Markers of History

We didn’t quite get fin­ished with the Colonial Parkway this week, but with a busy week­end of choir singing ahead, it’s time for me to step away from the key­board now. On Monday, the last three Parkway mark­ers should appear on these pages and then the blog will spend the rest of the week on mark­ers from Historic Jamestowne.

Colonial Parkway mark­ers
Mill Dam

Location: Colonial National Historic Pkwy, Williamsburg, VA 23185

Visited: July 4, 2009, 1:15pm

Transcription of marker: The mound of earth in front of you was prob­a­bly part of the dam for William Parks’ paper mill. His mill was the first in Virginia for mak­ing paper and oper­ated six years or more begin­ning 1744. Parks estab­lished the first per­ma­nent press in Virginia at Williamsburg. His paper mill sup­plied other print­ers, too, includ­ing Benjamin Franklin in Philadelphia.

My impres­sions: This is kind of inter­est­ing. I mean, we’re not just talk­ing about a mound of earth, we’re talk­ing about links to his­tory and peo­ple and places we prob­a­bly already know. And has that “the first” thing, too. It cer­tainly makes me think about what sort of things would have been printed using the area’s trees.

Colonial Parkway mark­ers
Great Neck

Location: Colonial National Historic Pkwy, Williamsburg, VA 23185

Visited: July 4, 2009, 1:15pm

Transcription of marker: When Richard Brewster, gen­tle­man, patented some 500 acres in this area on February 6, 1637 it was described as “the great Neck alias the bar­ren neck.” Cleared land then, the for­est has since grown back.

My impres­sions: This is another dis­ap­point­ing marker. It seems to come down to “this area is dif­fer­ent than it was almost 375 years ago.” I have no clue who Richard Brewster was, other than that he at one time owned 500 acres that included where I was stand­ing; there wasn’t much else for me to learn from this marker.

I did spend a cou­ple of moments yes­ter­day morn­ing, find­ing out about this verb patented, because I know it from the rights that are given to inven­tors, but that obvi­ously wasn’t what we were talk­ing about from the con­text of this marker. I did find a Wikipedia arti­cle on land patents that started to illu­mi­nate me. The arti­cle defined them as “evi­dence of right, title, and/or inter­est to a tract of land, usu­ally granted by a cen­tral, fed­eral, or state gov­ern­ment to an indi­vid­ual or pri­vate com­pany.” The arti­cle also explained that in the orig­i­nal 13 American Colonies, pro­pri­etors would grant land patents.

I also found another inter­est­ing tid­bit in the arti­cle on patents, where I learned that:

Certain grants made by the monarch in pur­suance of the royal pre­rog­a­tive were some­times called let­ters patent, which was a gov­ern­ment notice to the pub­lic of a grant of an exclu­sive right to own­er­ship and possession.

So the land patent was basi­cally a doc­u­ment (from the monarch or gov­ern­ment or pro­pri­etor) that granted an exclu­sive right to own and pos­sess land.

One last diver­sion, this time into the world of ety­mol­ogy: Wikipedia also men­tions that the word patent comes from the Latin word patere (“to lay open”). It comes from the avail­abil­ity of patent doc­u­ments for pub­lic inspection.

Colonial Parkway mark­ers
The Palisades

Location: Colonial National Historic Pkwy, Williamsburg, VA 23185

Visited: July 4, 2009, 1:15pm

Transcription of marker: For pro­tec­tion against the Indians, the set­tlers built a log pal­isade across the nar­rows of the penin­sula between the York and James rivers. This was about 1633. Middle Plantation (later Williamsburg) began as a set­tle­ment along this pal­isade which had its south­ern anchor where Paper Mill and College creeks join a half mile downstream.

My impres­sions: This seems to me like a case of “we’re not in Kansas any­more,” or in this case not in Canada. At home, I’m fairly cer­tain that the word­ing would have been changed. There is almost no place where the Canadian gov­ern­ment uses the term Indians for the peo­ple whose ances­tors lived on this con­ti­nent before the Europeans arrived. (Ironically, about the only place it does is in the name of a gov­ern­ment depart­ment: Indian and Northern Affairs Canada.) So to my ears, it seems almost point­edly vague and incor­rect now. Since “the Indians” are not a mono­lithic group, which Indians does the marker refer to? And why per­sist in using a term that was applied by some­body who didn’t know where he was?

The gram­mar­ian in me wants to re-work a cou­ple of sen­tences. It seems odd to have half-capitalized proper nouns, because of the ref­er­ences to mul­ti­ple rivers and mul­ti­ple creeks. At the least, I would have cap­i­tal­ized Rivers and Creeks, but I would much pre­fer a re-worded sen­tence that doesn’t read awkwardly.

Colonial Parkway mark­ers
Great Oaks

Location: Colonial National Historic Pkwy, Williamsburg, VA 23185

Visited: July 4, 2009, 1:15pm

Transcription of marker: These oaks were sprout­ing acorns about 1750 and were grow­ing toward fair size dur­ing the time of Washington, Jefferson, Wythe and Marshall.

They are white oaks (Quercus alba) with a height near 90 feet and a spread together of some 150 feet.

My impres­sions: Back on the road after a stop in Williamsburg for lunch and con­tin­u­ing on our way toward Jamestown. This does seem like more of a link to the past than the mill pond (which was the last marker we saw before break­ing for lunch). I think it’s because trees grow with age and so the size of the trees adds to the link to the past, at least in my mind. That said, I was get­ting tired of stop­ping for these mark­ers (prob­a­bly because they con­tain so lit­tle his­tor­i­cal infor­ma­tion), and we grad­u­ally stopped at fewer and fewer pull-offs as we continued.