If you search my blog you’ll find that one of my most favorite places on earth is Williamsburg, VA. I could easily spend a month in the Historic Area and never become bored. It’s my happy place ¹.

I’ve seen the place change over the years, which has been fun, and one of the most interesting is a bridge which leads over toward the Historic Area. On the bridge deck are embedded plaques, giving people perspective on how different the world of the Revolution was from the 21st Century. One of the ones which fascinates me most is the plaque for the 1790’s, pictured below.

An interesting example of this plaque’s point is seen back in 1775. On April 20, 1775 Governor Dunmore removed the power from the Williamsburg Magazine. For several days colonists negotiated with the Governor, and there was some civil unrest, but people generally felt that things could be put right. The only problem with this assumption was that the Revolution had already begun on April 19 with the Battles of Lexington and Concord. Virginia didn’t receive the news of the battles until a week later, which stoked the colony’s anger. Governor Dunmore himself didn’t flee the capital until May 2.

In a world where everything shows up on the Internet in near real-time, it’s easy for forget how much these tools have changed us.