In May 1774, Governor John Murray, the earl of Dunmore, informed the members of the House of Burgesses that he had dissolved their body. Dozens of Burgesses had crowded into the chamber of the colony’s Council, who sat in silent assent to Dunmore’s decision.
Or did they?
Was the Council present at that moment? In fact, we don’t know for sure. The documentary record is silent on this question.1
This was one of many dilemmas facing Colonial Williamsburg researchers and producers as they planned a January 2024 video shoot recreating two pivotal moments in the Williamsburg Capitol during the American Revolution: Governor Dunmore’s 1774 dissolution of the Burgesses, which sparked an escalation in colonial protests, and Virginia leaders’ decision to propose independence to the other colonies in 1776. In January 2024, with the 250th anniversaries approaching, dozens of costumed actors played these events out to generate video and photography for future projects.
So how do you recreate a revolution? It all starts with research.
Granular Details
When we talk about the American Revolution at Colonial Williamsburg, we often focus on big ideas: freedom, slavery, economics—things like that. But for this project, researchers had to start small. “Historians love to argue about details, but our research was absolutely granular,” says Katie Schinabeck, a researcher for Colonial Williamsburg Innovation Studios, “We were asking questions like, ‘Where did the Sergeant-at-Arms stand?’ and ‘Was the ceremonial mace on the table when the delegates were in a committee of the whole?’”
Sometimes there was hard evidence. Sometimes there wasn’t. In 1774, for example, according to the House of Burgesses’ journal, the clerk of the Council delivered “A Message from the Governor” to the House of Burgesses requesting that they meet with Dunmore.2
But the precise choreography of the event was left unstated. Did the clerk wait to be acknowledged before delivering the message, or did he walk in unannounced? Did he deliver the message to the Burgesses’ clerk or to the Speaker himself? Did he stand there while they read the note, or did he walk away?
“We started with research rather than drama, because the story is dramatic enough, and our role is to fill in the details as accurately as we can.”
Katie Schinabeck, Digital Projects Researcher
These are not questions that historians usually worry about. But they matter when you’re trying to bring these scenes to life in the most historically accurate way possible. To gain insight into these questions, Colonial Williamsburg researchers explored the intimate choreography of Virginia politics through the diaries and letters of Burgesses like Landon Carter and Richard Henry Lee. Since the House of Burgesses modeled itself in many ways on Parliament, English procedures also offered a useful guide. “We started with research rather than drama,” says Schinabeck, “because the story is dramatic enough, and our role is to fill in the details as accurately as we can.”
New Interpretations
Robert Carter Nicholas was a widely respected lawyer in Virginia who had recently served as the colony’s Treasurer. When a convention of Virginia leaders debated whether to instruct the colony’s representatives at the Continental Congress to propose independence, Nicholas was the only one to speak against the measure. But despite his misgivings, Nicholas joined more than one hundred other delegates to unanimously endorse the resolution for independence.
This account is based on a letter written by eyewitness John Augustine Washington, which Schinabeck rediscovered while researching for this project.3 For years, though, historians had believed that Nicholas had abstained from the vote. They followed the lead of a nineteenth-century account about the event written by Edmund Randolph, which claimed that Randolph refused to assent to the resolution since he feared that the Americans would struggle to win “so arduous a contest.”4 The Washington letter is a more reliable account, since it was written just after the event.
“It’s so exciting to realize that we're continually making new discoveries that improve our understanding of the past and its relevance to our lives today.”
D. Cash Arehart, Manager of Historic Interpretation
Learning that Nicholas voted for independence was one small, but significant detail that has changed how Colonial Williamsburg interprets this moment. It also raises new questions. Why did he vote yes when he was so hesitant? Why did he drag out the debate? Did he want to force his fellow delegates to fully think through the decision beforehand? “It’s so exciting to realize that we're continually making new discoveries that improve our understanding of the past and its relevance to our lives today,” says D. Cash Arehart, the Manager of Historic Interpretation for the Capitol, “It's a real manifestation of our mission—that the future may learn from the past.”
Becoming Burgesses
As one of the landmark sites at Colonial Williamsburg, the Capitol is normally open to visitors every day. It was a “massive undertaking to close down this building for a day and take half the staff off the streets,” says Leslie Clark, Executive Producer for CW Innovation Studios. 46 actors participated in period-appropriate clothing and wigs. In the eighteenth century, full-time wig wearers would have shaved their heads. “We didn’t ask our esteemed colleagues to do that,” says Debra Turpin, Master Wigmaker. Instead, the Wigmakers styled each wig to cover up modern hairstyles. Using Williamsburg wigmaker and barber Edward Charlton’s account book, according to Turpin, “we knew exactly which wig or hairstyle each man wore in the 1770s.”
Regular visitors to Colonial Williamsburg may notice some familiar faces among the Burgesses. Nation Builders Ron Carnegie, Joe Ziarko, Mark Schneider, Kurt Smith, and Robert Weathers joined the shoot. At times, actors had to be swapped or disguised to avoid confusion, if the person they were portraying was present for one of the two events being recreated, but not the other.
The shoot succeeded thanks to collaborators across the Colonial Williamsburg Foundation. “We had so many colleagues,” says Clark, “who stepped in to help us make this shoot possible.” These included Historic Clothing and Dress, Historic Interiors Collections Care, and the Colonial Williamsburg curators. Additionally, the Vacation Channel provided support with filming and lighting.
Why it Matters
The January 2024 shoot was the first large-scale recreation of these events at the Williamsburg Capitol building since production of the 1957 film Williamsburg: The Story of a Patriot. Given the challenges involved, it might be another seventy years before it’s attempted again.
Colonial Williamsburg will use the images and video from this shoot to generate educational content that will help people better understand the story of the American Revolution. Since this material will likely be used for decades, it was important for every detail to reflect our best understanding of these events. We may not be able to recreate the past exactly, but by grounding our recreations in historical facts, we can help bridge the gap between past and present.
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Sources
- The Council met on May 26, the day Dunmore dissolved the Burgesses. But they may have concluded their business earlier in the day. There is nothing about the dissolution in their journal. Virginia Council, Executive journals of the Council of colonial Virginia (Richmond: Virginia State Library, 1918), 560–61.
- John Pendleton Kennedy, ed., Journals of the House of Burgesses of Virginia 1773-1776 including the records of the Committee of Correspondence (Richmond: E. Waddey Co., 1905), 132.
- John Augustine Washington to Richard Henry Lee, May 10, 1776, Papers of the Lee Family, University of Virginia Library.
- Edmund Randolph, ed. Arthur H. Shaffer, History of Virginia (Charlottesville: The University Press of Virginia, 1970), 250–51.