May Day celebration helps open historic home

VIRGINIA BEACH

To help celebrate the reopening of the Adam Thoroughgood House, a May Day celebration will be from 12:30 to 4 p.m. to welcome the return of spring. Starr Donlon, educator for the historic house, said the event Sunday re-creates a bit of the its history, when several May Day celebrations had been held there in the past – in 1926, 1928 and 1930.

“We’re touching back to the way the Thoroughgood House was used on three dates,” Donlon said. “So people were really enjoying the site then, and we’re hoping to reinvent that this year with our own medieval group.”

In addition to the crowning of the May Queen, there will be a parade, a choir singing Old English songs and dancing around the Maypole to help visitors usher in the start of spring.

There will also be knights jousting on horseback and competing in field games like archery. This is also historically relevant, Donlon said.

“Adam Thoroughgood was certainly a founding settler of this area,” Donlon said, adding that many early settlers – like the Thoroughgoods – traced their heritage to old European families.

“There were knights in Adam Thoroughgood’s family,” she added, “and his wife’s, going back to the 15th century.”

“He wasn’t a knight here,” she added, “but he was captain of the militia and was responsible for restoring the peace and making sure the men and women were safe.”