- Our place, our time is made possible in part by grants from the Virginia Commission for the Arts and the National Endowment for the Arts, and from the Arts Commission of the City of Newport News.

This week on our place, our time, we consider the trial of Grace Sherwood, the notorious witch of Pungo.

We look through the lens at the vitality of fashion design in Hampton Roads, and we attend a very special homecoming in North Carolina.

And here's your host, Vianne Webb.

- It'll soon be Halloween.

And for that occasion, we have a special story for you, the story of the famous witch of Pungo.

And one of the settings for our story will be right here at the Historic Capital Building in Colonial Williamsburg.

But first, we wanted to take a look at fashion.

I wonder if you knew that the sale of women's clothes in Hampton Roads ranked second only to food in total retail sales.

Well, Kim Simon Fink took a look at the business and the art of fashion designing.

What she discovered was that not all leading designers live in New York or Paris.

Some of them live right here in Hampton.

Roads - Fashion, posh pos changing hem lines, bombastic body wraps that come in every imaginable fabric from shiny silk and satins to showing iridescent TDAs and comfortable cottons.

What is one season's chic?

May well be next season's bleak to those who keep pace with fashion.

Just who ensembles the collections that will determine the look of the new year.

And must all designers eventually make their move to the fashion meccas of New York or Paris?

The answers may surprise you.

Meet Kami Cesa fashion reporter for the Virginian Pilot Ledger star.

For 22 years, she has covered the rise and fall of clothing trends, past and present.

It is an industry according to cesa, the fourth largest in the US that has made a celebrated aristocracy of its designing elite - In our society, in the society the way it is today.

Our celebrities are the designers.

I mean, a lot more people know who Ralph Lauren and Calvin Klein are.

I mean, than they, than they know who say Tom Cruise is.

It means a lot to people to, to where their labels, and that's what they're selling.

They're selling an image, - But images are sometimes deceiving and designers are not always the irman clad royalty.

Madison Avenue makes them out to be, take it from three in the business, from their personal and professional accounts.

The fashion industry is crazy, insane, - Fast paced.

It's exciting, it's tumultuous.

- And there's also the opposite of that.

It's, you know, working in a sweatshop.

So that's, you know, degrading in some place.

- I spoke - To Sandra Renan, her husband and partner, Edwin Schiff and Lee Curtis all are in the business and art of fashion.

And though they live and operate out of Hampton Roads, there are no strangers to the high fashion markets of New York, LA and Dallas.

- It's not glamorous at all.

And even when you, what you see on the runway shows is that's few and front.

It's once every season.

And that's their time when they get to have their fashion show.

Now, New York seventh Avenue, like your Anne Kleins or your Halston or whatever, those kind of people, I would say that's a lot more glamorous because they're no longer, you know, really doing all the hard work anymore.

They have people to do it for them, so they're able to go to the, to the parties and the showings and this and that.

But they're really the guts of the industry.

Is this is it?

- It and rein's case is the Windrow Corporation located, not on seventh Avenue, but tucked away in a crowded warehouse in Virginia Beach, where Rein and Schiff design and manufacture a line of casual knitwear that is shown in New York and marketed nationally.

- Our distribution network is set up through manufacturers reps, and if you hire the best, you get the best.

And we hired an excellent man, manufacturers reping firm in New York.

Bakken Steinberg is the name of the company.

They have everybody from Sacks, Macy's Blooming, Bloomingdale's, Nordstrom's, bullocks, Marshall Fields, Burdines.

Every major retail in America goes into their showroom - Just blocks away from the Windrow Corporation.

And on a smaller retail scale, 24-year-old Lee Curtis operates much in the traditional style of a European co designing his not so traditional line of body conscious clothing in the back room of his boutique.

A successful line demands a designer have both a trained eye for design, aesthetics and a visionary sense of what will sell.

- I'm always looking at what people are wearing, whether I'm aware of it or not.

Most of the time I'm not aware of it.

At some point, I take in enough information and my mind just spit something out.

That may be a combination of everything that I saw, but in a new way.

- When I put together a line, it takes a lot of research.

I probably read every magazine known to mankind, including things such as Newsweek, national Geographic, you know, whatever it is other than fashion magazines.

I go to Europe three times a year, mostly London.

That's where I get my direction from.

As artists.

- Dre and artists approach their cutting tables as painters would their canvases, their individual styles characterized by their choice of fabric, textures, colors, and cuts to make successful careers of their art.

However, they cannot bank on their work alone.

For, as with most artists, there are certain concessions to be made.

- America is very, very much a off the rack society.

We do not go into the small boutique and look for something different.

We don't wanna look individual, we wanna look like each other.

- There are exceptions to the the Kauri rule.

I mean, in every city you'll find somebody like Lee Card that's here, that has his own little boutique that is making clothes, that's showing his own style, and it's very good.

And the people who buy from him wanna look different.

They wanna look unusual.

They want their own individualized look.

And then there's Sandra Renan.

And Sandra Jenen has been at this for a long time.

She's finally made it, but it's taken a lot of blood, sweat, and tears to finally get it out.

- The fashion industry is big business with no golden guarantees.

Design experimentation can be costly, but despite the odds, Lee Cardis and Sandra Renan are continuing with growing success to fashion careers from their art and doing it here in Hampton Roads, - Hampton Roads continues to be without a professional symphony orchestra.

Musicians of the Virginia Symphony continue to walk a picket line in their five week old strike and negotiations.

To end it are at a standstill.

At issue is a labor contract between the musicians and management of the orchestra covering the musicians wages and benefits.

In recent days, the musician turned down a management request to bring back into the negotiations of federal mediator.

The musicians say they want management to make a new wage offer before they'll agree to meet with a mediator.

Meanwhile, the musicians have announced they will perform a benefit concert Saturday evening at seven 30, November 5th in the Virginia Beach Pavilion Theater.

For our place, our time, I'm Tim Morton.

We'll have - Order in this court.

Legend has it that a ghost haunts this famous house in Colonial Williamsburg.

It's the home of George with the beloved teacher of Thomas Jefferson.

I wonder if the Lady Skipwith, who is purported to live here in the with house, is in communion with the famous spirit of our next story.

Her name is Grace Sherwood, the witch of Pungo.

Last summer, actors of colonial Williamsburg recreated the famous trial of grace, a trial for witchcraft.

The year was 1706.

Grace was from Princess Anne County in what is now Virginia Beach.

She was independent of spirit.

Shed trouble with her neighbors and she was thought to be a witch.

But her trial for witchcraft was unprecedented in the history of Virginia.

Our story is the result of Tim Morton's research.

- And Mr. Sheriff, you may begin.

Yes, sec.

- Oye.

Oye Oye silence is commanded in this court.

Why her majesty's governor and counsel are sitting upon pain - Of imprisonment.

First, that the said, grace Sherwood of Linhaven Parish in Princess Anne County in her majesty's colony of Virginia, did at the instigation of the devil, willfully and felonious be which diverse persons goods and livestock in the afor said county.

Then she bewitched me.

She got - Up on my back as if I were a horse and rode me around the countryside.

And after she'd done that, she brought me back to my house.

And then she turned herself into a small black cat.

And then she disappeared through the - Keyhole, sir.

And did with malice and forethought by the use of witchcraft, caused the death by miscarriage of an unborn child of the realm to wit one unnamed child of Luke and Elizabeth Hill, also of Princess Ann County.

- Lay in my bed with pains, tearing in my stomach.

And then, and then I lost my baby.

I lay there in the agony and then she came to my house to visit her handiwork.

- We will have order in this court.

My wife, sir, - She lost a child.

She lost our unborn child.

I know that it was grace.

What killed - Our child.

We will have Order in this court - Was Grace Sherwood, really a witch.

Colonial Williamsburg.

Actors have restored for us the alleged circumstances of one trial.

We can learn about others and more about grace from actual court records, which survive here at the Princess Ann Courthouse in Virginia Beach.

Grace Sherwood was a litigious soul.

She was forever suing people or people were suing.

Incidentally, this is order book number one of Princess Anne County.

It's beautiful thing, beautiful to hold.

We find one of the early mentions of Grace Sherwood is here.

Whereas a complaint was brought against Grace Sherwood on suspicion of witchcraft by Luke Hill.

And then we see several other references before we get to this one.

I love the way it works in the margin.

Sherwood ducked, this is the famous scene of the Witch duck, whereas on complaint of Luke Hill and in behalf of the majority, and it skips down and talks about all the spectators there.

They gathered here a beautiful point on the Linhaven River, where once stood the county courthouse in jail, - July the 10th, 17 six.

And it was a beautiful day, a beautiful summer day.

- Mrs. Florence Turner is the author of a history of Princess Anne County.

- Well, grace had been in and out of, of of court so many times that they, the judges finally got tired of it.

So they asked her to agree to what was called trial by water.

Well, she knew because it was common knowledge that trial by water, if she drowned, she'd be thrown in the water.

And if she drowned, she would be innocent.

But if she, if she came to the top and did not drown, then she was guilty of witchcraft.

They did this cross thing that they tied her right thumb to her, left big toe, her left thumb to her right big toe.

So it was crossed like this.

They, they wrapped in a blanket, carried her out to a boat and went and she was rode out to the deep water by these men, appointed by the court.

And they ripped off the blanket and threw her in.

Well, grace was too smart for him.

She not only could swim, but she got those, those ropes untied in no time and came back up to the surface and waved to the crowd.

Now the crowd was thick here.

They had come from all over because of these trials had gone on so long, it had become a cause celeb in the whole territory.

And so everybody was watching eagerly to see if she was a witch or not.

- Chag grinned that grace had come to the surface.

The man in the boat hung a heavy Bible around her neck and threw her in again.

- Again.

She came up without the Bible.

She had gotten rid of that.

And then she swam around, up and down here waving to the crowd, singing and laughing and having a good time.

She was, as you know, very independent.

And she liked an audience.

Well, she, but she had not drowned.

So the law said that she was a witch.

So unfortunately, she had to be imprisoned again.

And for eight long years, she was in the common jail in the courthouse over there.

But by that time, all the hysteria about witchcraft had died down and nobody cared anymore.

So the Governor, governor Spotswood, it was then not only released her, but gave her 145 acres of land adjoining what she already owned down on Muddy Creek.

- This is the house on Muddy Creek Road in Pungo that Mrs. Turner and others believed.

Grace Sherwood lived in the last 25 years of her life, not bothered anymore by her neighbors.

What do you think Grace must have looked like - To me?

And most of us who have been here for some time and heard the story, all the stories about her, we think she was tall and dark and very good looking.

We feel that most of these court cases that people brought against her was because the women were jealous.

- How did Grace die?

- Her body was never found because when she was dying, she asked her son to put her feet in the warm ashes.

She was cold, he turned around, looked back, she was gone up the chin.

Me.

Now that's one of the stories.

But there are many about grace, and they, they get better and better all the time as the, as the stories are retold and retold.

Gentlemen of this court, have you reached a verdict?

- Lorraine Twiz and Tom Espanola play music as lovely as their names.

They played formally with a now legendary folk music group called Trapezoid.

Tom and Lorraine live in little Washington, just off the Skyline Drive.

And their music evokes the pictures of beautiful wildflowers and peaceful mountains.

- You tried it all.

All you've tried it, all you've taken, set it down, let it touch you.

- In this season of witches, goblins, and ghosts, we turn next to a tale of how friendly and ancestral spirits are helping their descendants discover good feelings about themselves.

Becky live's journey to Somerset Plantation, just south of Crestwell, North Carolina, which is itself just south of Edenton, to observe happy homecoming to ancestral hos.

- For most of us, the word homecoming, especially at this time of year, means going back to an alma mater football.

And some of those, do you remember when stories?

But for some 3000 descendants of slaves and slave owners from the Somerset Plantation in northeastern North Carolina, the word homecoming means connecting with an almost forgotten ancestry.

- Talk this place up wherever you, - In pursuit of answers to questions posed by her teenage daughter.

After viewing the TV miniseries based on Alex Haley's roots, Dorothy Sproul Redford began 10 years of dedicated research that would culminate in the Somerset Homecoming.

- So when I came here, first of all, there was a lot of anticipation.

I was in a dream world.

I thought I would see houses and there's a cemetery or something that I could touch that would, you know, validate for me.

Yes, this is the place.

So in one sense, I was very, very let down, very hurt to come to the place that I had the paper trail to and find nothing tangible that let me know that anyone black, much less my ancestors were ever here.

But at the same time, there was a feeling of connectedness, a feeling of ownership almost.

'cause I knew I was walking land.

My ancestors had walked.

And I had identified a place - That place not far from Columbia, North Carolina, where Redford was born, a plantation that stretched over more than 5,000 acres of land.

And in its heyday had 350 slaves.

In 1785, Josiah Collins, the first and two partners, bought what would eventually become Somerset Plantation.

They also bought 120 slaves from surrounding counties and 80 from Africa.

Some of those would retain the name Collins.

By 1828, Josiah Collins II owned Somerset Plantation.

And in that year he bought 37 slaves from a man named Littlejohn.

They too would retain that name and it would be passed on eventually becoming the maiden name of Dorothy Sproul Redford's mother.

- As it happens, slaves imitated their owners.

They retained their surnames of birth no matter how many owners they went to.

And owners may have called them differently, but they emerged after, after, after 1865 with the surname of their family's first owner.

- Because the slaves retained original surnames, Redford was able to trace a slave list done at Somerset in 1865 in family groups to the 1870 senses where all the surnames appeared for the first time in public record.

Another contributing factor that greatly aided redford's research was the meticulous records kept by Josiah Collins, not unlike many owners of very large plantations.

- What he did was to keep families together.

And he did that as a a, a method of discipline.

There were never more than 10 whites here, there were 350 blacks here.

So in keeping a husband and a wife and children as an intact family, the threat of a husband losing his family served as a discipline too.

- The intact family evolved into a slave population with two or three generations in the same place.

Another factor contributing to traceable surnames included among the thousands of descendants that Redford would trace through those 21 surnames would be at least 85% of the blacks living in nearby creswell, North Carolina.

Barbara Leary remembers her dad driving his youngsters by the cemetery, where many slaves are buried and down the driveway lined with cypress trees that he pointed out were planted by their ancestors.

And they'd visit the plantation as well, where ancestors were slaves.

- I find myself now, as I come up and volunteer my work here in my service, I want to keep on working because I think of those descendants that work so hard in the laundry, in the milk room, in the kitchen or wherever may have you, - Do you sometimes have that feeling that some of your ancestors are right here with you, that they're just kind of rooting you - On?

Sure.

Yes, yes, yes.

I, I could imagine my great-grandmother, whatever, walking on these grounds and as I walk, I can imagine them being beside me.

- High school principal and Maryland State Senate majority leader, Clarence Blo said his initial reaction to homecoming was negative.

- Slavery was here and, and people were treated in hu in human ways.

They were shout out prophets and wanted to read about it in a book, have a professor lecture to you, but then to realize, hey, this is my great-grandfather.

This was my grandfather in my case.

That's different.

That connects you personally.

And I didn't want it and I didn't like it.

But what I could do is to be a part of the dream of those who lived here and worked here under slavery.

I'm a part of that anyway.

And, and, and to realize that the generations coming forth, doing, we are walking on the backs of those who, who served here.

- I'm proud of my heritage and my feelings for slavery.

Well, the bitter ones are sort of pushed in the background.

It's amazing 'cause most people right here are related to you.

You didn't know that - Descendants of Josiah Collins, surprisingly felt proud of what was happening here.

They had no regrets that the plantation had been lost by the family after the Civil War.

- It was, it was a dismal place when I came in 1930.

It was no paint on it and all really looked sad and there was nothing inside.

But I think they've done such a wonderful job restoring it and preserving it and getting people to give period furniture.

It's wonderful to see so much interest in the place.

- All was not reflection on meaning.

Of course, after all, this was a celebration and there was entertainment that gave b glimpses of slave life on the plantation.

Not only the struggle, but the joy of a young slave couple's wedding at the slave folk celebration called John Konner.

Or Nu the name.

It still carries to this day in the Caribbean where it originated in the 18th century.

It was the golden opportunity for slaves to feel free at Christmas time.

The one or two weeks of freedom that junk Nu afforded slaves was nothing like the freedom their descendants are grateful for today.

In remembering them, - I'm reminded of Mr. Washington of Tuskegee fame who said, judge me not by the heights to which I have ascended, but judge me rather by the deaths from which I have arisen.

- So it gives us a sense of feeling connected and apart.

Kind of validates your whole existence.

- I believe if you believe in your descendants, your fore parents, then you have to believe in yourself.

And - That is what we call real black - Pride.

Black pride.

Black pride.

Next week on our place, our time, we're going to take a look at what it took to bring down one of Norfolk's earliest skyscrapers.

We'll also have a profile of Glenn White.

Glenn was one of the world's leading ballet dancers, but he's come home now.

He's come home to direct the ballet company where he first started his dance career.

I'm Vianne Webb.

Join us next time on our place, our time.