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Neck event will turn back hands of time
Heathsville event to re-create colonial marketplace and tavern
Date published: 9/18/2008
BY FRANK DELANO The bounty of Northern Neck gardens and history will be on display Saturday at Heathsville, the courthouse village of Northumberland County. A restored 18th-century hotel and tavern sits behind the old courthouse on U.S. 360. On Saturday, the grounds of Rice's Hotel/Hughlett Tavern will be the busy site of a farmers market. "We try to re-create the idea of the original tavern when people came to use the area as a market," said Jay Walker, a member of the foundation that manages the complex. Walker said about 35 vendors of produce, ornamental plants and crafts will sell their wares from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. A blacksmith's shop will be in operation and carriages will be on display. Food and drink will be available at the Transportation Museum on the tavern grounds as well as in the tavern's restaurant and pub, he said. Historians date the tavern to 1795 and possibly earlier. It may have been there in 1791, when Councillor Robert Carter III rode the 20 miles to the courthouse from Nomini Hall, his plantation in Westmoreland County. Carter, one of the wealthiest men in Virginia, carried with him an unusual deed to file with the Northumberland court. The deed granted eventual freedom to his hundreds of slaves. It was the largest private act of emancipation in American history. Probably the most famous document in the county court records, Carter's Deed of Manumission, also will be on display at an 11 a.m. commemoration in the Circuit Courtroom of the new courts building behind the tavern grounds. Sponsored by the Historical Society of the Northern Neck of Virginia, the commemoration will feature a gospel choir and Westmoreland storyteller Daisy Howard-Douglas. Washington lawyer Thomas Duckenfield will also describe his finding of two of his ancestors among slaves freed by Carter. Heathsville is about 73 miles southeast of Fredericksburg via U.S. 17 and 360. Frank Delano: 804/333-3834
Date published: 9/18/2008
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