Steamboat Era Museum Open for the 2022 Season!
April 1, 2022 @ 10:00 am - 4:00 pm
The Steamboat Era Museum will begin the 2022 season on Friday April 1 with new exhibits, the fully restored Potomac pilothouse, new hours and more. Spring hours, April -May, are Friday, Saturday & Monday 10am-4pm. The museum will also be open on Sunday 1-4pm.
Visitors will be able to walk through the Potomac pilothouse, turn the wheel and ring the engine bell in the wheelhouse and learn about the men who captained the steamers during her long career. A new video, in one of the crew quarters, illustrates the restoration and installation of the pilothouse in 2019. Original pieces of the pilothouse are on display and one of the crew quarters has been left in its original condition when the restoration began to give and visitors an appreciation of the hard work it took to bring the structure back to her original glory.
Steamboat Era Museum is proud to announce a new interactive exhibit based on Against the Tide: The Turbulent Times of a Black Entrepreneur, a book about the life and times Captain Hansford C. Bayton.
Bayton was born in Essex County, the illegitimate son of an African-American woman and a Native-American. He rose from very humble beginnings to become the captain and owner of four excursion and mail steamboats that plied the Rappahannock River during the late 19th and early-20th centuries. During the difficult Jim Crow period in American history when segregation was the law of the land, Bayton acquired wealth and the respect of both blacks and whites.
Eventually, all his boats were destroyed by suspicious fires and he lost everything. But this is not the story of despair, but rather of one man’s dignified courage and determination to succeed in tumultuous times. He was a man truly ahead of his time.
The exhibition on Captain Bayton, Against the Tide: The Astonishing Life of a Black Steamship Captain, allows the visitor to not only read about Bayton’s life but to hear him tell his own story. It tells Bayton’s story from his birth in 1863, the year of the Emancipation Proclamation, to his death in 1927, the year Charles Lindbergh made the first trans-Atlantic flight.
This singular, amazing story of one African-American family’s experience during the Steamboat Era breaks new ground and sheds new light on a previously unknown slice of Northern Neck history. It is our hope that this exhibition will inspire visitors to think about perseverance and courage in the face of discrimination and to make a difference in the lives of others.
Admission
Adults $6.00 – Youth 12-17 $3.00
Active military & Children under 12 Free
Group Rate 10+ $5.00
Organizer
Irvington Steamboat Era Museum
(804) 438-6888
director@steamboateramuseum.org
Steamboat Era Museum Open for the 2022 Season!
April 1, 2022 @ 10:00 am - 4:00 pm
irvington Steamboat Era Museum , 156 King Carter Drive Irvington, VA 22480
The Steamboat Era Museum will begin the 2022 season on Friday April 1 with new exhibits, the fully restored Potomac pilothouse, new hours and more. Spring hours, April -May, are Friday, Saturday & Monday 10am-4pm. The museum will also be open on Sunday 1-4pm.
Visitors will be able to walk through the Potomac pilothouse, turn the wheel and ring the engine bell in the wheelhouse and learn about the men who captained the steamers during her long career. A new video, in one of the crew quarters, illustrates the restoration and installation of the pilothouse in 2019. Original pieces of the pilothouse are on display and one of the crew quarters has been left in its original condition when the restoration began to give and visitors an appreciation of the hard work it took to bring the structure back to her original glory.
Steamboat Era Museum is proud to announce a new interactive exhibit based on Against the Tide: The Turbulent Times of a Black Entrepreneur, a book about the life and times Captain Hansford C. Bayton.
Bayton was born in Essex County, the illegitimate son of an African-American woman and a Native-American. He rose from very humble beginnings to become the captain and owner of four excursion and mail steamboats that plied the Rappahannock River during the late 19th and early-20th centuries. During the difficult Jim Crow period in American history when segregation was the law of the land, Bayton acquired wealth and the respect of both blacks and whites.
Eventually, all his boats were destroyed by suspicious fires and he lost everything. But this is not the story of despair, but rather of one man’s dignified courage and determination to succeed in tumultuous times. He was a man truly ahead of his time.
The exhibition on Captain Bayton, Against the Tide: The Astonishing Life of a Black Steamship Captain, allows the visitor to not only read about Bayton’s life but to hear him tell his own story. It tells Bayton’s story from his birth in 1863, the year of the Emancipation Proclamation, to his death in 1927, the year Charles Lindbergh made the first trans-Atlantic flight.
This singular, amazing story of one African-American family’s experience during the Steamboat Era breaks new ground and sheds new light on a previously unknown slice of Northern Neck history. It is our hope that this exhibition will inspire visitors to think about perseverance and courage in the face of discrimination and to make a difference in the lives of others.
Admission
Adults $6.00 – Youth 12-17 $3.00
Active military & Children under 12 Free
Group Rate 10+ $5.00
