Williamsburg, Virginia

So, it's off on our last road trip from the B&B.  

We love it when a ferry is a part of the public highway systems and we get "free" rides!  It's a twenty minute ride across the James River, and we will "make port" at the same location that the original Jamestown colonists did over 400 years ago, back in 1607.

Ol' Mr. Albert Jester started the first automobile ferry here back in February of 1925.  The "Captain John Smith" ferry was 60 feet long and managed to carry as many as 16 Model-T Fords across the James River in a single voyage.  

This old Transportation Department map of the ferry area shows where we took Hwy. 31 across the James by ferry, landing just north of the island Jamestown was founded on.  (Well, "just north of the island on which Jamestown was founded."  Thank you, Miss Sutherland, 11th and 12 grade English.)  In this "Historic Triangle" you can find Smith's Fort Plantation which is on the dower tract of land that ol' Chief Powhatan gave to Captain John Smith in 1614 when Smith married Pocahontas.  (Hence the word "dower," which, by the way, first came into use in 1605!)  (I love words!)

There is also in this area the Chippokes Plantation (now a state park) that is still a working farm and still encompasses the original 1,683 acres claimed in 1619.  Bacon's Castle is not so very far away.  It was originally known as Arthur Allen's Brick House.  Not too classy, but accurate, as it twas Arthur Allen who had it built it in 1665.  Bacon's Rebellion in 1676 against the English appointed Governor and his "tidewater aristocrats" who refused to protect the planter-colonists against Native American aggressors resulted in Allen's house being fortified and used by Bacon, so now it's known as Bacon's Castle.  The house is the only surviving example of Jacobean architecture in North America and the oldest existing brick dwelling in all of Virginia!

Surry County that you see in the bottom left hand corner of the map still has the original county records from when it was established in 1652.  That's pretty cool in itself, but when you realize that they were protected from destruction by the British during the American Revolution and by the Union Army during the Civil War, that is really cool!

Coming into the landing on the other side of the James River we are greeted with a blast from the past:

All of that and we haven't even gotten off of the ferry yet !!