A fake name, perhaps a fake accent, and rum. All figure into an examination of John Wyatt. Host Dutchie Jessee talks about this fascinating character with Michael Hudson, Executive Director of the Smithfield-Preston Foundation in Blacksburg. That’s the topic of this month’s Cardinal 250 podcast, which relates to our story on John Wyatt, a barrel-maker from Botetourt County who became a spy that helped uncover a “most horrid conspiracy” among Virginia Loyalists.
You can listen here:
https://www.buzzsprout.com/2354002/episodes/16952821
Check out our other Cardinal 250 podcasts:
- Stephen Wilson of the St. John’s Church Foundation, about Patrick Henry’s famous “give me liberty or give me death” speech.
- Harvey Bakari, Black history curator at the Jamestown-Yorktown Foundation on Billy Flora, a free Black man who was a hero of the Battle of Great Bridge.
- The age of the Founding Fathers (which was younger than you might think).
- The music of the Revolution.
- The legend of Susanna Bolling, a 16-year-old from modern-day Hopewell who supposedly rode overnight to save Lafayette from being captured
- Historian Garrett Channell on “forgotten founder” Andrew Lewis.
- Tom Vaughan of the Overmountain Men Trail Association.
- Essex County Museum Executive Director Tim Manley about his county’s re-enactment of the historic Essex Resolutions.
- Descendants of Black Virginians who moved to freedom in Nova Scotia after the war (and the Canadian museum dedicated to them).
- Wward-winning historian Woody Holton about “the forgotten founders.”
- Retired Virginia Commonwealth University journalism professor Jeff South about the role of the press in Colonial Virginia.
- South also talks about Clementina Rind, the first woman to publish a newspaper in Virginia.
- Cheryl Wilson, executive director of the Virginia American Revolution 250 Commission.
