A Link Among the Days; the Life and Times of the Rev. Dr. W.A.R. Goodwin, the Father of Colonial Williamsburg - Softcover

Montgomery, Dennis

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0875170943 ISBN 13: 9780875170947

Publisher: Dietz Pr, 1998

Synopsis

This is the first biography of the Reverend Doctor William Archer Rutherfoord Goodwin, the minister who persuaded John D. Rockefeller, Jr. to resurrect 18th century Williamsburg. It is drawn largely from Goodwin's still private files, Colonial Williamsburg and Rockefeller files.

About this title

About the Author:

Dennis Montgomery lives and writes in Claremont, a James River hamlet deep in Virginia's Tidewater. A journalist for more than 30 years, the Virginia-born author has served the world's largest news service, a Piedmont daily and small-town weeklies as a writer and editor, and he has long contributed to journals and magazines devoted to history, law and business. Montgomery's feature stories on the American Revolution helped win him a National Endowment for the Humanities journalism fellowship at the University of Michigan and he is a scriptwriter of three prize-winning historical videos; among them The Rockefeller Family and Colonial Williamsburg. His interest in the Rev. Dr. W.A.R. Goodwin's contribution to the restoration of 18th-century Williamsburg began during Montgomery's years as a senior staff writer at the Colonial Williamsburg Foundation. He is completing work on his next book, Starving Time, the story of early Jamestown.

From Publishers Weekly:

There was a time not too long ago, when the dusty main street of Williamsburg, Va., boasted the Toot-N-Kum-In filling station instead of the Raleigh Tavern. The transformation of the former capital of Virginia from a decaying roadside nowhere to the meticulously restored Colonial destination it is today was the work of W.A.R. Goodwin, a man with a vision and a knack for cajoling the wealthiest men in the U.S. to help. When he became rector of the city's Bruton parish in 1903, Williamsburg's remaining colonial buildings had nearly all fallen into disrepair. After successfully returning Bruton Parish Church to its elegant 18th-century state, Goodwin began working with the William and Mary College in the mid-1920s to restore Williamsburg's main Duke of Gloucester Street. The revenue from visitors helped endow the college as well as rescue some fine 18th-century structures. Goodwin knew where the money was, and his astute wooing of Henry Ford and John D. Rockefeller Jr. led to the latter initially pledging $3 million, then continuing his support through the Depression and up to the reverend's death in 1939, when Montgomery's biography unfortunately ends. Tidewater readers may not need that final chapter to explain how Colonial Williamsburg was finally completed and how its groundbreaking method of presenting history was developed, but readers from outside the area will find this portrayal unsatisfying. Drawing on Goodwin's papers, files and personal photos, Montgomery has written a book of regional interest that could have drawn a wider audience.

Copyright 1998 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

About this edition

• Publisher: Dietz Pr
• Publication date: 1998
• ISBN 10: 0875170943
• ISBN 13: 9780875170947
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 320