THREADS OF FEELING

LEARN SOMETHING NEW IN WILLIAMSBURG! THREADS OF FEELING…

Monday, February 24, 2014
Williamsburg, Virginia
Sunny, 56 F

Excitement alert warning to Randy and Brian. We purchased our single day ticket for Colonial Williamsburg this morning for $25 per person, soon to be 43/per single day. We had a couple things in mind that we wanted to see and CW was not busy today. 

The Capitol—our own private tour. There we learned that our part of Pennsylvania was once part of Virginia, something we may have known before, but forgot.  We learned that Williamsburg’s population in the 18^th century was about 1800-2000 people and 52% were slaves.

The Charlton Coffee House---our own private tour.  In the mid-90s we saw the archeological dig here when the CW Foundation started researching and excavating a new site. Now there is a reconstructed coffee house on the site, not far from the Capitol. Virginian men in politics met here to discuss the topics of the day (1767 is being reenacted here). We had coffee today with 34 year old George Washington. He told us he had been to LeBoeuf and Fort Pitt in the north near where we liveJ.

Apothecary---we talked with Robin, the daughter of a Travelers Rest resident, who has worked at CW for 30 years!

Silversmith---now they have sterling silver beads for my bracelet!

King’s Arms Tavern—lunch!  I love eating as if it is 1775. Tim had fried chicken, I had a ham and cheese sandwich with homemade chips, and we shared excellent bread pudding. A violinist entertained.

Public Armoury Kitchen---this is where a blacksmith, a tinsmith, a carpenter, and other tradesmen worked together to make the ammunition and weapons for war. The kitchen was used for cooking meals for the tradesman and the manager of the armoury who lived onsite with his family.

John Greenhow---a city store that sells goods of the day, e.g. soaps, candles, pewter, games, toys, period clothing, etc. Always a favorite stop to look.

****Public Hospital and DeWitt Wallace Museum---First of all, I don’t like visiting the hospital for the insane for fear Tim will leave me. J J But, we had not seen it in a while and we visited quickly. Fortunately things have changed and people with mental illness are treated differently now.

THREADS OF FEELING at the museum.  This exhibit was so moving and heart rending, actually very difficult to view. 

According to the website, “The exhibition, which was originally curated and displayed at London’s Foundling museum in 2011, showcases fabrics never shown before which illustrate the moment of parting as mothers left their babies at the original Foundling Hospital.

In the cases of more than 4,000 babies left at the London Foundling Hospital between 1741 and 1760, a small object or token, usually a piece of fabric, was kept as an identifying record. The fabric was either provided by the mother or cut from the child’s clothing by the hospital's nurses. Attached to registration forms and bound up into ledgers, these pieces of fabric form the largest collection of everyday textiles surviving in Britain from the 18th Century. A selection of the textiles forms the focus of the Threads of Feeling exhibition, along with examples of the kinds of garments made from them, and the stories they tell us about individual babies, their mothers and their lives.

Visitors to the Colonial Williamsburg Museum in Virginia, USA, now have a chance to view this moving collection as the exhibition remains in situ until March 2014.  This will be the last time these objects can be exhibited for the foreseeable future, because natural dyes fade if exposed to light for too long. Two years on display is considered the maximum exposure that is safe.
The process of giving over a baby to the hospital was anonymous. It was a form of adoption, whereby the hospital became the infant’s parent and its previous identity was effaced. The mother’s name was not recorded, but many left personal notes or letters exhorting the hospital to care for their child. The pieces of fabric in the ledgers were kept, with the expectation that they could be used to identify the child if it was returned to its mother. In reality, very few of the children were ever reclaimed.”

Actually information in the exhibit noted that there were over 16,000 babies left in this hospital and only 152 children were reclaimed by their mother. Reading the notes that the mothers left with their babies really tore at my heart—there were so many circumstances, economics, unwed, the mother died. Actually the hospital still exists today, as an orphanage.

 

I just cannot imagine a mother having to leave her child like this. The heartbreaking circumstances that would lead to giving up a child.  The last act of leaving a token, like a piece of cloth or a note, or some token. I asked the Colonial Williamsburg curator if there were any records indicating how these children grew up and had families and did she know of anyone to trace their family back to a foundling baby. She said that the babies, with new names and christened, stayed with a wet nurse until they were 5 or 6 years old. Then they returned to the London Foundling Hospital and School for school and then to learn a trade. She said a CW employee has traced his family back to a foundling who learned a trade, came to America, and had a family.

 See http://www.threadsoffeeling.com/ 

That exhibit ended our day at CW. We went to dinner at Uno Chicago Grill (aside to Friend H—do you remember the one in Denver?) I love their deep dish pizza!

Today was cooler, still wearing sandals! We are thinking about whether we will stay an extra day because of the weather.

TK’s Take: we got a call today from the owner of the Park Model in TRR—she ended up selling it today to her neighbor’s daughter. We knew she had first dibs, but the owner was not sure she could get financing. Oh well.