Tag: 10th Massachusetts

Breaking Up By Letter

On By kittycalashIn Events, Living History, Reenacting2 Comments
Mr S, always slightly suspicious

Mr S and I joined other members of the 10th Mass and National Park Service staff and volunteers at the North Bridge in Concord, Mass last Saturday for the postponed reading of the Declaration of Independence. It was one of those perfect New England summer days, breezy blue skies and dry wind smelling of grass and flowers: days like that I finally get the Transcendentalists.*

Some of those present in modern and historic clothes alike had never heard or read the Declaration all the way through; it is one of my favorite documents, and not just because I was in a 5th grade play about the document. Questions of slavery and principles aside, the Declaration is a great poem of a break-up letter. It makes poetry of the list of King George III’s crimes and reminds us of the core principles that undergird our government and that began with the Magna Carta, limiting the power of the king.

Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed

Leaning against a tree near the North Bridge, you could close your eyes to the shorts and kayaks and baseball caps and listen to a document being read as it would have been 238 years ago, and imagine what it was like to hear this for the first time (at least until the airplane passed overheard).

I have a complicated relationship with patriotism, which makes me a curious candidate for this living history business. But that moment in Concord reminded me of the enthusiasm I had for history as a child, and the passion I had for what educators now call narrative play, and what some of us now grown up call reenacting, and others call historical re/creation.

There is something we can learn, as participants, and that the public can learn, as we go about this business of re-investigating the past, through making clothing and reading and cooking and re-learning historic processes and crafts. We may not always learn what we expect to about the past or about our selves, but if some in the audience enjoyed the smell of grass in the wind, and heard the true poetry of Jefferson’s text, maybe that’s enough to be getting on with. Because for all the questions about how a musket works, the real point of all of these events isn’t the musketry, it’s the history.**

*They clearly did not wake up to the “what the hell’s that smell?” game tidal canals like to start on summer mornings.

** Sorry, lads, but I think it’s true: wars are about words backed by muskets or other weapons.

Musical Monday: Chester

On By kittycalashIn Events, History, Living History, Reenacting
Virtue Rewarded
Virtue Rewarded

Saturday was Flag Day, but you knew that, right? There are a lot of holidays we no longer pay much attention to, from Armed Forces Day (when Mr S and I once hosted a very amazing and lengthy party in an 1870s brick row house in St. Louis) to Arbor Day to Flag Day.

To celebrate the Bicentennial of the Star Spangled Banner, the Paul Revere House asked us (which means Mr HC) to lead the visitors in the national anthem. “Never miss an educational opportunity” could be one of the 10th Massachusetts’ mottoes, so with the regimental colors unfurled, the time was right to lead the assembled company in a rendition of Chester, written in 1770 and perfected in 1778 by William Billings, and the song to which the men are accustomed to march. (It is also the song mostly likely to play accidentally on my phone while it’s in my pocket.)

So here they are, the 10th Massachusetts and Members of the Publick, led in Chester by Mr Cooke.

 

As mentioned elsewhere, it is nearly impossible to read and sing simultaneously. It is also clear that we do not generally sing in our daily lives, or not nearly as often as people did in the past. Most of us think we have awful voices and refuse to sing, though we endure singing in school, or did. It’s an art that we should enjoy more and more often. You don’t have to be Idina Menzel to please the right audience (in my case, some cats).

History is Not a Competition

On By kittycalashIn Events, History, Living History, Reenacting1 Comment
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Drilling by the Sergeant

Saturday was my first post-operative foray into costumed interpretation, up to Paul Revere House on Flag Day. This went much better than my first attempt at Paul Revere House, which ended in ignominy as I missed the train. In April, I managed to convince Mr S to drive in Boston, which he usually refuses to do (in fact, he nearly abandoned me once at the Old State House one Saturday after a miserable drive that had us stuck in the Downtown Crossing vortex).

I’m so glad we managed this, Despite anticipatory near-tears and epic pouting by the Young Mr, we managed to have a rather nice time.

Poise, with extra elevation by the Young Mr
Poise, with extra elevation by the Young Mr

We were in the courtyard, and Mr HC and Mr FC told the story of Amasa Soper’s company and its members several times to the streams of tourists. They solicited recruits and ran them through the 1764 drill using the nicest wooden muskets I’ve ever seen, though with mixed results. Some new volunteers held their muskets backwards, and the Young Mr’s ramrod got stuck in the barrel, though that is a known issue with that particular musket.

I sat on my ladder-back chair near the house and made the tiniest hems I could on Mr S’s next shirt, which will be for best. People asked about the sewing and my clothes, and I had a chance to talk about what women wore, typical fabrics and fibres, supplying the army, and who made what.

The day was warm, but fortunately not overwhelming, and as a museum person, I found the crowd quite interesting. This is a facet of Boston I don’t usually see: the tourist experience.

In one memorable moment, a pair of young women stood just outside the door to the house.
Young Woman Number One: “Is this really his house?”
Young Woman Number Two: “Yes, this is where Paul Revere lived.”
YWNO: “Oh, my God! I’m so excited! This is so neat!”
Kitty Calash: <eats heart out with jealousy> “Why can’t my museum do that?”

The celebrity factor of Paul Revere is undeniable. There were tourists with guide sheets in Chinese, and tourists who made me wish I still remembered my college German. Some seemed to be hitting every Boston landmark they could in one day, carrying white cardboard pastry boxes; some seemed to be going more slowly, looking, and trying to figure out what they were seeing, and what it meant.

Virtue Rewarded
Virtue Rewarded

What living history means is something I’ve been thinking about lately, or trying to. It’s tangled up with questions of authenticity and appropriateness, but what I learned on Saturday, or re-learned, was how very happy this business makes me. I like history, and historic costume. It doesn’t matter to me if we are talking Revolutionary War or New Republic or Lewis and Clark.

My favorite visitors were a mother and daughter from Steamboat Springs, Colorado, visiting Boston for the first time with a young man from New Hampshire. The mother said, “There’s so much more history here than where we’re from. Our town’s only 100 years old.”

That’s a challenge I’m always ready for, so I asked where they were from. Colorado to me means Native American settlements reaching back a thousand years, Spanish explorers and conquistadors, French, and then American, fur traders. It means hundreds of years of history, and a chance to remind people this isn’t a competition for “oldest” or “mostest.”

Knowing where our country came from is important: so yes, please visit Boston, and Paul Revere House, and Providence and Newport, too! But knowing where you are is just as important. There’s history all around you, and your local historical site, society and museum would love to tell you about it.

Tactical Strategies

On By kittycalashIn Events, Living History, Reenacting

One of the things I liked best about this year’s School of Instruction was the Petite Guerre demonstration that followed a discussion of those tactics by Dr Stoltz of the 5th NY.

Mr McC & the Young Mr share a tree; note British officer and Hessian

Demonstrating skirmishes instead of linear warfare makes sense, given the numbers of men who take the field at events, and the smaller engagements will reflect exchanges common between the sides during the war.

What I like in particular is that using ‘petite guerre’ tactics requires the commanders and soldiers to tailor their actions to a site (site specific immersive experience: you cannot go wrong) and as the action unfolds, soldiers at all ranks are forced not only to move but also to think. Any action where the interpreters have to think is likely to create a better experience for visitors—and no great surprise, that usually makes a better experience for interpreters. It also flatters the site managers and visitors, who will appreciate that you’ve taken the time to explore and understand their place, and its place in history.

While you don’t necessarily want to fight the Battle of the Comfort Station, skirmishing around a site with buildings provides an objective, while multiple buildings and some woods or undergrowth provide cover for the Light Infantry troops and opportunities for deceit.

Of course, depending on troop size, it may be that each man needs his own tree. On Sunday, the Young Mr kept close to Mr McC, demonstrating troop [leg] length.

It’s hard to be invisible when you’re tall.

But I do mean this seriously: scaling events to available resources allows for a better interpretation.

That’s common sense, and sound museum practice, and that’s pretty much the business living history practioners (aka reenactors), are in: interpreting the past to visitors. Best practices for professionals and hobbyists are grounded in the same principles:

  • Primary source research
  • Material culture research
  • Site, resource, and audience- appropriate delivery
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Direction provided by Mr C with spontoon.

Building an encampment and tactical demonstration on the first two principles grounds the event in in historical authenticity. Adding the third principle, and increasing the use of smaller group tactics, tailored to the participants and site, would be a subtle but strategic shift to build a more engaging experience that better educates visitors and might even attract new recruits.