For Many American Tourists, Time Travel Has Become Real

What a day for a wedding.

The sky was bright blue, not a cloud in sight. From her thatched-roof house, the bride emerged and squinted, briefly, beneath her elaborately embroidered headpiece, or coif. Her dress was deep purple, sent from England by an uncle. Intertwined ribbons, a lover’s knot, were pinned on one shoulder. On the other, 22-year-old Constance Hopkins wore a sprig of rosemary, for remembrance.

Her bridegroom, 28-year-old Nicholas Snow--a joiner, or woodworker--saw the fine day as a blessing on the union.

“It is perhaps God’s gift unto us,” Snow said, in perfect 17th century English.

On the dusty main avenue of Plimoth Plantation here, the archaic language, the men in pantaloons and ruffled shirts, and the crude cottages that pass for homes seem not at all implausible. Only the tourists reminded one that this was a Saturday in April 1999 and that the lovely couple were a pair of historical reenactors, or “interpreters.”

“It feels very authentic,” said Margot Blacker of Bellevue, Wash., one of half a million visitors to Plimoth Plantation each year. “They draw you in. They make you become a part of their time.”

In a country scarcely more than 200 years old, living history is a growth industry. Thousands of Americans don blue or gray uniforms each year to reenact battles from the Civil War. From Lexington, Mass., to Yorba Linda, Calif., Revolutionary War scenes also are brought to life by latter-day pipers and musketeers. At the Norlands Living History Center in Livermore, Maine, entire families often sign up for a residential dose of the 18th century.

A 19th century maritime village is re-created at Connecticut’s Mystic Seaport Museum. Old Sturbridge Village, in western Massachusetts, depicts an early 19th century town. Conner Prairie, in Indiana, replicates a pioneer settlement from 1836. With its grand restaurants, gift shops, marching bands and shuttle buses, Colonial Williamsburg, in Virginia, is the Disneyland of living history museums.

At Plimoth Plantation, time is frozen. The year is 1627, and after the terrible first winter in which more than half the “Old Comers,” or original Mayflower passengers, perished, the village is flourishing. About 160 settlers are in residence, along with a dozen Wampanoag Indians at Hobbamock’s Homesite, the only Native Americans who dwelt with the Pilgrims.

Since it opened in 1949, Plimoth Plantation has focused on “first-person history,” an interactive technique that turns Pilgrim interpreters into cultural informants, and visitors into anthropologists who observe them first-hand. Using tools and materials appropriate to the period, interpreters in 17th century garb carry on with the daily details of life in 1627. Dialogue with visitors is encouraged, although sometimes the time warp catches up with one side or the other.

Interpreters work from biographical dossiers of the first settlers, and details are so scrupulously researched that each interpreter must apprentice for two years. They learn dialect, daily conventions and never, never to be shaken beyond the year 1627.

The wedding of Constance Hopkins and Nicholas Snow did in fact occur in April of 1627, for example, and prior to Saturday’s ceremony, Master Isaac Allerton was explaining why he would officiate as the village magistrate. Pilgrim beliefs held that the church was a place solely of worship, not of ritual, Allerton said. A civil ceremony helped resolve questions of inheritance, “to keep matters clean from the lawyers.”

“Lawyers!” piped up a visitor from the crowd that had formed around Allerton. “You know what Shakespeare said about lawyers!”

“Shakespeare?” asked Allerton, eyes narrowed. “Who is this fellow?”

If Shakespeare was not a household name in 1627, neither were timepieces a routine part of life. The White-Snow wedding was scheduled for noon, or thereabouts, because the sun made midday easy to recognize. Spelling was also a thing of the future, thus explaining the phonetic configuration of the plantation’s first name.

Same thing for humans: “Don’t know as it matters,” said Stephen (or Steven?) Hopkins, father of the bride, when asked about the spelling of his given name.