Jamestown Christopher Newport

Prince George native puts region's heritage on display

PRINCE GEORGE - If it weren't for a little communications breakdown back in 1607, Prince George County and not Jamestown might have been the site of the first permanent English settlement in America.

But even though the impatient colonists landed on the wrong side of the James River while their leader, Sir Christopher Newport, was busy scouting what he thought was a better site in Prince George, the county still has European settlements dating back at least to 1616 - four years before the Pilgrims landed in New England.

With more history than almost anyplace else in the nation, it's fitting that the person in charge of putting that history on display is a county native.

Carol Marks Bowman has been executive director of the Prince George County Historical Society since shortly before the group opened the county's Regional Heritage Center in 2008 in the former courthouse. She had been a board member and volunteer for the society for several years, helping with the restoration of the courthouse building out of a lifelong passion for the past.

"I was raised in a home that was built in 1794," Bowman explained. "I was always interested in historic structures and historic preservation."

After retiring from a division of chemicals giant Dupont, where she had last worked as an assistant division comptroller, she returned to her family home in Prince George, which she started restoring. Joining the historical society in its work on the old courthouse - built in 1883 to replace a Revolutionary War-era building that was destroyed in the Civil War - was a natural progression.

"I became very active when they started talking about a museum - that was what we were calling it then," she recalled.

Her work in finance helped equip her for the executive director's job. "You do need an understanding of the bottom line, of how to pull together all the funding," she noted.

The big fundraising challenge at the moment is raising the money to complete restoration of a second building in the courthouse complex, the former clerk's office.

"It's a historic building in its own right," Bowman noted.

However, it needs a lot of work before it will be ready to hold the four new galleries planned for it, including an exhibit about the county's Czech and Slovak heritage, and a gallery inspired by the founder and longtime director of Prince George High School's marching band, John V. Mazza.

The building needs work "from the inside out" including electrical and other vital systems.

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The panels

The New World Tapestry, which in its entirety measures 267 ft x 4 ft (81.3 m x 1.2 m), consists of twenty four panels, each of which depicts the narrative of a particular phase in the period between 1583 and 1642.

Each panel measures 11 ft x 4 ft (3.4m x 1.2m).

The figures of the tapestry are rendered in an unmistakably modern, cartoon-like style, but it also follows in the tradition of Tudor and Jacobean canvas work embroidery. The panels are worked in gobelin stitch which entirely covers the ground, and along with pictures of the main scenes of the story, the panels also feature birds, animals, flowers and insects all beautifully worked in bold colours.

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