"Now He Belongs to the Ages"

The most historial day we spent in Washington, D.C. was the day we visited Ford's Theatre and other notable landmarks relating to Abraham Lincoln.  We started at Mary Surratt's Boarding House, where John Wilkes Booth was staying (and who is said to have conspired with Booth), which is located in what is now Chinatown.  If you weren't looking for it, you would walk right by it, as the building is now an Asian convenience store.

From there, we walked several blocks to Ford's Theatre.  We purchased tickets in advance but still waited an hour to go into the theater and learn a bit about how Booth planned the murder and was able to get access to the President.  I read Killing Lincoln last year, so felt like I was able to follow along with things really well.

The box Lincoln was seated in, decorated just as it was the evening he was shot.

After the program in the theater, we again waited in line to enter the Peterson House, which is the home across the street from the theater where Lincoln spent his final hours and died.

Mary Todd Lincoln passed some of the time here, while Lincoln was in the bed in the room next door.

Attached to the Peterson House is a three story museum about Lincoln's death - from the capture/death of Booth to the funeral train.

A tower (this photo doesn't do it justice) of books about Lincoln.

Yorktown

After leaving Colonial Williamsburg but before heading to Washington, D.C., we visited Yorktown.  I had some of the same feelings at Yorktown that I did at Jamestown - feeling overwhelmed at standing in the same spots, on the same battlefields, as George Washington and thousands of men who fought for our country.  It was pretty great.  There was a hard freeze that morning, so we were all quite chilly as we toured the battlefields - gorgeous today, but bloody some 235 years ago.

Actual piece of George Washington's field tent, which he used at Yorktown. 

Elizabeth was obsessed with the privy - and when she found this one on a replica ship, she squeezed right in.   

Lafayette's cannon, which bears the scars of British small cannon fire (below). 

There was a cemetery in the middle of the battlefields for soldiers that died, in battle there, during the Civil War.  Many of them looked like this.  I won't lie - it was very emotional to think of the thousands of mothers that mourned their sons, having no idea of the location of their final resting place.  In 1866, the cemetery was designated as a national cemetery and Union dead from over 50 different field sites within a 50 mile radius were re-interred here.  There is now a total of 2183 burial sites; only 747 were ever identified.

Cannons and other types of firepower were everywhere - and original.  That blew my mind. 

Part of Redoubt 9. 

The Moore House, sight of the signing of surrender papers. 

At Surrender Field, the spoils of victory of victory - 11 British cannons - are on display.  

The village of Yorktown. 

Yorktown Victory Monument - stands 100 feet tall and took 100 years to build. 

Jamestown

It was pouring rain the morning we visited Jamestown, but we still were able to make the most of this historic place.  Jamestown is the site of the first British colony.  I have to say, it was pretty crazy to look out at the waters of the James River and think that John Smith and Pocahontas did the same thing at the same place, hundreds of years ago.

Our day started with a bald eagle sighting just as we arrived at the national park.  As you can see in the photos below, he had just caught a fish and was trying to eat it.  The photos are dark because it was pouring at the time.

Actual pottery recovered at the site. 

The church. 

Pocahontas statue. 

Part of the church burned during a revolt in the 1700's.  You can still see the marks on the brick. 

Site of the first landing. 

James Smith statue. 

"Firing" the cannon. 

Statue remembering the Virginia Company. 

Jamestowne ruins. 

Burned out mansion.  This home was built in the early 1700's and burned during the Revolutionary War, the War of 1812 and the Civil War.  After the Civil War, the family decided not to rebuild. 

On the shore of the James River.