Tidewater lies east of the fall line of the Virginia rivers that flow into the Chesapeake—a definition that dates back to colonial times. Much of what we know of seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Tidewater comes from the writings of Captain John Smith, William Byrd II and Thomas Jefferson. Photographer and author Bryan Hatchett matches many of his stunning photographs in Tidewater Spirit with quotes from the celebrated writings of these three early Virginians.

The Virginia of Smith, Byrd and Jefferson remains, in part, our Virginia. Geography and place names are largely the same. Their accounts of what they saw, where they traveled, what’s in bloom and what’s ready for harvest will sound very familiar. The Tidewater Spirit story continues into the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries with a devastating war and its aftermath. Hatchett’s photographs are of historic Tidewater buildings as well as scenes of modern nautical commerce and farmland where ships have sailed and crops have grown for centuries.