Our Friend, Essie Simms

Posted by Bruce Miller
This is a post written and submitted by Carrie Galeski, Barksdale Trustee extraordinaire. Carrie isn't actually on the Board anymore, but once a Trustee, always a Trustee. During Pat Carroll's recent visit to Richmond (Pat was a guest artist with Irene Ziegler's Virginia Arts & Letters LIVE), Carrie hosted Pat in her beautiful Hanover home (see photo to the right of Pat and Carrie). One of the highlights of the reunion was a visit which Carrie and Pat made to Barksdale stalwart Essie Simms, who now lives on the third floor of the Parsons Health Care facility at Westminster Canterbury. Essie recently entered hospice care, but, to the extent that she is able, she still welcomes visitors. Phil and I stopped by today, but we were unable to rouse Essie from her nap. We'll return next week to visit with our dear friend. In the interim, we post Carrie's lovely article about Pat's return to Richmond and their visit with the irreplaceable Essie Simms.

--Bruce Miller

Our Friend, Essie
By Carrie Galeski

No greater friend has Barksdale Theatre than Essie Simms! She was always at Opening Night, Closing Night, and oftentimes in between. Her passion is theater, and especially Barksdale. Essie was at the first performance of Gold in the Hills at Hanover Tavern in 1954, and I doubt if she ever missed a play after that.

Like many of Essie’s friends, I met her at Barksdale. In the past year, she has had several debilitating strokes, and is currently in the Health Care Unit of Westminster Canterbury. A little over a month ago, I had been told that she had gotten much worse, and some had even been told she was not to have visitors. Being an old RN myself, I don’t always follow rules, so I went to visit her. On that particular day, I found her to be alert and very much in the moment. While talking, I told Essie about Pat Carroll coming to Richmond to do an event at the Cultural Arts Center, and she immediately brightened up. “Oh, how wonderful! I wish I could go” Essie said as she continued to tell me about the many times she had seen Pat perform.

At that moment, I promised myself that I would get Pat up to visit Essie if at all possible. I called Pat at home, and told her about my idea. “We’ll make it happen!” was Pat’s response.

Pat arrived on Wednesday with a full itinerary, but on Friday morning, Pat, my friend, Linda, and I went to see Miss Essie at WC. When we got to Essie’s room, Pat went in first, with her contagious laughter and wonderful spirit to greet Essie. The response was fantastic – smiles and laughter everywhere! They talked and talked; Essie even tried to tell a couple of jokes. When we left, Pat was very touched, and told me that she had expected the visit to be about 10 minutes. Instead, it was over 45!

Friday was also the night of Virginia Arts & Letters LIVE at the Cultural Arts Center where Pat was the guest emcee and also one of the participants in performing the new works. Before the program began, Pat told the audience about our visit to see Essie, and when her name was announced, the audience gave her a round of applause. Then, Pat very graciously announced that she wanted to dedicate her portion of the evening to Miss Essie Simms, with even bigger applause, and I dare say, not a dry eye in the theater.

The next day, we took Pat out to the airport for her trip back to Cape Cod. On the way back to Hanover, we stopped at WC to see Essie. I walked in, and immediately said “Essie, Pat dedicated the evening to you, and you got not one, but two huge rounds of applause!” The biggest tears rolled down her cheeks, and I know they were tears of joy! We even had Pat do a short recording on Linda’s Iphone that we played for her. She was speechless and soooooo happy.

Pat sent several pictures that she had signed to Essie, and I have since framed and hung them on the wall next to her bed where she can see them as she lies in bed. Ursula is even in one of the pics. At times, ES forgets who they are, but not often.

Essie LOVES visitors! When you go, be patient, as some days are better than others with her. The distant past might get mixed with the present, but she loves to see her friends, past and present. Seeing that grateful smile makes it all worthwhile.

My Visit with Pat Carroll--Our 500th Post!

Written by Carrie Galeski
Visiting with Pat Carroll was the cherry on the sundae during my recent trip to New England. It was a fun trip, visiting friends in Nantucket, playing lots of golf, and also catching up with a favorite cousin in Connecticut. I can’t believe it, but I finally got my fill of lobster on this trip!

It’s always fun spending time with Pat, and this visit was no exception. She had just returned from spending a month in England and was a bit tired. She said the trip to England had been good medicine for her, giving her time to both relax and reflect.

It‘s been a very hard summer for Pat in that she had to face the death of her son, Sean, in August. He died unexpectedly of a heart attack at age 56. Pat’s daughters, Tara and Kerry, were with her during this arduous time, along with her granddaughter, Evan, whom Pat adores.

Pat is writing her autobiography and has been for the past year or so. I can’t wait to read it. As always, Pat has been busy. She still goes out to LA to visit her girls, and is doing voiceovers for Disney, along with any good parts that happen her way.

I hope you got to see the movie Freedom Writers with Hillary Swank. Pat played a wonderful role in this true story, Miep Gies, one of the Dutch citizens who, earlier in her life, had helped to hid Anne Frank and her family in the Secret Annex. Pat is very proud of the film. I was in California several years ago when she was filming FW, and she was so excited about the part then. If you haven’t seen it, it’s well worth your time.

Some of the time we spent reminiscing about her time at Barksdale. She speaks lovingly of Pete, Nancy and Muriel, Bruce and Phil (whom she met while doing Grace and Glorie with Theatre IV), and all the friends she made in both Hanover and Richmond.

It’s hard to believe, but it has been more than twenty years since I first became friends with Pat. She was doing Nunsense at the Tavern for the first time, and Pete urged me to go in to see her one morning. Pat was sitting at the infamous “kitchen table” having coffee. She asked me to join her, and…twenty plus years later, I count her as a dear friend who has brightened my life ever so much.

She asked that I give her very best wishes to her many friends in this area.

--Carrie Galeski, former Barksdale Trustee, Barksdale Leadership Award winner 2006

Richmond's Sweetheart Is Disney Legend

Posted by Bruce Miller
In conjunction with the 20th Anniversary of the release of The Little Mermaid (the Disney animated feature), it has been announced that our own Pat Carroll will be named a Disney Legend in December of this year. We couldn’t be happier for our dear friend Pat. She’s always been a legend in our eyes, so it’s about time Disney stopped and smelled the coffee.

It’s fun to remember that 2009 also marks the 10th Anniversary of Pat receiving Richmond’s Key to the City from then Mayor (now Governor) Tim Kaine. When I learned of Pat's upcoming Disney honor, I asked for a search through our photo files to see if we had anything commemorating her Richmond honor. Look what was found.

In 1999, Pat was in town to co-star with Irene Ziegler in Theatre IV’s production of Grace and Glorie at the Oates Theatre at Collegiate School. Prior to his election as Mayor, Tim was our City Council representative—he served the district in which the Empire Theatre and Theatre IV’s offices are located. Ten years ago, we knew Tim pretty well.
Phil and I wanted to honor Pat for her great work on Grace and Glorie with Theatre IV, so we asked Tim if he’d consider granting Pat the Key to the City. Turned out our then Mayor/now Governor was a big fan, so he immediately agreed.

We knew that Pat's original connection to Richmond was all through Barksdale, so we called together some faithful Board members from the Theatre IV Board (Tracy Schwarzschild and Sara Belle November) and the Barksdale Board (Neil November and Carrie Galeski), and asked Barksdale Artistic Director Randy Strawderman if he would join us. Pete and company were tied up with something or other and unable to make it. We bought Pat a corsage, and together we all trundled down to City Hall for a ceremony in the Mayor’s Office.

Turns out the Key to the City (at least in Richmond) is more of a plaque than an actual key. Nonetheless, Tim was very gracious and Pat was quite taken with him. She predicted great things in his political future. It was a very festive afternoon and everyone, including the Mayor and Pat had a grand time. We even got a little TV coverage on the evening news.
This was two years before the events of 2001, when Barksdale and Theatre IV struck up our current strategic alliance. Turns out it presaged the wonderful cooperation that was soon to come. And Pat's predictions about Tim's future also came true--first with his election as Lieutenant Governor and now Governor--and an outstanding one at that!

We offer many, many congratulations to Pat for being named a Disney Legend. In addition to the Key to Richmond, she will always hold the key to our hearts.

--Bruce Miller

The McAuley-Kilgore Memorial Library

Posted by Bruce Miller

Under the exemplary leadership of John Glenn, Barksdale Theatre moved from Hanover Tavern to its new digs at Willow Lawn in 1996. The plan at the time was to create a theatre library in honor of our founders, Nancy and Pete Kilgore and Muriel McAuley (pictured above, left to right). A tasteful room was built off the southern end of the lobby, and the words “McAuley-Kilgore Memorial Library” were emblazoned over the elegant French entry doors in letters of gold.
Predictably, the renovation that transformed the former second floor warehouse area into the intimate and comfortable theatrical setting we enjoy today required a larger investment of time and money than originally planned. And so the construction of permanently installed bookshelves in the “Library” was postponed until such time as resources became available for their design and assembly.

One thing led to another, and now, in 2008, we still have yet to transform our “Library” into a library.

Countless boxes of scripts, theatrical texts, showbiz biographies and original cast albums remain in storage, waiting for over a decade for their promised homeland. The collection of tomes has grown over the years as loyal Barksdalians have contributed their home libraries to our long anticipated public “Library.”

In the interim, a private theatre library was started at VCU in memory of the great director and theatre prof Ken Campbell. More recently, in association with RAPT, David Sennett has generously launched an internet-connected lending library from his home.

But the McAuley-Kilgore Library, when it finally comes to pass, will still fill an important void. When the general public wants to walk into a room and peruse shelves filled with theatrical scripts and reference works, there’s still no place in Central Virginia for them to go. For all their many strengths, our local public libraries are woefully short on scripts. Many a professional and amateur actor and/or theatrical student has searched for even a well-known play only to learn that a well stocked, “open to the public” theatrical library still doesn’t exist in Greater Richmond.

Until that day when the McAuley-Kilgore Library finally opens to meet at least part of that need, our “Library” is being put to good use. The Richmond Playwrights Forum has been meeting there on a monthly basis for years. Theatre IV’s Board of Directors and Barksdale’s Board of Trustees call the “Library” home for the lion's share of their Board and committee meetings. Countless production meetings have been held there, not only for shows at Willow Lawn, but also for shows at the Tavern and the Empire. Small armies of students and children have gathered around the table engaged in seminars and summer camp experiences.
Most tastefully of all, the “Library” has welcomed a cornucopia of buffets and party spreads in service to an endless parade of cast soirees and group outings.

Hopefully, the longed for end will soon be in sight. David Powers, our Technical Director at Hanover Tavern and carpenter extraordinaire, has designed and priced the shelves, and this year we will be in the process of raising $12,000 in capital funds to refurbish and install the inner workings that will one day allow our “Library” to live up to its name. If you or any of your associates would like to help with this fundraising effort, please email Emily Cole. If you would like to donate books and/or recordings of a theatrical nature, please contact Brad Tuggle at the same address.

Our goal is to refinish the handsome conference table and chairs donated by the Markel Corporation in 1996, enabling us to continue to use the “Library” for all of the multi-purposes that have emerged over the last 12 years. We also plan to continue to display the historic portraits of Pete, Nancy, Muriel and Pat Carroll. Surrounding these practical and cherished features, we’ll one day have a fine collection of theatrical reading and listening materials to meet our community's need.

Muriel, Pete and Nancy (especially Muriel) had the greatest reverence for books. One day soon, we’ll all be able to enjoy and benefit from the Library built in their name, with the greatest reverence for their memories, and all they meant to Central Virginia.

--Bruce Miller

Where Are They Now - Steve Richardson

Posted by Bruce Miller

Steve Richardson is perhaps the only Barksdale/Theatre IV alum to step on stage to collect a Tony Award. I can think of at least three other Tony nominees (Pat Carroll, Emily Skinner and Elisabeth Welsh), but at 6:30 a.m. on a Saturday morning, he's the only one I can recall actually joining the "winners" circle. Please help me remember if I'm forgetting someone.

Steve's Tony encounter occurred when Theatre de la Jeune Lune of Minneapolis won the coveted 2005 Outstanding Regional Theatre Tony. Steve was Producing Director of Jeune Lune at the time, and a lot of his friends in Richmond watched the Tony broadcast closely that year to see Steve standing on the stage of Radio City Music Hall with his artistic coworkers to accept the award. The Regional Theatre Tony, regrettably, is one of the ones awarded before the TV broadcast begins, and so you see it only in those recaps that they flash across the screen.

But, if you didn't blink, there Steve was standing alongside Jeune Lune's designated speaker, winning a Tony for the theatre he had managed for the previous ten years. All of us in Richmond couldn't have been more proud. Jeune Lune is an artistically innovative, highly respected theatre that has earned international acclaim. Their current production of The Deception is pictured to the left.

Steve graduated with a BA in Philosophy from Carleton College in Northfield, Minnesota in 1986, and came to Richmond after graduation to intern for a year at TheatreVirginia. For three years beginning in '87, Steve worked as Marketing Associate and then Marketing Director at Theatre IV. In 1990, he won his dream job when he was hired as Marketing Director of Theatre de la Jeune Lune, taking him back home to the frozen north. In 1995, he was promoted to the top management position of Producing Director.

This week, Steve left Jeune Lune after 17 years to accept his new position as Director of the Arts at his alma mater. He is charged with developing the arts at Carleton, promoting arts outreach to local schools, the Northfield arts community, and the Twin Cities area arts community and beyond. He is responsible for management of the new interdisciplinary arts center, coordinating major art events, and performance and exhibition series, along with managing curricular and co-curricular arts activities. He’s also in charge of arts publicity and work with Carleton’s career center to connect students with internship opportunities.

As if that weren't enough, Steve will serve as the liaison between the College’s faculty and building design team for the new arts center that will be located in the former Northfield Middle School. He will work with faculty and students to develop innovative collaborations in the arts, seeking ways to integrate the arts across the College’s curriculum.

Throughout his distinguished career, Steve has always included his Theatre IV affiliation in his resume--something we've greatly appreciated. The one aspect of his work here that he never claims is his brief foray into acting. During our Summer Lights Festival in the late 80s, Steve played the dashing young man opposite Jan Guarino and Tye Heckman in George Bernard Shaw's How He Lied to Her Husband.

We wish Steve the greatest success in his new position, and continue to be proud of his outstanding accomplishments.

--Bruce Miller

Deathtr ... errr ... Birdtrap

Posted by Jacqueline "Jackie" Jones

A new acquaintance once asked me what kinds of roles I play. My friend Holly came to the rescue: "Jackie tends to play quirky characters," she said. Yeah, I thought. That and moms. Helga "I am psychic" Ten Dorp, my delicious current role in the production of Deathtrap now playing at Barksdale Hanover Tavern, definitely falls into the quirky category.

At Barksdale’s Hanover home, the cast dressing room is affectionately known as "the Pat Carroll Room" because it was the bedroom Ms Carroll occupied during her earliest runs of Nunsense. It shares the Tavern’s third floor with the business office of Michelle's Restaurant, and in this upper sanctum, actors and culinary artisans co-exist side by side.

About a year ago, Agatha Christie’s Mousetrap was my first show back at the Tavern since its renovation. During the run, we actors had been instructed not to open the windows because of the new alarm system. Till last week, I had never been tempted to disobey.

But on the Thursday evening of Deathtrap's Invitational Dress Rehearsal, I climbed the crooked “servant” stairs at the Tavern’s southwestern corner and entered the long and winding hallway that leads to our northwestern dressing room. Was it my imagination? A pigeon flew overhead. “There’s a bird up here!” I shouted.

Back and forth my new feathered friend frantically flew, seeking escape. That's when I noticed a broom-wielding bartender rushing forward from the other end of the hall, holding his “weapon” aloft like Sweeney Todd. And an arm-flapping waitress (Mrs. Lovett?) began squawking at my back. The pigeon, knowing an animal lover when he saw one, assessed the situation and headed straight toward me.

Quick as a bunny, I turned to the eastern windows looking out toward the historic Hanover Courthouse, hastily removed the "security nail" and tapped with all my might until the top window dropped. The bird, knowing a good thing when he saw one, circled my head like a plane attempting to land at JFK and then whizzed past my ear and out the window into the freedom of beautiful Hanover County.

“Give me liberty,” I thought. Patrick Henry tended bar in the original Hanover Tavern, you know. And his immortal words seemed to be working just as well for pigeons in 2007 as they had for patriots in 1775.

The restaurant staff, relieved by the speedy departure of our uninvited guest, headed back to their stations as I sauntered into the dressing room. My fellow actors were oblivious to all the excitement.

Soon the show began, and I headed downstairs in all my theatrical regalia to prepare for my first entrance. Except for a brief introduction the previous evening (and our Hitchcock moment a half hour earlier in the upstairs hall), Michelle’s new bartender and I had never met. Even if he were able to recognize me in street clothes, he'd never seen me all done up for the play in Helga's Little Dutch Boy wig and blue beret. Perhaps that explains the very curious look he gave as I strode past the bar on my way to the stage door and whispered, "You really didn’t need the broom, you know. It's good luck to have bird-poop on your head."

Oh, those crazy theatre people, I’m sure he thought, probably not identifying me with the pigeon rescuer from the upstairs hall. I smiled. Pete and Nancy Kilgore (animal lovers extraordinaire) would have been so proud.


--Jacqueline “Jackie” Jones
http://www.jacquelinejones.net/

Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon

Posted by Bruce Miller

In response to a recent blog entry (Summer Stock Memories - Part II [Aug 19]), a curious reader commented as follows: “I don’t mean to be dumb, but what the heck is Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon?” The question, of course, is not dumb at all.

Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon is a game. I understand it’s now even a board game. I've never seen the board game, but the photo to the right and above, found on the internet, seems to indicate that a board game version does indeed exist.

For years it was a boardless trivia game, inspired by the career of the talented actor, Kevin Bacon, pictured to the left. It required no equipment other than a knowledge of and interest in theatre and film.

The game was originally inspired, I believe, by the brilliant John Guare play, Six Degrees of Separation, which was itself inspired by the interconnectedness theories espoused by the Hungarian author Frigyes Karinthy in 1929, and the subsequent "small world" research conducted by Harvard-based American social psychologist, Stanley Milgram, in the late 60s and early 70s.

The basic idea is that everyone in the world is interconnected. If you are separated from your friend by one degree, then you are separated from your friend’s friends by two degrees. Milgram’s research suggests that when we extend this theory forward to six degrees, everyone in the world is connected to everyone else—and by a fairly short chain.

John Guare’s play is a funny, thought provoking and deeply moving examination of what this means when we look at our daily lives and social responsibilities. It’s one of my two or three favorite plays in the world. If The Little Dog Laughed works well on the 2007-2008 Signature Season at Barksdale Willow Lawn, expect to see Six Degrees of Separation appearing in a forthcoming seaon not too far down the road.

Anyway, back to Kevin Bacon. Inspired by these same theories, the game depends on the belief that every actor in the world can be connected to every other actor in the world by a chain of cast mates. The object of the game is to discover the closest connections in the shortest amount of time.

Let me give you an example: I recently mentioned Charlie Dacus, the child actor who just appeared in Bye Bye Birdie at Dogwood Dell. Can we link him to Sir Laurence Olivier, the “greatest English-speaking actor of the 20th Century”?

After about 5 minutes, here’s the chain I discovered. Charlie Dacus was in Theatre IV’s The Wizard of Oz with Jan Guarino (one degree). Jan Guarino was in Swift Creek’s Once Upon a Mattress with Phil Whiteway (two degrees). Phil Whiteway was in Theatre IV’s West Side Story with Blair Underwood (three degrees). Blair Underwood was in L A Law with Jill Eikenberry (four degrees). Jill Eikenberry was in Arthur with Sir John Gielgud (five degrees). Sir John was in Richard III with Sir Laurence Olivier (six degrees).
And yes, I have noticed that Kevin Bacon appears nowhere in the chain noted above. But he doesn’t have to, at least the way I’ve always played the game. The game is called Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon simply because, as college kids were inventing and playing the game in the 90s, Kevin Bacon’s name kept coming up because he tends to have been in lots of movies with lots of diverse actors, including his wife Kyra Sedgwick. That's Kevin and Kyra in the photo to the right.

While at the University of Virginia, a grad student named Brett Tjaden created the Oracle of Bacon website and computer program to determine if Kevin Bacon was, in fact, the Center of the Hollywood Universe. Tjaden entered data for the 800,000 plus actors listed in the Internet Movie Database (IMDb) to see which actors had the closest connections to the largest number of other actors. He determined that whereas Kevin Bacon was in fact in the top 1% of all film actors in terms of his close connections to all other film actors, he was beat out by Rod Steiger (pictured to the left), Dennis Hopper and Donald Sutherland for the top three spots.

Some people play the game by giving each actor a Bacon Number. If you are Kevin Bacon himself, your Bacon Number is 0. If you have appeared in a cast with Kevin Bacon himself, your Bacon Number is 1. If you have appeared in a cast with someone who has a Bacon Number of 1, then your Bacon Number is 2.

Richmond All-Star Robyn O’Neill (pictured to the right with Pat Carroll) has a Bacon Number of 3. You can read her comment to my previous blog post (Summer Stock Memories – Part II [Aug 19]) to count the connections. The only Richmond actors who I know have a Bacon Number of 2 are John Glenn, Pat Carroll, Sam Wells and Kelly Scallion. John (pictured to the left in The Man Who Came to Dinner at Company of Fools) works in Idaho with Demi Moore, Pat was in E. R. with Noah Wyle, and Sam and Kelly were in Miss Rose White with Kyra Sedgwick. Demi and Noah were in A Few Good Men with Kevin, and Kyra is married to Kevin and appeared with him in Murder in the First. So, if you’re a Richmond actor and you’ve appeared with John, Pat, Sam or Kelly, you also have a Bacon Number of 3.

To a certain extent, my wife and daughter, set designer Terrie Powers and Hannah Miller, have you all beat. When Miss Rose White was filming in Richmond, Kevin Bacon, Kyra Sedgwick and their child (children?) all lived in a rented home by Byrd Park. When Hannah was a baby, Terrie used to take her to the Byrd Park playground. One evening Terrie came home very excited, because she and Hannah had just spent the entire afternoon playing in a Byrd Park sandbox with Kevin Bacon and his son. Terrie was a huge Kevin Bacon fan, but just like I had done years before with Arthur Miller, she never let on that she knew who he was. So they sat there for a couple hours playing and talking as two parents. If she’d done the “fan thing,” he probably would have left.

All reports are that Mr. Bacon himself is not particularly into the celebrity game. When interviewed about the Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon, he good-heartedly replied, "I felt as if I was the brunt of some massive joke at my expense: 'Can you believe this loser can be connected to Marlon Brando and Katharine Hepburn?'"

A "loser" he certainly is not.

On a final note, if you’re a fan of The Closer starring Kyra Sedgwick (and if you aren’t, you should be), you’ll know that Kyra’s dad is now being played by Barry Corbin (pictured below and to the right), who was with us here in Richmond as a special guest star last October for Virginia Arts & Letters Live at the Empire. So if you performed in that iteration of VALL, your Bacon Number is now a 3.

All those who want to accept the challenge of discovering the other Richmond actors with Bacon Numbers of 2—I know there must be some—please do so in a comment to this blog.

--Bruce Miller

Happy Birthday Barksdale! - Part V

So, with regard to the history of Hanover Tavern, what’s true and what’s not? I don’t pretend to be a historian, but I’ve done a fair amount of research. Joseph D. Kyle, Ph.D. with the Hanover Tavern Foundation IS a historian, and he’s done a LOT more. Acknowledging that the recording and retelling of history is an art and not a science, here’s my take on the provenance of our landmark building—with lots of credit going to Dr. Kyle and others more expert than I.

The oldest part of the building we know and love today is the north end, which includes our theatre (I’ll call this the first floor), our third floor dressing room (the Pat Carroll room for fellow old-timers), and the two second floor rooms that fall in between (what Pete, Nancy and Muriel used as their living room and dining room). The Pat Carroll room is so named because it's the room Pat lived in during the various runs of Nunsense.

This northern section of the existing Hanover Tavern was built in 1791 as a private dwelling for Paul Thilman and his family. The front of this house faced west, toward what we now think of as the backyard. During the American Revolution and up into the 1790s, Thilman also owned the original Hanover Tavern, which stood nearby, but no one knows exactly where.

So all the Patrick Henry, George Washington, and Cornwallis history that we hear about actually took place in a building that no longer exists, but was located on a site very nearby. We'll call this no-longer-standing building the original Hanover Tavern.

We know that the original Hanover Tavern was in existence in 1733, when records show that Peter Marks, a wealthy Hanover landowner, held an “ordinary” license to operate a tavern at Hanover Court House. The experts I've read speculate that the original tavern was constructed in 1732.

Records indicate that the original Hanover Tavern was purchased by Patrick Henry’s father-in-law, John Shelton, in 1760, and that Henry and his wife moved in with the in-laws in 1763, living either in the original Tavern itself or another building adjacent to the original Tavern. Legend has it that Henry tended bar at the original Tavern in his father-in-law’s absence, and there is no reason to believe that this legend is untrue.

Legend also has it that Washington and Lafayette both stayed at the original Tavern, or at least ate there, during the Revolutionary War period—again, there's no reason to suspect that these legends are untrue. A first hand account from a French general assigned to George Washington’s troops discusses the French general’s stay at the Tavern in the early 1780s, shortly after Yorktown. In this first hand account, the French General states that Tavern master Thilman told him that Lord Cornwallis and his troops had quartered there on their way to Yorktown, and had left hastily without paying any compensation. So, unless Thilman was engaging in hyperbole in the 1780s, that story is true.

No one knows what happened to the original Hanover Tavern, but early in the eighteen hundreds it was no longer standing. Most likely it was destroyed by fire, a common occurrence in those times.

From the late seventeen hundreds until 1846, the stage coach route from Richmond to Williamsburg passed by the Hanover Court House community, almost certainly to the west of the Tavern. This would explain why the Thilman home had been built with its original orientation toward what we now think of as the backyard. After the original Tavern was destroyed, the Thilmans apparently wanted to continue their commercial venture, and so they built a new tavern immediately to the south of their home.

The L-shaped building that makes up the southern end of today’s tavern is what remains of this new tavern built by the Thilmans. Using a scientific evaluation of the timbers, it has been dated to 1822, a date supported by tax records showing an increased assessment in 1823 due to new construction the previous year.

This L-shaped building and the Thilman home were permanently connected to each other in about 1832, according to scientific analysis of timbers from the central section of today's Tavern, creating the one large building we know today.

So the current Hanover Tavern has three phases of construction: the north end built in 1791 as a private home, the south end built in 1822 as a replacement for the original tavern, and the connecting middle section, built in 1832 to join the north building and the south building into one large structure.

One story that is patently false is the one that was featured on the plaque mounted to the Tavern's exterior wall at the time of the 1953 purchase. The plaque indicated that John Chiswell, a member of the House of Burgesses, murdered Robert Routledge in the bar room. Chiswell was involved with Routledge's death, but many believe it was an accident and that Routledge fell on his own sword. In any case, this altercation took place not at Hanover Tavern, but at Mosby Tavern, which still stands today in Powhattan County, and is pictured to the right and above.

Beginning in the early eighteen hundreds, the old stage road served as a main transportation route between Richmond and Washington, and the Tavern was a frequent stopping point for many travelers. In the not too distant future, I’ll recount what the experts tell us about the famous people who may have visited the existing tavern during those heady times.

--Bruce Miller