Back to Colonial House
August 14th, 2008. Filed under: Thursday's Travels.The reality TV series, Colonial House, takes us back to 1628. Last week, I had just begun watching this particular “house” series. The settlement toiled and struggled as they moved from the 21st century into the seventeenth. The group consisted of men, women, children and a couple dogs that traveled back in time. By the end of the series, these people were a community. Some still had difficulties in the change over from modern day way of thinking to that of colonial New England. Imagine losing all your freedom and individuality as a woman or a free person. Not all of the people who traveled to the new world to start life fresh were free men. Many were arriving as household servants or those who were indentured and would work for their freedom. That’s the price some paid to in order to afford to travel to their new settlement. These settlements were sponsored and expected to produce revenue for the businesses who did the sponsoring of the venture. Provisions, minimal live stock, basic household goods and the like were provided. From there on out, the settlers had to figure out how to provide for themselves and to send back goods to England. A man was sent over by the company to assist the struggling colony. This was another time of adjustment as this was essentially a notice by the company that they weren’t doing a good enough job of fulfilling their obligations. If a colony was not profitable, did not pull together as a community and were not going to have enough to survive the winter, the settlement was deemed a failure. I suppose these people were all carted off back to England to work out their debts over there. That information was not provided. Our small group managed to pass the final inspection, but with the condition that the company would appoint a different governor.
This group of people from various walks of life managed to pull together in spite of their differences. They did an incredible job of handling a life of hardship. Our ancestors had so much to overcome to start this nation of ours. Not everything they did was for the best. This was brought out when Native Americans entered the picture and the settlement. There was some difficulty on both sides as they struggled to overcome some of the negative aspects of our history.
As the series ended, these very different people did indeed become a community over the months of their lives in colonial America. There were some tears as they left to return back to their modern life. I couldn’t help by hear the words to a Teddy Pendergast song as I watched. “So sad the song that says goodbye.”
Go to PBS to meet the colonists and go behind the scenes.