What would make a person put on a wool uniform in the middle of summer and run around recreating the Civil War? I have heard that question a lot in my almost 20 years of reenacting. It’s a question I ask myself sometimes on a hot Saturday afternoon in the middle of a field with a few hundred of my closest friends.
The sweat is pouring, my feet are tired and sore and the nine-pound musket feels like 90 pounds. And then the crowd applauds and the smiling faces remind me that a little inconvenience on my part is worth bringing history alive. Inspiring a young person to dive into a little bit of history -- because now it's not so boring -- is worth sleeping on the hard ground and eating soldier food.
One of the extra benefits in reenacting the Civil War in Ohio is the chance to see so many great towns and areas. My favorite? Hard to say as there are so many. Favorite memories might be easier. Like the weekend I slept in Ulysses Grant’s backyard. Or the time I slept in the Statehouse Rotunda. Or just sitting around the campfire at night telling stories and sharing memories.
If I did make a list of favorite reenacting places in Ohio, it would definitely include these two – Hale Farm in Bath and Zoar Village in Tuscarawas County. Both are filled with historic buildings and stage some of the best reenactments in the country.
Hale Farm is a great place to visit any time, but when it is filled with reenactors, it feels just like an 1860’s town. I especially like the stone buildings as they provide a cool spot on a hot summer day.
Zoar Village simply oozes with old-world charm. From the quaint small homes to the bakery (best bread I ever ate!) to the amazing gardens, you’ll find us reenactors walking through the town like tourists.
Of course, we’re there to portray soldiers and help visitors see into what life was like in the Union Army. And, that’s where the hot uniforms come in. Back then, wool was the most common fabric for clothing, winter and summer. Is it hot? Well, yes. It is hot, but we don’t mind as we know that air conditioning and other modern amenities await us at the end of the weekend. For the 325,000 Ohioans who served during the war, it was four years before they made their way home.
So, come August 13-14 (Hale Farm) and September 17-18 (Zoar Village), you’ll find me and hundreds of reenactors living the life of a Civil War soldier and loving every minute of it.
In my 24 years of reenacting I too have experienced many of the things that Mark talks of here. Made a lot of friends, experienced a lot of things that most people would never experience in their entire lives. Been places that I normally would have never visited and met people that I would have never had the opportunity to meet had it not been for reenacting. But I also learned there are some idiosyncrasies that exist in the hobby that are not so fun. It is refreshing to hear Mark (as well as many others) still have at heart the reasons they reenact, to teach others about history and share with them many of the experiences those soldiers of long ago had to endure. Those idiosyncrasies I spoke of earlier are the negative side of reenacting I have seen over the years as well that serve to detract from an otherwise wonderful avocation. There are those in the hobby that are feeding their egos and advancing their personal agendas by being a part of the reenacting community. These are the people who have wrongly turned the community of Zoar into a faux military camp every two years. Zoar was a communal society that was a pacifist community and to use it as a reenactment site is just simply wrong. Even though there were several members of the Zoar society that did join the military, that was an exception, not the rule. To mix history involving the American Civil War and a communal society such as Zoar is unacceptable as it sends mixed signals to the general populace about two completely different aspects of history. Zoar is not being used to convey educational information concerning the civil war, it is being exploited by certain individuals who have only thing in mind, to make money off the public to serve their own agendas, as I said before. I am a direct descendant of a member of the original Zoar community and I take offense at what these people are doing and so should many others.
Posted by: George Baumgardner | 07/27/2011 at 07:43 PM