Chester Comix - Comic books and graphic novels that bring history to life!

Welcome to Chester Comix! Inside this site you'll find fun samples of the way Bentley Boyd uses comix to spark interest in history for reluctant readers! Check what he's drawing now, go with him to weird historical sites across the country, or download a coloring page and put your own words into his drawings! This home page features my most recent news/blog entries. Learn more about my blog. Have fun! --Bentley Boyd

Colonial Williamsburg Teacher Institute groupie

July 27th, 2008

Finally, after four days of me trailing after them from Jamestown to the slave cabin at Colonial Williamsburg to the taverns to the costume shop, one of the teachers said, “Honestly, who would follow after a bunch of social studies teachers?!”

Me. I’m a hardcore groupie! I love hanging with those who think it’s important to teach the next generation about the highpoints and problems and vital choices of our past. I think it will affect our future.

I’ve worked with Colonial Williamsburg staffers in many ways since I moved here in 1992, but it was still a welcome surprise when CW invited me to spend a week shadowing one session of their summer Teacher Institute. For almost two decades, CW has given master teachers a chance to renew their knowledge of Colonial times and pick up new tricks for making history vital. They bring in about 600 every year from across the country, many of them paid for by donors in their home state. I jumped at the chance.

I did learn some new things myself and corrected some misconceptions that had creeped in to my own knowledge base. But mostly it was just fun to see these folks from Texas and California and Wisconsin and Washington play around the Historic Triangle — they acted like it was history teacher Disneyland. One woman had spent time in Virginia as a girl in segregated days and was happy to see the story of slavery portrayed so well at Jamestown, Yorktown and Williamsburg. One woman had worked summer school in her Florida district so she could pay for this and make it a vacation with her daughter, who also teaches. Many had never been to Colonial Williamsburg and were awestruck at the detail this place offers. At the end of the week one young teacher said, “I can’t WAIT to get back and NOT use my textbook!”

What can I say, I’m a history geek. Yes, yes, it’s good business for me to hang with them — these 29 teachers found my comix in the various gift shops around town and went nuts for them, but that’s not why I did this. My interest in education and history and kids is so strong that the transition between all the hats I now wear feels seamless to me. Often during the week I would pivot in an instant from being student to being a teacher of history. But it’s ALL advocacy!

Send me a message or post to this note if you’d like more details on what I saw and did with the Teacher Institute! You can also find official info on CW’s website: www.history.org/history/teaching/tchsti.cfm

Tags: Bentley Boyd, Chester the Crab, Colonial Williamsburg, comics, history, Jamestown, social studies, teachers
Posted in History Teacher | 4 Comments »

History Density

June 28th, 2008

Last week I met the Rev. W.A.R. Goodwin, the man who thought Colonial Williamsburg could be brought alive with just a few million dollars.

Well, I didn’t meet Goodwin himself. I met Ed Way portraying this wonderful Virginian as if it was 1937 and the restoration of the Colonial capital was well under way. It was a treat to stand toe-to-toe with 20th Century History in a place that usually shuns it.

The only thing missing was the sweet tea. Way’s new program at Colonial Williamsburg has him greeting visitors and chatting under the shade trees on the crisp lawn behind Bassett Hall. The man with the seersucker suit and gentle Virginia accent quoted Scripture, told tall tales about Congressmen and condemned cars. “I used a horse-drawn conveyance as long as I could, but it’s not safe anymore, with cars going by you at 30 miles per hour!” Way said as Goodwin.“I never have liked motor cars. Big old expensive mischief machines is all they are.”

Goodwin came out of the Blue Ridge Mountains to Williamsburg in 1903 to be the rector at Bruton Parish Church. The 1715 structure needed a new roof and other repairs. Goodwin pushed the congregation to completely restore the church to its Colonial appearance in time for the 1907 celebration of the 300th anniversary of Jamestown. His ability to mix History, politics and fundraising made the Bruton project a success and convinced him the same could be done with other surviving Colonial buildings in the small, dusty Southern town. He approached several industrialists (Ford, the DuPonts, etc.) before he found a partner in billionaire John D. Rockefeller Jr. in the late 1920s.

“I didn’t push him hard,” Way says as Goodwin. “He teases me, saying to people, ‘Some people get taken for a ride; I got taken for a walk that’s cost me $68 million!’ But truly, I didn’t have to press him. I just talked about the idea with enthusiasm.”

The irony is that the foundation Goodwin helped create is right now putting up fencing to pasture animals on the land where Goodwin died. Goodwin’s last home was a mile across the Historic Area from where Way gives his presentation on Tuesdays and Thursdays; CW tore that home down in 1993 (I wrote the newspaper story about it) because Goodwin’s home was on the edge of the 18th Century area and didn’t fit the storyline they focus on.

I miss that kind of physical marker, but the History is still there. That downtown city block actually has an amazingly dense story. Goodwin’s home stood behind a 1715 home, which is one of the oldest in Williamsburg. Just over the fence from where the historic animals will soon graze sits the Armistead family cemetery; the Armisteads fought in the Civil War and have fought Colonial Williamsburg since it formed (their antebellum home on Duke of Gloucester street is the last non-Colonial holdout). A few feet away from that cemetery is Matthew Whaley Elementary, which Rockefeller built to butter up the town and where my two sons attended elementary grades; Whaley is 77 years old now and is ITSELF on the National Register of Historic Places!

And I haven’t even told you about how Georgia O’Keefe lived in this neighborhood as a little girl . . .

These ghosts are all still floating through this one city block, whether a living actor calls them to mind or not! It’s all in how closely you can listen to them . . .

Posted in Colonial Williamsburg | No Comments »

Angolan history comes to Williamsburg

June 5th, 2008

This week I met Souindoula Simao, director of Angola’s National Museum of Slavery! He is on a three-week tour of the United States to build partnerships with museums here and better tell the story of the African genocide during the trans-Atlantic slavery trade.

I interviewed him for a story in the Daily Press (www.dailypress.com), the paper that hosted Chester the Crab for 13 years. Mr. Souindoula was a true historian: well-spoken, curious — and, ummmm . . . lengthy! (I think I asked him three questions but his answers filled the 40-minute interview on the shaded porch of a Colonial Williamsburg home.)

I had a wonderful time learning new things from him about the cultural connections between his nation in southern Africa and our continent. Did you know there’s a coastal town in Delaware called Angola? The African nations took slaves in their wars, but the number of slaves taken really jumped when the Europeans started buying. Mr. Souindoula’s museum is in a Portuguese slave trader’s seaside home, where thousands of slaves were baptised before being crammed into ships for the Middle Passage to the Americas (a trip that killed many of them).

This was a great connection to make. You can see it in the photo I took of Mr. Souindoula, his Portuguese translator, and a Colonial Williamsburg interpreter portraying a newspaper publisher of Colonial times. Our Founding Fathers weren’t all white gentlemen who now appear on our money; it took men and women of all colors and backgrounds to build the nation we have today.