History and mystery

This morning at breakfast, we learned a great deal about the history of Bingham School (the B&B is on its former campus and uses some of the original buildings). We even got to see the walls of a log cabin built in 1790 (previously exterior, the walls now form part of the interior kitchen walls). After breakfast, I took a walk around the grounds and enjoyed looking at the old brick walkways, a silo, a barn, an old well, and the milk house (which is now a suite). Even though the part of the B&B our room is in is more modern (it had to be rebuilt after a fire), the owners have maintained the historical design, with wood plank walls and simple furnishings. Outside the door to our room is a very-old-looking-but still-sturdy wooden bench, on which we sat and enjoyed the mild day (the high was approximately 70 degrees today, a welcome warmup after the cold of last week). I am not sure whether this is true or not, but John and I imagined that the bench had been here in the early 1800s when this was a preparatory school for young men planning to attend the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (the first public university to begin instruction in America, in 1795).

This afternoon, I went to the NC Museum of History to see the exhibit "Mysteries of the Lost Colony". It was fascinating and very well presented. Some of the most interesting things I saw were a coin from 1585, a 2800 year old canoe, the collection of watercolor paintings done by John White during his time with the colony on Roanoke island, a picture of Senator Marc Basnight at about age 8, and several of the remaining few surviving costumes from the Lost Colony musical which is presented each summer at the Waterside Theater in Manteo, near the spot where the colonists lived over 420 years ago. (The other costumes were destroyed in a fire in September. See this blog.) The exhibit didn't solve the mystery of course, but it did present some interesting evidence and encouraged the visitor to draw his or her own conclusions. If you are going to be in Raleigh in the next few days (the exhibit runs until January 13), and you are at all interested in America's first unsolved mystery, I would recommend a visit to the museum to see this display. You will definitely learn something, and how often do you get a chance to look at watercolors which are more than 400 years old?

The picture of the Inn at Bingham School which is in our room:


The old bench:

...still sturdy enough for our weight!