Colonists Online: Colonial Williamsburg Online Museum

I've been to Colonial Williamsburg twice in my life.  I don't remember the first time, because I was a little over a year old and I napped through the whole experience.  The second time was in the 8th grade, when I went as part of a school field trip, and I accidentally poked someone in the face with a stick that was supposed to be a musket.  I don't think I gathered too much knowledge during either trip (except for now understanding that muskets were sharp), but thanks to the exhibits Colonial Williamsburg has put online I can learn in the comfort of my own home.

Right now Colonial Williamsburg has four exhibits up online:  Historic Threads, Conserving the Murray Sisters, Coins and Currency in Colonial America, and Mapping Colonial America.  I was really excited about Historic Threads, because I love historical fashion, but this was the most disappointing of the exhibits.  Not because of the content - the images of gowns, suits and accessories are wonderful and are accompanied by great information about materials and time periods.  What was frustrating about Historic Threads was that it didn't work very well.  It's next to impossible to navigate between images - I would click the forward button and the previous image would stay on the screen, or the text would load but not its accompanying picture, or I would be left hanging in some kind of black limbo.  I found that the only way to get a screen to load properly was to refresh each page, which was so annoying that I gave up and moved on before I had seen half the exhibit.

Conserving the Murray Sisters takes on an interesting subject matter:  the scientific process of conserving artifacts.  Colonial Williamsburg was given a painting of these sisters dating from 1794, but it was too wrecked to display in its initial condition.  A series of images in this exhibit show the different steps conservationists took to restore the painting, including viewing it under different types of light.

Coins and Currency in Colonial America tries very hard to make a dull subject interesting by adding in a lot of features.  The coins are sorted by time period, from Columbus's travels to the end of the American Revolution, and are accompanied by notes on their history and metallurgy.  There are plenty of opportunities to seek out extra information and compare coins from the era, and you can even see a scale of each coin relative to a quarter.

Mapping Colonial America is probably the best online exhibit.  It's set up a lot like Coins and Currency, with maps arranged historically and information gathered in text boxes.  There's also a timeline running along the bottom that automatically sets itself to point at the time when each map was created.  The images of the maps have a great resolution - you can zoom in on each one and see a lot of detail.  On one map I was able to pinpoint the location of my hometown and still read the names of the surrounding villages and rivers.

Colonial Williamsburg's online exhibits are a great supplement to a visit and or an introduction for those who haven't been before.  Though some of the subject matter is a little dry, I would encourage you to check out all the functioning exhibits to see what you can glean from each.  As for Historic Threads, I really hope someone can get it to function better, because I need some sartorial escapism.

Colonial Williamsburg Online Museum Exhibits
Website:  www.history.org/history/museums/online_exhibits.cfm