Word: williamsburg
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Thus the last act began. Virginia, the continent's most populous colony, precipitated it. The 112 members of its convention in Williamsburg voted unanimously on May 15 "that the delegates appointed to represent this colony in General Congress be instructed to propose to that respectable body to declare the United Colonies free and independent states ..." With that, Virginia set about establishing an independent state government and adopting a bill of rights...
When he was 17, Jefferson entered college at William and Mary in Williamsburg, capital of the colony. his principal teacher, a Scot named William Small, imparted to the youth his own searching cast of mind as well as a thorough grounding in natural philosophy and mathematics. The invaluable Small also introduced his student to two other figures whose influence still marks him: Francis Fauquier, a humane, generous, formidably literate man who was then Virginia's acting Royal Governor, and George Wythe, a Williamsburg lawyer and an expert classicist. The four often dined together at the Governor's Palace and enjoyed...
After college, Jefferson began the study of law with Wythe, moving frequently, as he acquired his own practice, between Williamsburg and his family's estate at Shadwell, 90 miles to the northwest. At 21 he came into his inheritance, and in 1769 he began work on his own estate, four miles from Shadwell, which is still uncompleted and which he calls Monticello, the Italian for "little mountain." (Its elevation is only 500 feet, but it provides a view of 20 miles to the Blue Ridge Mountains...
...most important of the new constitutions is that of Virginia, approved just last month. The proud Virginians had no thought of asking Congress for any advice. Indeed, they considered the work being undertaken in Williamsburg at least as important as that in Philadelphia. Said Thomas Jefferson: "Should a bad government be instituted for us, it had been as well to have accepted the bad one offered us from beyond the water without the risk and expense of contest...
...Bridge. He liked to call New York City his "wife." The city keeps recurring in the exhibition; it is its only clear image and might have been the subject of a coherent but less compendious effort. Raphael Soyer has a wonderfully weighty picture of the massive foundations of the Williamsburg Bridge with little red Surprise Laundry wagons lined up at the curb ready to make deliveries. In the '30s George Grosz did a series of watercolors: a childlike view of the harbor and a lurid skyline. Piet Mondrian, who spent the last four years of his life in Manhattan...