American Village Visit

On our first day in Birmingham, we drove into Montevallo to visit the American Village. American Village is a reproduciton of Colonial America with a chapel, colonial houses, George Washington's Virginia estate, a courthouse, and a tavern. Professional actors play the parts of key historical figures and do an amazing job. Each actor has studied colonial history and their character extensively, allowing them to answer even obscure questions correctly without ever breaking character.

To begin our day, we visited Constitution Hall where Thomas Jefferson was addressing the Constitutional Congress abouth the need for a Declaration of our Independence from King George of England.

After hearing about the need for more volunteers for the regular Army, we proceeded to an encampment of the Rhode Island regular Army and, after passing a physical (2 good legs? 2 good arms? 2 good teeth?) were asked to enlist to fight the British. Duane, Kaitlyn and I enlisted along with several other visitors.

We were schooled in how to load, fire, and shoulder a musket, fix a bayonet, and march in a line. We also got to witness the prepping and firing of a cannon.

After our enlistment and training, we took a break in the dining room of George Washington's Virginia estate. Here we met his daughter in law who had come to keep her mother in law company while the men were away fighting the British. She taught us about the importance of dance in social and political situations and the girls and I got to learn a minuette and perform it. Kaiti and Sam were quite enamored with our instructor's dress and accent! After dancing lessons, we visited the tavern where we learned three gambling games which we played quite successfully. Sam, we discovered, is quite adept at 9 pins! After our little foray into gambling, we headed back to the Virginia estate to meet George Washington himself. He told us all about the statue crafted in his honor as well as the politics of the war and our emerging nation. He even discussed with Duane the tactics and politics surrounding Roger's Rangers, some of the first United States Army Rangers! Following our visit with George, we paid a visit to the courtroom and learned of colonial legal proceedings from a magistrate. He even described in detail some of the punishments! We ended our visit with a viewing of the colonial chapel, the Oval Office, and, of course, the gift shop. We highly recommend American Village if you ever have the chance to visit Alabama! It was incredible and the girls had a blast.