Join us for Commemorative 1666 Day at the Patawomeck Museum and Cultural Center April 20th

Join us on Saturday, April 20 at the Patawomeck Museum and Cultural Center at 638 Kings Highway, Fredericksburg, Virginia for a half day event commemorating the Patawomeck people and the new book 1666: A Novel  by Lora Chilton, a member of the tribe. Lora imagines the legendary story behind the tribe’s survival based on written colonial records and tribal oral tradition, told from the fictionalized point of view of the two women who lived it.

In 1666, in their efforts to steal the land of the Patawomeck people in what is now Virginia, colonists massacred the men of the Patawomeck tribe and took the women and children as slaves, marching them to the coast to slave ships that would take most of them to their deaths in the brutal sugar fields of the Barbados.

Author Lora Chilton

To honor the women who suffered this horrible ordeal and to pay tribute to the tribe’s ultimate survival in part because of the two women who escaped and made it back to Virginia, author Lora Chilton’s book tour will follow this imagined route from Fredericksburg through Richmond and Williamsburg to Hampton in Virginia.

The event on April 20 at the Patawomeck Museum and Cultural Center will launch the Virginia tour. Ceremonies and festivities for the day will go from 11 to 3 and include demonstrations of the Patawomeck traditions and culture, interviews with elders, speeches from those who are introducing the new bill recognizing the tribe, a 1666 book talk and book signing with author Lora Chilton, plus access to the museum, and much more.  The U.S. 7th Congressional  District of Virginia Representative Abigail Spanberger, sponsor of H.R. 5553, The Patawomeck Indian Tribe of Virginia Federal Recognition Act, has been invited to participate. This event is free and open to all.

To learn more, please visit: https://www.patawomeckindiantribeofvirginia.org/

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Chilton’s appearance at the Patawomeck Museum and Cultural Center with the 1666 Commemorate Day event will kick off The Historic 1666 Route of the Patawomeck Women Book Tour.

At each event, Lora will share how she came to write this story, how she studied the Patawomeck language, interviewed the elders of her tribe who kept the story alive through oral tradition, as well as conducted her own research. Lora tells a powerful story of discovering her own heritage and then uncovering this story that up until now has only been known within the tribe.

Livestream with Lora Chilton on Instagram
April 20, 2024, 11:30 a.m. Eastern
From the Route of the Patawomeck Women tour launch event at the Patawomeck Museum and Cultural Center (event runs from 11 to 3)