CHAPTER 15

Colonial Williamsburg

WILLIAMSBURG

Spirits that have been dormant for centuries can be awakened by a flurry of activity and sounds. In the 1920s and 1930s, a major restoration project found the village of Williamsburg undergoing complete re-creation. It is possible that the constant pounding of hammers and the digging by archaeologists may have jolted some of these spirits from their sleep.

—Jackie Eileen Behrend, The Hauntings of Williamsburg, Yorktown, and Jamestown

MANY TIMES OVER THE YEARS I have walked the darkened streets of Colonial Williamsburg late at night, often in an attempt to clear my head a bit after some party before turning in. Despite the fact that on any number of those occasions not a single other living human being was in sight, I often felt that I was not alone, and that other people were moving about me on the ancient byways of the sleeping town.

Colonial Williamsburg—one point of the “Historic Triangle” that also includes Jamestown and Yorktown—is the historic district of the modern city of Williamsburg and includes many of the buildings that were part of the capital of the British colony of Virginia from 1699 to 1780 (although its first structures were built as early as 1632). Located on the high point of the Virginia Peninsula about halfway between the James and York Rivers, the town was prominent both geographically and as a center of politics, education, and culture. It was named in honor of King William III of Great Britain.

After the Revolutionary War began, the capital was moved to Richmond, fifty-five miles to the west, for security reasons and never returned to Williamsburg, which thereafter slipped into relative obscurity for several decades. It regained some prominence during the Civil War, when Union and Confederate forces fought for control over the strategic area it commanded. It returned to a somewhat sleepy and increasingly marginalized existence for the following half-century or so, however, and the historic district began slowly to decay.

Then, in the early 20th century, millionaire John D. Rockefeller Jr., his wife, Abby, and the Reverend Dr. W.A.R. Goodwin began to champion the restoration of Williamsburg as a way to educate people and honor the patriots who participated in the struggle for American independence. Spurred by their efforts, renovation of the district began in 1926 and continued initially into the 1930s—and since then into the present—during which time existing buildings were restored as closely as possible to how they were thought to have looked during the 18th century. Many vanished Colonial-era structures were also reconstructed on their original sites. All signs of later improvements and buildings were removed.

Today, the historic area is run as a living history center that interprets life in Colonial America through dozens of authentic or accurately recreated buildings and exhibits. Most of the roughly five hundred buildings in the historic district are open to visitors—with the exception of several that serve as residences for Colonial Williamsburg personnel—and some eighty-eight of them are original.

In the nearly two decades I have lived in Virginia, I have visited Colonial Williamsburg at least seven times for a variety of reasons, including family vacations, research for my Living History magazine, and for an annual conference that I used to attend on behalf of yet another magazine. Other than a distinct feeling that this oldest city of Virginia intersects with the unseen world, I never saw anything that I would take as credible evidence for the presence of ghosts. Innumerable other people have, however, and it would be completely accurate to say that the population of ghosts purported to haunt the district far exceeds the number of living people who now dwell within it (most of whom are now researchers and historical interpreters affiliated with the Colonial Williamsburg Foundation that was initially endowed by Rockefeller).

My wife, brother, and I all spent a weekend at Williamsburg in the 1990s and stayed at a historic property called the Chiswell-Bucktrout House, one of the historic properties associated with the Williamsburg Inn (which had once served as accommodations for British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher during a visit to her government’s former colonial capital).

This two-story, nine-room house does, in fact, have a violent past, and its owner, mercurial military officer Colonel John Chiswell, was accused of murder in 1766. Freed on bail pending his trial, he was himself discovered dead before the court could determine his guilt or innocence. A number of ghost stories have been associated with this house over the years, and with the detached kitchen (now also used as lodgings), including tales of sleeping people being awakened by ghosts touching or talking to them. I recall sleeping rather heavily the weekend I spent there, however, during which I discovered the delights of fortified wine, a Colonial-era favorite.

Just a few blocks northeast of the Chiswell-Bucktrout House, at the east end of Duke of Gloucester Street, is the old capitol—the first such building in America—a large structure that has been carefully recreated and landscaped as closely as possible to its original 18th century appearance with the help of period descriptions and illustrations. George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, and Patrick Henry were among the famous members of the House of Burgesses who met there in its day. Fire destroyed it in 1747, after which it was rebuilt, falling into disrepair and eventually being abandoned after the state capital was moved to Richmond, and the building now standing on the site is a 1930s recreation of the 1705 building.

A number of ghost stories have been associated with this site, but while it is possible that some or even many of them are true, they generally seem more fanciful and have a less credible ring to me than many.

“Some Williamsburg inhabitants go so far as to say that on the stroke of midnight on every Fourth of July there is an assemblage of Revolutionary ghosts, with Patrick Henry at their head, who stand in front of the capitol and use the most reprehensible language,” wrote William Oliver Stevens in his 1938 book Old Williamsburg, which sounds less like a ghost story than like someone complaining about a long-forgotten issue of the day they were upset about.

Just to the north of the capitol at the east end of Duke of Gloucester Street is the Public Records Office, a fire-resistant brick building constructed in 1748 after many documents were destroyed in the blaze at the Capitol the previous year. It eventually ended up serving many other purposes over the years, and by the turn of the 20th century was home to David Roland Jones, his wife, and their seven daughters. One of them, a myopic young woman named Edna, is said to have snuck out of the house one night for an assignation with a young man. While en route to her tryst, the weak-eyed girl, possibly distracted by ardor for her lover or fear of her father, stepped out in front of a speeding carriage—a common hazard upon the darkened streets of Colonial cities, no doubt—and was killed. Since then, witnesses have reported seeing her ghost peeking from around corners of the building; floating over the graves of the nearby family plot; or calling out to women, who look to her spectral but still-deficient eyes, to be her friends.

Moving westward along Duke of Gloucester Street a little ways will bring a visitor to the Raleigh Tavern, a venerable institution first established in 1717, razed by fire in 1859, and subsequently rebuilt in its original form in 1932. Named for Walter Raleigh, its rich history involves serving as a meeting place for Revolutionary agitators and being the location for the 1776 founding of the Phi Beta Kappa fraternity. While ale flowed, dice rolled, and high ideas were discussed inside the tavern, slaves and other commodities were sold outside on its steps.

Some of the oldest ghost stories for any site in Colonial Williamsburg are about this location and have been documented as far back as 1856, three years before the destruction of the original building. These stories are all fairly uniform and typically involve passersby who detect signs of revelry within the building, including music, singing, clinking of glasses, and the smell of tobacco smoke.

Continuing west to the north end of Duke of Gloucester Street, then north a little ways along the Palace Green brings a visitor to the Wythe House, one of the sites in Colonial Williamsburg with the greatest reputation for being haunted. Considered by many to be the most attractive house in the city, the two-story brick manor dates to the 1750s and was owned by George Wythe, a leader of the Revolutionary movement in Virginia, a delegate to the Continental Congress, and the state’s first signer of the Declaration of Independence. It also served as George Washington’s headquarters prior to the British siege of Yorktown; French General Rochambeau used it as his headquarters after victory at Yorktown; and Thomas Jefferson lived there in 1776 while a delegate to the Virginia General Assembly.

The ghost mentioned most often in the traditional cycle of tales about the Wythe House is that of Lady Ann Skipwith, a temperamental young woman who is said to have fled a ball at a nearby house in a tiff, losing a shoe before ending up at Wythe House, and somehow dying mysteriously there (although some authors contest this latter detail and claim she died later and somewhere else). Her ghost, seen stylishly clad in a cream satin dress or heard clomping along on her single shoe, has been reported many times over the years. Other ghosts reported by various witnesses and authorities include Wythe himself, apparently poisoned in Richmond by an avaricious nephew, and George Washington (although the latter are more likely to be of some other poor devil in powdered wig and frock coat, unimaginative witnesses or storytellers generally preferring to simply see the ubiquitous Washington than to ascertain the identities of more obscure or less interesting individuals). A number of other ghosts have been cited in the works of various authors and psychic researchers.

Walking across the Palace Green and westward again, this time on Nicholson Street, will quickly bring a visitor to the Peyton Randolph House, originally built in 1715 and restored between 1938 and 1940. It is widely considered to be one of the most beautiful homes in the city and notable guests from the Revolutionary War era included Washington, Lafayette, and Rochambeau. Its owner at that time was Betty Randolph, widow of Peyton Randolph. After she died in 1782, the house was sold at auction.

Apparently, so were many of her slaves, including one named Eve. Betty is reputed to have treated this woman especially badly, and to have had her sold off as a deliberately cruel means of separating her from her family. As she was be carried off into bondage elsewhere, some stories say, the embittered Eve called down a curse upon the house and its inhabitants. A number of people are said to have killed themselves or died suddenly in the house over the ensuing decades, and some believe that Eve’s curse might be responsible. Others—including Lafayette himself, who stayed in the house during an 1824 return visit to America—have reported feeling ghostly hands upon their shoulders, being shaken awake while asleep in bed, and hearing a constant muttering of ghostly voices.

Those are just some of the Colonial Williamsburg buildings reputed to be haunted in some way, and it would be an understatement to say that entire books could be written about the subject of locations inhabited by ghosts within the historic district.

It would not necessarily be accurate to assume, of course, that all the ghostly activity at Colonial Williamsburg has its roots in the 18th century or even the Civil War. Many generations of people have lived in the town during periods that, while they may have been less exciting from a historical perspective, were just as relevant to their participants. So, while the vision for the creators and custodians of Colonial Williamsburg is that it should reflect America’s Revolutionary War history, it is a bit much to ask spirits to either manifest themselves or remain quiet based on the eras in which they lived. It bears mentioning, too, that not all local residents were pleased with the transformation of their town in the 1930s, and some of them protested it arduously. It is certainly easy to imagine such angst being carried into the afterlife, and the ghost bearing it becoming progressively agitated at being identified not just as someone else but, indeed, as an inhabitant of an era other than his own—and on the basis of aesthetics no less.