Travel back in time…Colonial Williamsburg: A Revolutionary Adventure!

Tour of Conservation Lab (2:30 - 4 p.m.)
Colonial Williamsburg's DeWitt Wallace Collections and Conservation Building is one of the nation’s largest collections preservation complexes. The facility includes approximately 17,000 square feet of workspace for object analysis and treatment laboratories.

The Mission of Williamsburg / Williamsburg and the Revolution (4 - 5:30 p.m.)
 Perry Leavell and Barbara Oberg
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Reception (6 -7 p.m.)
Gather together with your fellow time travelers as we kick off the weekend activities and get to know one another.

Dinner with Thomas Jefferson* (7:15 - 9:30 p.m.)
Enjoy a conversation between Barbara Oberg,Professor of History and General Editor of the Thomas Jefferson Papers at Princeton University, and member of the Board of Trustees at Colonial Williamsburg, and Thomas Jefferson, scholar, governor of Virginia, writer of the Declaration of Independence, and considered one of the founding fathers. Read more...

Breakfast at Lodge (7:30 - 9 a.m.)

Tour of Palace (9:30 - 11:45 a.m.)
When Governor Francis Nicholson drew the plan of Williamsburg in 1699, he arranged its streets and spaces with attention to the relationships of purpose and power in the colony's new capital. Thus the city's main north-south axis commands twice the breadth of its central east-west thoroughfare and rolls imperiously 900 feet to the gates of the Governor's Palace. Read more..

Capitol Tour with "Patrick Henry"

Tour Charlton’s Coffee House -  Jim Horn, Vice President of Research
The first Colonial Williamsburg-led archaeology occurred on the coffeehouse lot in 1996, not long after the Cary Peyton Armistead house was relocated. It followed early archaeological research in the late-1980s, and more significant but still preliminary excavations undertaken by Virginia Commonwealth University in 1995. Colonial Williamsburg's archaeological research, pursued in consultation with the Armistead family, continued until 1998. After a ten-year respite, the site was again analyzed in the summer of 2008, to explore a number of unexamined areas before the Coffeehouse reconstruction began. Read more...

Lunch at the Dewitt Wallace-Abby Aldrich Rockefeller Museum (Noon - 1 p.m.)

Tour of the Dewitt Wallace Museum (1 - 3 p.m.)
Ron Hurst, Vice President for Conservation, Collections and Museums
Opened in 1985, this museum is home to an extensive collection of American and British antiques. See furniture, metals, ceramics, glass, paintings, prints, firearms,and textiles from the 17th, 18th, and 19th centuries. Read more...

Tour of the Abby Aldrich Rockefeller Museum
Ron Hurst, Vice President for Conservation, Collections and Museums
Colonial and contemporary artists and craftspeople work outside the mainstream of academic art to record aspects of everyday life, making novel and effective use of the materials at hand. Bold colors, simplified shapes, and imaginative surface patterns can be seen in the variety of paintings, carvings, toys, needlework they create. Read more...

Tour of Revolutionary City (3 - 5 p.m.)
Perry Leavell, Barbara Oberg and Jim Horn
You can have the American strategy for the 1781 siege of Yorktown explained to you in the middle of Williamsburg's Duke of Gloucester Street by General George Washington and the Marquis de Lafayette. It happens every other day, and you'll be pleased to know that Washington's strategic analysis is correct. Here's how he sees it: General Charles Lord Cornwallis, commander of British forces in Virginia, has his back to the York River at the end of a narrow peninsula, his escape by land or water is cut off, he is outnumbered by French and Continental troops, and he is going to get his booty kicked. The Americans and French will win the Revolutionary War. Huzzah! Or "hooray" in twenty-first-century terms. Read more...

Tavern Dinner (7 - 9 p.m.)
After Jane Vobe opened the King’s Arms Tavern in 1772, it became one of the town’s most genteel establishments. Present-day diners can savor traditional southern fare, sumptuous desserts, and after-dinner cordials in surroundings an 18th-century traveler would recognize. Read more...

Tavern Ghost Walk (9 - 10 p.m.)
Join in a chilling prowl through Colonial Williamsburg’s Historic Area on a Tavern Ghost Walk. Let your imagination wander as your guide depicts dramatic tales of the ghosts that are said to still haunt modern Colonial Williamsburg’s taverns and sites. The tour serves as a wonderful after-dessert treat to a delicious dinner at the taverns or simply a one-of-kind way to spend an evening. Read more...

OR

Revolutionary Solider Training (9 - 10 p.m.)
Enlist in the Continental Army. Soldiers of the Virginia Regiment take you back to the American War for Independence where you will experience the lot of the common soldier. Become a new recruit and see what it was like to be a soldier in the 18th century. Learn how soldiers lived, fought and, and survived an eight-year ordeal to become free and independent. As every good soldier, guests should be prepared for some physical activity as they experience how soldiers lived, fought and survived during the American Revolution. Read more...

 Breakfast / Closing Conversation (7:30 - 9 a.m.)