With the last of my Christmas crafting wrapped up (see what I did there?) and a few solid naps in, I turned my brain back towards writing. Things came together better than planned and suddenly I find myself on the cusp of moving my cast to the final location in this book: Williamsburg, VA circa sometime after 1765 but not yet winter of 1775.
I did the bulk of my Williamsburg research during a trip to the city right after I graduated from EKU back in 2023, occasionally throwing new information down on 3×5 cards and tucking it away in my folder.
This week I pulled everything out and did a browse through to see what holes I need to fill now that I have a rough plot outline. The good news is I have a solid cast of characters well researched for me. The neutral news is that after working in the northern colonies for so long, I have a lot of social research to do before I can capture the much more liberal setting.
That said, here is some information on Colonial Williamsburg!
Williamsburg was settled just up the river from Jamestown after colonizers had such a bad time with the brackish water/swampy diseases/cannibalism that they decided to try again. By 1699 Williamsburg was the capitol of Virginia and a few times a year the town swelled with people as the representatives (Burgesses) from each area showed up to decide on the laws and such. The Governor of the colony lived in a swanky palace and presided as a representative of the British monarch.
After a rough start, Virginia colony became a series of towns with large plantations and small farms that benefited from the soil that worked well with tobacco, and later other cash crops. Large scale agriculture was make possible by chattel slavery and indentured servanthood.
While enslaved people were kidnapped and brought to the colonies largely from Africa, indentured servants came largely from other British held lands. Virginia became a penal colony for England. Not only could she rid herself of the undesirable poor, but she could provide her wealthy colonists with more land and labor to produce all sorts of goodies for the folks back home.
By the mid 1700’s, Williamsburg was a bustling town with taverns, theaters, shops, and sturdy fortifications. Farmers brought their wares to town for markets and fairs. The elite of Virginia converged on the town and celebrations were next level. Dancing, music, live theater, and red light districts made for a grand time. If you were white.
Williamsburg did found the second public hospital in the colonies (after Philadelphia) in 1773. Women were allowed more freedom in Virginia, being allowed to own property to some extent. Religion was prevalent, but it was hardly a theocracy like puritan colonies of the north. The Virginians didn’t like to be told what to do.
So there is a broad overview of Williamsburg before the lead up to the Revolution. Ben Franklin’s World is a fantastic podcast put out by the Omohundro Institute of William and Mary College; I recommend it for a jumping off point if you’d like to do more research on this topic. The college archives are amazing as well and well worth the in person research trip.
As for books, I have several that I am referencing for different purposes—see pictures below—some which I found at Williamsburg, and others that I have picked up here and there.
One of the big reasons for setting a story in this town is that today, it is a giant living history museum with an enormous research budget, and a digitized archives that rivals just about any I’ve played around in.
So this won’t be the last time I am Hyperfocusing on Williamsburg, but in the future the topic is likely to be narrowed a bit. I should be wrapping up Philadelphia this week (I have a couple or three more chapters to write) then cleaning up my workspace and breaking down my potential character list into a character web, mapping a few locations, and jumping back into the page, but we’ll see how it goes and what my brain gets stuck on in the coming days.
See ya next week, and happy nerding!
Mamasquatch the Writer 
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