Days 31 & 32: Chickahominy County Park & Yorktown, VA

The weather and traffic for the ride to Chickahominy was awesome.  It was 70 degrees when I started riding and the winds were reasonably fair.  The roads were great - low traffic and very scenic.  The terrain was a bit more rolling than we have seen in quite a while, which was a very welcome change.

We managed to catch the free ferry across the James River just before it set off at 11 am.  From there, I was on the Capital Trail most of the way to our campground - smooth and easy pedaling the whole time.

We camped at Chickahominy County Park ($41.19 with taxes [less for County residents], with power and water).  While it is a large campground, there are only a handful of sites occupied, and only about half of it is open at this time.

After setting camp we made a brief visit to Jamestowne.  The last time I was there was about 50 years ago.  Only recently has it been proven that the site truly is the actual site of Jamestowne.  Accounts from nearly 200 years ago claimed that the fort was under water in the James River, and no detailed map of the area or the actual fort had survived to present times.  The only clues were Jamestowne Council records, which gave some description of how various buildings were oriented to one another.  An ongoing archaeological dig is proving that the original fort was built in the vicinity of the surviving 17th Century brick church (shown in the photo below).

We awoke to rain on our second day here, so we were relieved that we didn't have to ride in it.  Instead we went out for breakfast at the Five Forks Cafe before heading to the Yorktown Battlefield.  I had my first serving of Dutch scrapple.

Three of my direct ancestors were in attendance at the Siege of Yorktown when Lord Cornwallis capitulated, marking the last major engagement of the Revolutionary War.  Those three ancestors are all on my father's side of the family tree:  John Malone, Senior; John Hunter, Junior and Benjamin Rodden.  I suspect there may be more of my ancestors who were there, but thus far available records are insufficient to prove that.  These three men (or their descendants) had applied for pensions based upon their Revolutionary War service, providing a wealth of detail about their lives and service.  Transcriptions of some of these documents can be found at revwarapps.org.  More detailed descriptions of the service of these first two men can be found in the main volume of my Malone book.

Cannons used by the English, Americans and French at the Siege of Yorktown.

It was cold and rainy while we listened to a park ranger give an hour and a half synopsis of the events that led up to the Siege of Yorktown and the sequence of events that transpired to force Cornwallis to capitulate.  Despite our being uncomfortably cold (especially Lana, who was quite well behaved), it was well worth catching it all and imagining three of my ancestors lined up in the long row of fellow patriots as the British soldiers marched out and laid down their arms.

Recreated defensive measures on Redoubt #9. 

At the start of the Revolutionary War, when the British first marched into battle against the revolutionaries they are said to have sung "Yankee Doodle Dandy," which at that time was considered an insulting song that equated American colonists to backwoods yokels.  Yet, with the help of the French Army and Navy, they had just defeated the best trained and equipped infantry soldiers of their day.  I can imagine my ancestor's pride as they sang that same song for the British as they were marched past them that day on their way to lay down their arms.