Meet Virginie: Madeleine Bolton

Madeleine Bolton’s fingerprints are all over Colonial Williamsburg. Her footsteps, too.

That’s because Bolton, 26, who three years ago completed a six-year apprenticeship in brickmaking and masonry, is helping to make some of the tens of thousands of clay bricks used to restore, repair and build structures on the 300-acre historic site.

“The amount of clay is the pressure, you know, and stuff like that. I really like molding. I like trying to get it exactly right, trying to get it in perfectly, I think that’s kind of fun to do. Like, if they want to see how I’m doing it, I have to think in my head, ‘I have to go slower.’ What I want to do is go really fast, because it’s kind of fun to think, ‘Oooh, yeah. Put it in there, squish it,’ which is also what I think when I’m talking: ‘Slower. Don’t talk so fast,’” she says with a laugh.

But if she goes fast, Bolton can shape about 180 bricks an hour: she shapes a 5kg ball of wet clay before rolling it in fine sand and beating it into a wooden shape. From there, the still-soft shapes are emptied onto a flat surface of sand, covered with canvas and left to dry in the sun.

In the fall, Bolton will help build and stoke a massive brick kiln and, for four or five days and nights, bake the summer batch of bricks at 2,000 degrees Fahrenheit until they are a crispy purple-brown color.

It’s satisfying work, hot and monotonous. Bolton leaves occasional footprints and handprints, like a secret, collective prank by bricklayers. Look closely at Williamsburg’s original buildings and you can see Bolton’s 17th- and 18th-century counterparts: some free, many enslaved.

“For us, like I said, we work eight hours a day, like we can leave when the day is done,” she notes. “We go home and we think about the people who came before, the slave laborers, who were making all those bricks historically. They’re making them because tomorrow won’t be any different. Let’s talk about all the work and all the suffering that went into it. Because, of course, today, all of us in the brickyard, we work for a wage. And they wouldn’t have had one. Historically, the bricklayer might have worked his way up to become a merchant. But the bricklayer, he works until he can’t work anymore. And all the people on that site, the slaves, who are making all those bricks, that’s all they know.”

Bolton’s initial plan to become an epidemiologist was abandoned when COVID-19 struck his senior year at James Madison University.

“I’ve always been kind of obsessed with this topic, even in middle school, which is kind of scary in hindsight,” she says. “I was so passionate about it and eager to learn more about disease transmission and response and how we address these global problems. And then as the problem faded and how difficult it became, I became less and less excited about hitting that wall. I was thinking about other ways I could be useful.”

After graduating and looking for a few months, she landed a job in Williamsburg in 2021. She is one of about 30 apprentices working there.

“It’s probably not something that young Madeleine would have imagined doing, but I really enjoy it now. I’m a very detail-oriented person, to a fault,” Bolton admits. “So it’s a good thing, because I’ve always liked to understand things to some degree. And this gives me a multitude of ways to do that.”

The future brickmakers’ clay mill is a perfect example. It is a room-sized clay mixer with a vertical shaft that, when finished, will be connected to a horse whose hoops will move it. The clay mill also means that Bolton will no longer have to spend as much time in the pit, cutting clay barefoot, as the brickmakers of the 17th and 18th centuries did before her.

And then, you know, the horse.

“We’ve already given the horse a name. I’m very excited. Buckwheat. It’s a classic from the brickyard,” she says with a laugh.

Our partner station WVTF has been sharing the stories of people across Virginia – teachers, immigrants, business owners and others throughout the year in a “Meet Virginia” special series.

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