CWTI: This Old House

The Powell House is not on the regular tour at Colonial Williamsburg.  Mr. Powell was a building contractor, and he actually built the first mental health facility in the American colonies.  While in and around the Powell House, we had to consider the differences between the lives of the Powell family and the lives of the enslaved people working on the property.

We often think of the enslaved as working on large plantations, but here we were in a relatively small house - not a mansion - on a relatively small property - not a plantation.  Yet, there would have been a number of enslaved people owned by the family, and they would have worked in some very hot, very cold, very miserable conditions doing some very difficult jobs.

The Powell family, on the other hand, would have spent a lot of time entertaining.  After their meal, they would have cleared the room for some dancing.  Some of the teachers tried their hand at some 18th Century disco.

In other pictures here, you might notice a couple of irons for smoothing out clothing, one of which is heated in the fireplace and inserted into a cylindrical piece.  Delicates are then carefully drawn over the cylinder to iron out the wrinkles.

We also got to look at both mattresses on a bed, the upper of which was filled with feathers, and the lower filled with straw.

I, of course, took to looking at the details of the floors, the minimalist furnishings and considered the open windows as a very light breeze attempted to sweep through from east to west.  I had to appreciate the brickwork, looking for the literal fingerprints of enslave workers who must have thrown clay into molds to form them.