The Carpenter of Colonial Williamsburg

Williamsburg was the 18th-century capital of the Virginia colony, with a bustling economy powered by the specialized skills of its tradespeople. While farmers grew food for the community and blacksmiths forged tools from iron, carpenters built the town.

In 18th-century Williamsburg, woodworking included trades like carpentry, joinery, and cabinetmaking. Joiners handled the finish work for buildings, like windows, doors, shutters, and cupboards. Cabinetmakers crafted the fine furniture that went inside.

Carpenters cut trees into usable lumber, framed walls, raised heavy timber rafters, laid floors, hung doors, and provided finishes, thus building the city. Williamsburg’s carpentry trade relied on a diverse workforce that included trained enslaved Black men.

Unlike in England, where carpenters specialized in a specific task due to the competitive market, Virginia carpenters were incredibly diverse in their output, handling a wide variety of tasks to meet the broad demands of a developing colony.

Even Williamsburg’s massive brick buildings, like the Capitol building, relied heavily on carpenters for wooden floor joists, staircases, and roof beams.

Building a typical 18th-century Williamsburg house took about a year, and a colonial carpenter labored hard from dawn to dusk. The process also relied on other tradespeople like masons and painters, and suppliers for products like handmade bricks and nails.

The construction schedule was dictated by weather. Cellars and brick foundations were laid in spring. Timber frames were raised and roofed in summer. Interior flooring and stair construction occurred in the cold fall and winter, with plastering waiting until the spring thaw.

Since space was limited, carpenters couldn’t work directly on the building site. Instead, they worked in a carpenter’s yard. There, they pre-assembled the timber frames, labeled each piece, and then took them apart for transport.

To save time and energy, carpenters carefully planed the visible top sides of floorboards to be smooth and attractive but left the hidden undersides rough and unfinished.

For 18th-century construction, the best material was old-growth timber. Slow-grown and dense with tight growth rings, this wood was incredibly strong and far more rot-resistant than the younger timber available today.

A colonial carpenter’s toolkit was simple but effective: axes to shape timber, saws to cut logs, and chisels and mallets to carve exacting mortise-and-tenon joints (a woodworking technique to join two pieces of wood) that securely locked the massive wooden building frames together.

Carpenters at The Colonial Williamsburg Foundation today practice the trade just as colonial carpenters did, using period-accurate tools and techniques. The goal isn’t merely to build a reconstructed 18th-century building, but to test historical theories about the trade, teach the public, and keep the craft alive.

To reconstruct a building from the 1700s, Colonial Williamsburg’s historic carpenters act like detectives. By examining surviving 18th-century buildings, they—along with a team of experts—can “read” the original tool marks, chalk lines, and pencil scratches left behind by their predecessors centuries ago.

Carpenters build designs drafted by architectural historians in consultation with historians, archaeologists, and curators. Additionally, they review surviving 18th-century building documents to replicate authentic colonial techniques.

Today, visitors can see Historic Trades artisans keeping 18th-century skills alive. Through their modern practice of this historic trade, carpenters ensure these vital, traditional skills—and structures—survive for the next generation and beyond.