The Colonial Williamsburg Foundation Earned Media Coverage

January 30, 2014

“2014 Best Hotels in the USA Winners”

By: Allison Michaels

1/28/2014

Choosing the right hotel for your next stateside getaway is no easy feat: A property's quality can be difficult to measure until you're standing at check-in with luggage in tow. That's where U.S. News & World Report's annual Best Hotels in the USA rankings come in. In recent years, high-end hotels have been upping their game and making strides in defining new standards of luxury. This year's rankings reflect increased competition and an ever-improving guest experience.

U.S. News' travel editors analyzed a wide assortment of travel resources — including guidebooks, travel websites, guest reviews and expert ratings — to compile a comprehensive list of the best places to rest your head in the United States. Our editors used an unbiased methodology to evaluate nearly 1,700 luxury hotels across the country. From Hawaii's most paradisiacal escapes to the towering high-rise hotels of Chicago, this collection of properties showcases the diversity of lodging options across America.

The 10 top hotels in the USA for 2014 stand out among a varied landscape of great American properties. High-end amenities, excellent customer service and gourmet restaurants contribute to the distinguished reputations of each of these hotels.

111. Williamsburg Inn – Williamsburg, Va.

http://travel.usnews.com/features/2014-Best-Hotels-in-the-USA-Winners/

January 2014 | MeetingsFocus.coM

The DesTinaTion experTs

Meet Me in 2034

Experts prognosticate on the meetings of tomorrow

Budget tips Dollars and Sensedrive-to Meetings All Over the Map

resort Meetings Business, Meet Pleasure

The destination sections selected by you!

digital edition exclusives:

31 Bella sky comwell copenhagen: lofty lure

31 carlsberg: Brewing up History in copenhagen

s28 country Music Hall of Fame and Museum: striking a new chord in nashville

s30 Hatch show print: tennessee treasure

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Long a leisure draw, Colonial Williamsburg provides a meeting experience that blends past with present, all in a living history museum where groups can enjoy modern amenities in a self-con-

tained setting.And when meeting here, the money groups

spend goes directly into preserving history and also to schools across the country.

“I look at us as probably one of the most unique hotel companies in the U.S. because we’re owned by a foundation and it’s not-for-profit,” says Thomas Spong, director of sales at Colonial Williamsburg Hotels. “And revenues go into keeping Colonial Williamsburg alive.”

Groups have a variety of hotel choices.The high-end Williamsburg Inn, which

is where President Reagan and Queen Elizabeth rested their heads during their respective visits, features 5,000 square feet of meeting space and 62 guest rooms.

The 323-room Williamsburg Lodge pro-vides 5,000 square feet of meeting space and a connected conference center with 45,000 square feet of space and 28 meeting rooms.

The more-moderately priced, 300-room Williamsburg Woodlands boasts a standalone conference center with 13,000 square feet of space, and is a good fit with middle manage-ment or government meetings for up to 250.

In all, the destination offers four hotels and 1,040 guest rooms, along with 77 colo-nial houses and taverns.

Spong says most groups theme one night and perhaps do an outdoor function, ending with a fife and drums corps leading attend-ees to one of the historic taverns for dinner.

“Almost every group does one tavern din-ner and a final night banquet, but a lot want to go out and have a dinner,” he says, noting that the destination’s award-winning banquet team has been dedicating a lot of effort to farm-to-table cuisine.

Other activity options include buses to the nearby colonial draws of Jamestown and Yorktown, as well as Busch Gardens and Water Country USA. mf

Norfolk

Richmond

Williamsburg

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Colonial Williamsburg Hotels, Williamsburg lodge, Williamsburg inn800.822.9127www.colonialwilliamsburg.com/plan/groups/meetings-and-conferences

MeetingsFocus.coM s5

by tyler davidson

Close•Up:Williamsburg, Va

Colonial gone contemporary

Art Museums of Colonial Williamsburgwww.colonialwilliamsburg.com/do/art-museumsAccommodating up to 120 for a dinner and 200 for a reception, the DeWitt Wallace Decorative Arts Museum and Abby Aldrich Rocke-feller Folk Art Museum showcase colonial-era art.

College of William & Mary Mason School of Businesswww.mason.wm.eduLocated about two miles from Colonial Williamsburg, this historic college’s school of business can host groups of up to 200 in a ballroom or courtyard, which can be tented.

Gardenswww.colonialwilliamsburg.comAmong outdoor reception venues that can host up to 600 for open or tented functions, the Oval

Garden and Fountain Garden are two of the most popular settings.

Tavernswww.colonialwilliamsburg.com/do/restaurants/historic-dining-tavernsGroups can dine 18th century-style in four period taverns: Chowning’s; Christi-ana Campbell’s; King’s Arm; and Shields.

Williamsburg Winerywww.williamsburgwinery.comThis 300-acre winery less than three miles from the center of Wil-liamsburg can host up to 300.

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Getting there:Williamsburg is located midway between Richmond and Norfolk, a little more than 50 miles from each on Interstate 64. Washington, D.C., is approximately 150 miles north.

Major airports:Newport News/Williamsburg International Airport (PHF) is 20 minutes away; Norfolk International Airport (ORF) is 45 minutes away; and Rich-mond International Airport (RIC) is 45 minutes away.

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“Hampton hangs two members of Blackbeard's crew 295 years ago”

By: Mark St. John Erickson

1/27/2014

Blackbeard's braided hair and beard, which he is said to have embellished with smoking fuses, are

prominently represented in period portraits of the notorious pirate, as is his trademark bandolier filled with loaded pistols. This image appeared nearly 20 years after his death in 1718. (From A General History

of the Robberies and Murders of the most notorious Pyrates" / January 27, 2014)

HAMPTON—When a Royal Navy expedition led by Lt. Robert Maynard returned to Hampton from North Carolina on Jan. 3, 1719, the grisly sight of Blackbeard's severed head swinging from a bowsprit marked the end of one of history's most notorious pirates.

Cannons roared and townspeople cheered when they saw this horrific trophy -- and the indisputable proof of the famous brigand's demise -- sailing up the river toward the King Street docks.

http://www.dailypress.com/features/history/our-story/dp-hampton-hangs-two-members-of-blackbeards-crew-295-years-ago-20140127,0,16260.post

Some members of Blackbeard's captured crew were imprisoned in Williamsburg's Public Gaol, the

original part of which was completed in 1704 and which still stands after a restoration in 1936. (Courtesy of Colonial Williamsburg / August 19, 2004)

But for nine of the crewmen who fought alongside him — plus six other accomplices seized with his loot in Bath, N.C. — the sounds of the port city's celebration merely signaled the opening of a new and — for some, at least — ultimately fatal chapter.

According to the log of HMS Pearl — whose sailors played a critical role in the Nov. 22, 1718 sea battle that killed Blackbeard near Ocracoke, N.C. — two condemned pirates were taken from the ship on Jan. 28, 1719 and hanged on the Hampton waterfront.

The remains of one may have been found in the mid-1980s, when archaeologists exploring the shoreline near what is now the Crowne Plaza hotel uncovered the partial skeleton of an early-18th-century male who had been been buried in a ritual fashion.

Laid face down between the low- and high-water marks at what was then known as Customhouse Point, the orientation of the remains reflected a common practice designed to damn or at least insult the spirits of supposedly "soul-less" buccaneers by denying them a conventional Christian interment.

"It's exactly how they buried the pirates hanged in Charlestown the year before," says N.C. historian Kevin P. Duffus, author of "The Last Days of Blackbeard the Pirate."

"The evidence suggests that these are the remains of a pirate -- and possibly one from Blackbeard's crew," adds Hampton History Museum curator J. Michael Cobb, who oversees the collection in which the skeleton has been both preserved and recreated as part on an archaeological exhibit.

Taken to Williamsburg to stand trial, the remaining members of Blackbeard's crew were held in the 1704 public "gaol" on Nicholson Street just north of the Capitol. At least some faced an admiralty court on March 12, when — according to the most cited source — one was acquitted, one pardoned and the rest sentenced to hang.

http://www.dailypress.com/features/history/our-story/dp-hampton-hangs-two-members-of-blackbeards-crew-295-years-ago-20140127,0,16260.post

No direct records of that trial or the execution survive. But in 1992 archaeologists from the College of William and Mary discovered the remains of a large, triangular gallows one mile from the gaol and just yards from Capitol Landing Road -- which then was known as Gallows Road.

With its distinctive shape, the early 1700s scaffold was modeled after the infamous "Triple Tree" gallows at Tyburn, London, archaeologist Joe B. Jones says. And with each leg measuring 11 feet long, it also boasted the size needed to carry out a mass hanging.

"This was designed to handle more than one person at a time," Jones says.

"And it was big enough to allow the simultaneous execution of the 13 members of Blackbeard's crew."

If the sentence was carried out as many historians believe, the site was an easily accessible and highly visible location.

Dense scatters of early 1700s artifacts have been found around the postholes from which the gallows rose, including coins suggesting that some onlookers placed bets on the death throes of the condemned.

"In London, people turned out in large crowds for the execution of notorious criminals," says Tom Hay, site supervisor of the courthouse and Capitol in Colonial Williamsburg.

"And it's overwhelmingly likely that it happened here for the execution of Blackbeard's crew."

Still, in Bath, N.C. — where Blackbeard and some of his crew lived for part of 1718 — surviving property and court records suggest that four of the men were still alive long after they were reported hanged in Virginia, Duffus says.

Lt. Gov. Alexander Spotswood's discussion of pirate testimony in a letter dated before the March 12 trial suggests that some previous but now undocumented legal proceeding took place — perhaps one that invoked a December 1718 royal pardon offering amnesty to repentant pirates.

Duffus believes only six members of the pirate crew died on the gallows because of what was then known as the "king's mercy". He also thinks all six hangings were carried out in Hampton rather than Williamsburg because of the port town's prominence in trade and its location on the water.

Likely hung in chains after their deaths, the remains of the pirates may have been displayed as a grisly warning to others.

And the ritual burial discovered in the 1980s may have been only one of a half-dozen that may have taken place after their bodies were taken down.

Blackbeard's head is said to have been mounted on a pike and placed on the banks of the Hampton River for the same reason.

"Plenty of people have written about it. It was the sort of the thing that would have been done — and we have pretty good evidence from the piece of land that's always been called 'Blackbeard's Point,'" Cobb says.

http://www.dailypress.com/features/history/our-story/dp-hampton-hangs-two-members-of-blackbeards-crew-295-years-ago-20140127,0,16260.post

"But whether it actually happened is a whole other matter — because there's no mention of it in the log of the Pearl."

This replica of the early 18th-skeleton found in the mid-1980s near the site of the old Hampton gallows is on view at the Hampton History Museum. (Courtesy of the Hampton History Museum / January 27, 2014)

http://www.dailypress.com/features/history/our-story/dp-hampton-hangs-two-members-of-blackbeards-crew-295-years-ago-20140127,0,16260.post

“Variety…the Spice of Valentine’s Day!”

By: Emily Ridjaneck

1/28/2014

Valentine’s Day dining options abound at Colonial Williamsburg this February. Traditions at the Williamsburg Lodge is creating a sumptuous seafood buffet with your favorite sea fare and seasonal sides. Chef Travis Brust’s brigade has prepared a savory six-course menu for the Sweethearts Dinner at the elegant Regency Room at the Williamsburg Inn. For an intimate, casual evening, reserve your candlelit tavern meal in King’s Arms or Shields historic taverns to warm your evening up. Last-minute planning? Reservations are not required at Huzzah! BBQ Grille, featuring slow-cooked barbecue slathered in delectable sauce, salmon on cedar plank, wood-fired specialty pizzas and more.

Click here to find out more about these dining options and to see a full list of Valentine’s Weekend event.

http://wydaily.com/2014/01/28/variety-the-spice-of-valentines-day/