four statues of noted people in squares and then named a different square after them.
In each square we crossed, the oak trees were heavy with hanging Spanish moss. We were told that the origin of the phrase “Sleep tight, don’t let the