Where will you be on March 28th, now that the LTB muster is cancelled? How about HistoryCamp 2015? You can register here for free if you volunteer or for a nominal fee otherwise.
You can check out sessions here, but I know there’s a really good one on living history…because I’ll be presenting along with Elizabeth Sulock of Newport Historical Society in the Risky Business: Living History Events in Tradition Museums session. There’s a lot of other good stuff, too, so if you’re in the area, why not register so you can check it out?
I set off for Newport yesterday to spend the day at Whitehorne House with Sew 18th Century. I was pleased to have my coat, and pleased as well to see the ads for “lead colored pelisse cloths” at Nathaniel Sweet’s shop at 112 Cheapside in N’port. Everything fits better when you have some documentation.
We occupied the kitchen at Whitehorne House, interpreting the lives of mythical maids and cousins Eliza and Kitty Smith.
The Whitehorne Kitchen
We hope to save enough to reopen our millinery shop, which flourished once in Salem just a few years ago. Times are hard in Newport, but there are some promising lotteries–a $10,000 prize in the Kennebec Bridge lottery and an incredible $25,000 prize in the New York Literature Lottery! We will have to save our wages to buy even one ticket– difficult to do with so many tempting’ wares in the shop–but the rewards would well worth our efforts.
A shop on Thames Street is to let not far from the Great Friends Meeting House. We think ’tis a fine location, for while Friends may be plain, they are well dress’d. One of our visitors offered to spread the rumor that the shop is haunted, so no one else will rent it, but I worry that such a tale might drive off custom.
Gingerbread, bread-and-cheese and apples form’d our repast
Visitors called from as far away as New Jersey, New York and Connecticut, but found Mr Whitehorne at the Coffee House and Mrs Whitehorne out makin’ calls. As prominent citizens, they are busy about the town. Mrs Whitehorne is well-known for her receipts, and we were pleased to offer callers a sample of her fruited gingerbread. Indeed, ’tis delicious, though not as sticky as the late Mr S preferred.
Some visitors thought our plan to invest in woolen mills was a fine idea, and in addition to the mills on the island (there is one in Portsmouth), we hear there are several in Hartford. Providence has not the monopoly on industry she imagines.
There is much washin’ and mendin’
The laundry does pile up in a household of seven children, and since we have run out of wood, I suspect the laundress has as well. The island is short of lumber now, and wood must come from Swansea. Still, there is always mending’ to be done.
Perhaps if we had known how many visitors would call, I might have taken more care in tidyin’ up the kitchen. ‘Twas a surprise to see so many, from so far away, but we do think N’port is due for a revival. ‘Tis a busier day of visitin’ than I was accustomed to in winter at the farm on Poppasquash Neck, but with Mr Smith now dead, and our lad on a brig in the coastal trade, we could not keep the lease. I am grateful to my cousin for helpin’ me find work in such a lovely house.
Because I’ll be spending Valentine’s Day in 1820, I thought I’d try to replicate this token. News on how it turned out later… I don’t feel clever enough to write my own verse, but here is the Rhode Island example transcribed.
My love is true to none but you My heart expires for your sake And if you don’t me pity show My true and tender heart will brake
Here a question you will find A sweet question you will find Sweet is the question mark it well Heart upon heart and so farewell
My Dearest dear and Blest Devine I’ve pictured here your Heart and mine But Cupid with his fatal dart Has deeply wounded my poor heart
There between us sat a Cross Which makes me to Lament my loss But I am in hope when the Cross is hone That both our hearts will be in one
My heart is fix’t no more to Range I like my Choice to well to Change Oh that my Heart to yours could meet Then all my joys would be compleast If you take this in disdain Pray send it back from Whence it Came L M
No, we didn’t go, and I have regrets. Six weeks before the event, I thought I was working on January 3rd, and by the time the schedule changed, it was too late. Instead, you can read about Drunktailor’s experience.
Reenactors portraying Philadelphia Associators. Beverly Schaefer, Times of Trenton
The background is interesting, similar to the kind of events and projects we’ve been talking about here in RI: site- and time-specific events that combine commemoration, history, and experimental archaeology, or an emotional and social archaeology, if you will.
From event co-organizer Dave Niescior, quoted in the Rutgers-Camden News Now: “The goal is to gain a better understanding of the hardships endured by individuals who lived and made a critical moment in history.It is one thing to write ‘the troops marched overnight to Princeton,’ it is yet another to understand what that physically and mentally meant to the men who had to put one foot in front of the other all night long.” Co-organizer Matt White told NJ.com, “We’re trying to stage a number of vignettes to give people a sense of what was going on in the Continental Army in this period between late December and early January of 1776 and 1777.”
that’s cold. From Daily Reenactor
These and other collected images help convey a sense of the event, which–as far as I can tell– did provide participants with the kind of transcendent experience I know I enjoy and hope to find at events.
This is the kind of event that I think proves a belabored (and elsewhere belittled) point: accuracy matters. It is just about ALL that matters.
On a now-defunct phone, I had an old video of the Young Mr with a now-deceased reenactor of whom I was quite fond, despite our wildly divergent politics. In it, Mr D shows his Charleville to the Young Mr on the front porch of an 18th century home and asks, “Do you know what this is?” The Young Mr shakes his head, and Mr D answers, “It’s a time machine.”
Although I remain committed to reducing the degree to which living history is musket-centric, there’s truth in that statement: Mr D had an original, period Charleville and a fairly well-cut uniform, considering his generous figure. Using, showing, and interpreting actual period pieces and well-made, correct replicas is the single best way to connect the present, and the public, to the past. Accuracy matters because it’s the literal key to the past: you have to cut the pattern right.
Accurate impressions rendered in a place of shared value will transport you to the past, and give you insights you did not expect. That is the point of these exercises: insight and understanding. It’s how to get high on history.
Kirsten Hammerstrom 
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