Virginia Road Trip - Part Two

August 26, 2014 – Virginia Road Trip – Part Two

Note:  This is the second post about our recent Virginia road trip.  Before you read this one, please make sure you read the post from a couple of days ago, Virginia Road Trip – Part One. 

The second day of our trip was devoted to another Staunton attraction, the Frontier Culture Museum, a living history museum.  The museum consists of several farming settlements that allow visitors to understand life in the Valley of Virginia (the original English name for the Shenandoah Valley) for the Native American population and for the primary European and African groups that came to this area in the 17^th through 19^th centuries. 

As a history major and history teacher, I was looking forward to this visit with great anticipation, but I wasn’t sure how Elliott and Marshall would react.  I shouldn’t have worried. We all found it fascinating and could easily have spent a full day on the premises, especially since we were able to use a golf cart to travel from one exhibit to the next.  At each site, costumed interpreters answered all of our questions and provided a wealth of information.

First of all, several rebuilt or reconstructed farming settlements showed us how people from West Africa, Germany, England and Ireland lived in their home countries before arriving in America.  At the West African farming compound from the 1700s we learned that the Igbo of Nigeria measured wealth in yams.  These yams, however, did not resemble our Thanksgiving sweet potatoes.  They were massive specimens whose very starchy white flesh formed the basis of the Igbo diet.  

Elliott and Marshall in the Igbo compound

Yams growing just outside the walls of the compound

  

Next, we visited a series of European farms that represented the Old World lives of immigrants who came to the Valley in the 17^th and 18^th centuries.  We started with an English yeoman’s farmhouse dating back to 1641.  The structure was brought over from Worcestershire.  A pair of goats was merrily nibbling on the rosy pink façade.  We admired the simple furniture and everyday objects in the two-story house.  Also, we learned that a yeoman was one step below the gentry and would be comparable to today’s upper-middle-class.  

17th century English farmhouse

 

Goats nibbling on the farmhouse

Freshly made cheese in the English farmhouse

 Inside the 1700s Irish farmhouse from the Ulster area (where many Protestant Scotch-Irish lived), we observed the farmer at his loom, weaving linen cloth.  When we remarked on the very high ceiling, he informed us that all Irish farmhouses were built this way because the peat the Irish burned for fuel created so much smoke.  At the nearby forge, we took a quick look at the blacksmith working over the blazing fire.  It was too hot to linger. 

Interior of 18th century Irish farmhouse

Weaving linen in the Irish farmhouse

Working at the forge

 The German farmhouse, also from the 1700s, was immediately recognizable.  It looked as if it had been plucked straight from the Rhine River area of Germany or France.  The German farm wife, who was working at her spinning wheel, pointed out the raised hearth at the fireplace.  It seems like a very smart idea (much easier on your back when you’re cooking) but apparently the Germans were the only group of immigrants who built their hearths in this fashion. 

18th century German farmhouse

At work spinning

The raised hearth

 Then it was on to America.  The Native American settlement was still under construction, but some very healthy-looking pumpkins were on the vines.  

Not-yet-completed Native American settlement from the 1700s

Pumpkins on the vine

There were three frontier farmhouses, but we only had time to visit one since Elliott was getting tired and we were all getting hungry.  We’ll have to return to see the small log cabin from 1740, and the farmhouse from 1840.  However, we went inside an 1820 farmhouse where a young woman was tending a fire (without a raised hearth).  The apple pie she’d just prepared smelled delicious, and the aroma reminded all of us that it was well past our usual lunchtime. 

Frontier farmhouse from the mid-1800s

If you go to the museum, be advised that there is no restaurant or cafeteria on the premises.  However, you can bring your own lunch, as picnic tables are set up in shady areas throughout the property.  Since hunger pangs were kicking in, we went back to Staunton’s historic district for a bite to eat at The Pampered Palette.  Cocoa Mill Chocolatier just happened to be in the same block, so we went inside to select a few tasty treats.

While Elliott went to lie down for his afternoon nap, I walked over to Trinity Episcopal Church, one of Staunton’s main tourist attractions.  I had been seeing posters for Staunton’s annual summer music festival, and it turned out that a small group of singers and instrumentalists was rehearsing in the church at the time.  The ethereal sounds of a Mozart motet created the perfect atmosphere for admiring the twelve Tiffany stained glass windows.  

A detail from one of the Tiffany windows

We wrapped up the second day with a marvelous dinner at Zynodoa, a farm-to-table restaurant near our hotel.  My friend Georgi, who retired from Annandale High School a year ago, joined us for dinner since she recently moved to a horse farm not far from Staunton.  A few of the dishes we shared were fried Rappahannock River oysters, lemon risotto with Chesapeake jumbo lump crab, picked vegetables, Bibb lettuce salad with peaches and candied pecans, rainbow trout, brined and roasted chicken, grits (my new favorite food) and cornbread scones.  By the way, the name of the restaurant is the Native American word from which the English “Shenandoah” is derived.

Even the drive home on the third day of our trip was an adventure.  Once again, I avoided highways and circuitously navigated us back through Shenandoah National Park and a string of little towns.  Our route brought us to Culpeper, where we stopped for lunch – another great meal, at It’s About Thyme.  I’m sure we’ll return to Culpeper, as we noticed a number of interesting looking shops and eateries.  In fact, we stopped at a cheese shop and picked up half a wheel of Humboldt Fog goat cheese before we resumed our drive back home. 

Elliott really enjoyed the trip, but he’s having nearly as much fun back here at home in Fairfax.  See what he’s accomplished in the last few days: