Raleigh Tavern

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Raleigh Tavern in Williamsburg, Virginia, gained some fame in the pre-Revolutionary War Colony of Virginia as a gathering place for the Burgesses after several Royal Governors officially dissolved the House of Burgesses, the elected legislative body, when their actions did not suit the Crown. Such dissension became more common between the end of the French and Indian War in 1763 and the outbreak of the American Revolution in 1776.

In 1769, the Raleigh Tavern began its career as a center of sedition when the Burgesses, dissolved because of resolutions against the British Revenue Act, convened in the Apollo Room as the 'late representatives of the people' and adopted the Non-Importation Agreement. This room was the frequent rendezvous of Jefferson, Henry, and other Revolutionary patriots. They met here in 1773 to develop intercolonial committees of correspondence. Dissolved by Dunmore, the Burgesses met again in the Apollo Room in May 1774. The tavern was an institution. Auctions as well as balls were held under the Raleigh's aegis. The Marquis de Lafayette was entertained at a banquet here in 1824, and the building remained in continual use as a tavern until it burned, at the hands of an arsonist, in 1859.

In modern times, the reconstructed Raleigh Tavern, rebuilt in 1932, is one of the more modest but popular attractions of Colonial Williamsburg, a living history museum depicting life in Virginia's colonial capital city. The Raleigh Tavern, an L-shaped white weatherboard building with 18 dormer windows, has been completely reconstructed on its original foundation. It stands on Duke of Gloucester Street in contrast to the elaborate Capitol Building as testament that the work of democracy did not require fancy trappings to function. In the restored Apollo Room, Hilaritas sapientiae et bonae vitae proles (jollity is the offspring of wisdom and good living) is the motto over the mantel. [1]