# @vadogwoodnews on Instagram

- **Type:** Image
- **Original URL:** https://www.instagram.com/p/CvxLFlAuWEk
- **Gondola URL:** https://gondola.cc/posts/8210296-vadogwoodnews-instagram
- **Thumbnail:** https://img.gondola.cc/tr:w-,h-,fo-auto/thumbnails/e778ffc925.jpg
- **Posted:** 2023-08-10T15:00:42.000+00:00
- **Account Owner:** Dogwood (@vadogwoodnews) — https://gondola.cc/vadogwoodnews

## Caption

Who’s your eye immediately drawn to in this photo?

The coachman? Yeah, us too.

Benjamin Spraggins was a coachman and guide at Colonial Williamsburg for almost two decades, from 1934 to 1953. This 1946 photo captures him in the middle of his tenure.

Spraggins often drove a “sociable,” a type of open four-wheel carriage with two double seats facing each other. It was an important job at the historic site, providing a unique way to see the grounds and an insight into the history there.

“Black coachmen had an outsized role in popularizing carriage, and oxen rides as an interpretive experience for millions of visitors to the Historic Area. These men conveyed countless visiting dignitaries, great men of government, and even royalty around the restored city, skillfully handling important guests and valuable cargo on busy city streets,” a portion of an article about coachmen on the Colonial Williamsburg Foundation’s (CWF) website read. “They were also veterinarians who cared for and healed rare breed horses while also training them to respond to the slightest touch of the pull on the reins.”

In 2022, the CWF named a new carriage after Spraggins. The Associated Press reported that the tribute was “part of the museum’s ongoing reckoning over race and its past storytelling about the country’s origins and the role of Black Americans.”

ICYMI, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill, and then-Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower are in this photograph, too. They’re seated in the carriage.

📸 : AP Photo/William J. Smith
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#history #historytidbit #vahistory #ushistory #blackhistory #virginiahistory #cwf #colonialwilliamsburg #colonialwilliamsburgfoundation #historic #historicarea #historytidbit #coach #coachman #carriage #horsedrawn #horsedrawncarriage #sociable #williamsburgva #tribute #winstonchurchill #churchill #eisenhower #funfacts

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## Tags

funfacts, horsedrawncarriage, historicarea, sociable, vahistory, colonialwilliamsburgfoundation, coach, williamsburgva, cwf, blackhistory, winstonchurchill, history, carriage, eisenhower, coachman, churchill, colonialwilliamsburg, ushistory, tribute, horsedrawn, historytidbit, historic, virginiahistory

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