Day 10 - Petersburgh, VA

October 11, 2019

Weather was great again today. The furnace was set on 64 degrees and rain a few times in the early morning hours. Jeans and a long sleeve shirt felt good in the morning, a tee shirt and shorts were great the rest of the day.

Kathy started the morning doing another load of laundry at the campground laundromat this morning, she did two loads after we arrived yesterday. After that we headed to Richmond. 

ALL of the parking lots around the American Civil War Museum were closed for a Folk Festival, and we could find no on street parking. I finally stopped a guy in a golf cart, told him we were from Missouri and wanted to go to the museum. I asked him if he knew of a place we could park. He had us turn around and follow him up this NARROW, cobblestone lane to a place where could park on just off the lane.

Looking back down the lane.

We both went through the Tredegar Iron Works museum and while Kathy sat on a bench I went through the American Civil War Museum. I was disappointed. There was some interesting verbiage about how the Tredegar Iron Works produced half the cannons used by the Confederacy and how the Confederacy was so short on manpower that the Iron Works employed more than 300 young girls to make percussion caps, friction primers, fuses and small arms cartridges. 9-12 year old girls averaged 1,200 cartridges per day. It was estimated that they make 72 million cartridges during the war, almost half the number produced throughout the Confederacy during the war.

The American Civil War Museum appears to have been “sanitized” by the Yankee businessmen responsible for the War of Northern Aggression. No mention was made of how the vast majority of income received by the federal government prior to the war came from tariffs on products imported into the South. The Museum would have you believe the war was all about slavery, which is a total lie. It was about changing our nation from one where States had power to one where virtually all power was in the federal government, sort of going back to the days before the Revolutionary War. It was also about Northern states refusal to abide by the Constitution and a federal government that did nothing about it. (Similar to the recent Congress’s outright refusal to enforce immigration laws passed by Congress. And even worse their refusal to even revise the laws they won’t enforce.)

One good thing came out of this, it piqued my curiousity and when we are someplace with a decent Internet connection I will be doing some research on the causes of the War of Northern Agression (Yankees call it the Civil War, there was nothing Civil about the deaths of 650,000 soldiers.)

This weekends Folk Festival looks like a HUGE event. We won’t be going back into Richmond tomorrow. Traffic was terrible today.

Kathy had happen to see something about a Henricus Historical Park, in Chester, VA, in some of the literature we have. On our way into Richmond we saw a sign about it an exit. On our way back out we decided to check it out. It was AWESOME! I took far to many photos to post them, but I will post a few. For some reason we have found almost no public information about it.

On May 14, 1607 Virginia Company settlers landed on Jamestown Island to establish an English colony, about 60 miles from the mouth of Chesapeake Bay. They were sent here to find riches, to make a profit for investors in the Virginia Company. In terms of a business venture it was not a success. They were attacked by Indians within days of their arrival. The site was boggy and prone to disease. Most importantly they found now gold or anything else of value to send back to the investors.

In 1611 the investors sent 300 mercenaries to set up a town further upriver. They settled at a point 20-30 miles (I think) up the James River from Jamestown. In four months, even though they were regularly attacked by Indians, they built a fortified settlement with frame houses, a church, storehouses, watchtowers, etc. Once again however, they initially found nothing of value to send back to England that would make a profit for investors. No one seems to know where the seeds came from but John Rolfe started growing a new strain, non-native, of tobacco. It was a hit with the English because it was far cheaper than the tobacco they could buy from the Spaniards. The investors started getting a return on their investment.

There is a LOT more to the story, Pocahontas becomes a Christian and marries John Rolfe, after 8 years of peace the Indians massacre about a fourth of the inhabitants, etc.

A Powhatan indian family dwelling.. 

 The exterior is sheets of woven reeds, something similar to cattails.

 Inside.

Inside the fort, which originally encompassed about 7 acres.

 I think this was the first church.

 Craftsmanship looked amazing to me.

 Mortise and tenon and pegged joints all over the place.

Blacksmith shop.

 Tobacco barn.

 The first hospital in the New World.

More awesome framing.

A cable stayed bridge on I295, over the James River. Because I missed a turn when we came through Richmond yesterday we got to drive over it, as part of our 18 mile detour. We had to slip out the back gate of the village to get these last two photos.

The James River. The bridge is in the left background. Note the guys in the boat fishing.

I'm not sure what tomorrow holds for us but I do know that God is good, "And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love Him, who have been called according to His purpose." Romans 8:28. May He bless you and yours.