A small disquisition on hoeing, boredom, and starvation

Many of these days lately I have spent much of my time hoeing among the corn hills in the field outside the fort.  Not long ago, while I was bent to my task, I gradually grew aware that someone was watching me.  I straightened up slowly (in negotiation with my arthritis), and turned to discover that I was being closely observed by a small boy.

“Howdy,”  I said.  He continued to study me with a serious face.  At length he seemed to gather himself up.  I could see a question coming.

“Isn’t that.., what you’re doing..,  isn’t it like..,  you know..,    just really boring?” 

I stood pondering for a few moments.  It was a serious question and deserved a serious answer. 

“Well,”  I said,  “that’s a pretty good question.  A lot of people watching me hoe this corn every day must wonder the same thing, but you’re the first one who’s ever asked me. 

So let’s think about it.   —   If you were here in this field hoeing corn some two hundred and thirty years ago, when everything for a hundred miles in every direction was a howling wilderness and you were all alone out here with just your young wife and a baby waiting for you back in the cabin, and you were working hard to bring on a crop of corn and beans and squash, somehow I really doubt that the question of whether or not you were bored would even occur to you. 

 The only question you’d be asking yourself is whether, come the first heavy snows of November, you would have enough food laid by to see you through the next five or six months, or whether this would turn out to the winter that you and your family would starve.”

The abrupt ending, landing emphatically on the verb starve, and just stopping there, made his eyes grow wider. 

“Oh,”  he said.

Recruiter for General Hand to be at Pricketts Fort, July 4

To All Brave, Healthy, Able Bodied and Well Disposed Young Men, in this Vicinity, Who have any Inclination to Join the Troops now Raisng under General Hand, at Fort Pitt, for the Defence of the Liberties & Independence of the United States against the Hostile Designs of Foreign Enemies

TAKE NOTICE,

that Saturday, July Fourth, at Pricketts Fort, Monongalia County, at the confluence of the Monongahela River & Pricketts Creek, attendance will be given by Captain Springer of the Monongalia County militia, commanded by Colonel Zacquill Morgan, for purpose of receiving the enrollment of such youth of spirit, as may be willing to enter into this HONOURABLE service.

The ENCOURAGEMENT at this time, to enlist, is truly liberal & generous, namely, a bounty of TWELVE dollars a year in GOLD & SILVER money on account of pay, the whole of which the soldier may lay up for himself & friends, as all articles proper for his subsistence & comfort are provided by law, without any expence to him.

Those who may favour this recruiting party with their attendance as above, will have an opportunity of hearing & seeing, in a more particular manner, the great advantages which these brave men will have, who shall embrace this opportunity of spending a few happy years in viewing the different parts of this beautiful continent, in the honourable & truly respectable character of a soldier, after which, he may, if he pleases, return home to his friends, with his pockets FULL of money & his head COVERED with laurels.

GOD SAVE THE UNITED STATES

Idyllic days on the old Virginia frontier . . .

It’s not all tomahawk throwing & telling tall tales around the campfire out here on the romantic Virginia frontier, not by a long shot ….

Day to day life at the fort is just a bit more prosaic. Take Two Hawks here, passing an idyllic Spring morning mucking out the sheep pen — ah, that redolent rural air — Even a footloose Shawnee brave has to wade into it once in a while. It will take fifteen or twenty wheelbarrow-loads to get the pen cleaned out, followed by a liberal scattering of lime and clean straw and filling the feed trough with fresh hay.

Meanwhile twin lambs Polar Bear & Panda Bear inspect the first load, prior to its dumping on the fallow garden plot.

At the end of it all, Two Hawks takes a well-earned breather, sits on a stump, pulls a knife from his sash, examines its keen glistening edge in the morning light, and sets to scraping the muck from his mocassins.

Ancestral Wars

On May 25th, Memorial Day, Pricketts Fort held observances in memory of the men from Pricketts Fort who served in the following wars: the French & Indian War, Pontiac’s Uprising, Lord Dunmore’s War and the American Revolution. The ceremony also memorialized the descendents of these men who served in the Civil War.

At the time of the French & Indian War and Pontiac’s Uprising, Pricketts Fort was not yet in existence, but Jacob Prickett and his two compatriots, James Chew and Zacquill Morgan, participated in these wars while serving in the Frederick County militia in Virginia in the 1760s. These three men would go on to organize the civilian militia on Jacob Prickett’s land at the confluence of Pricketts Creek and the Monongahela River a decade later.

The original refuge fort on Prickett’s land was built by civilian militia in the spring and early summer of 1774 in response to an uprising of the Mingo and Shawnee tribes sparked by the murder of Chief Logan’s family by a band of rogue frontiersmen. This would lead in turn to Lord Dunmore’s War, in which the Pricketts Fort militia were active participants.

During the Revolutionary War, the Pricketts Fort militia participated in putting down a Tory uprising in Washington County, Pennsylvania, and in campaigns to suppress Native hostilities.

As part of the Memorial Day observances, four stations were set up near and in the fort, representing the French & Indian War,

Lord Dunmore’s War,

the Revolutionary War

and the Civil War,

manned by historical interpreters with an in-depth knowledge of those conflicts. Visitors with an interest in any of these wars could engage in conversation with the interpreters and examine a blanket filled with articles that a soldier in any of these wars would have carried.

On the hour at 11 a.m. and 3 p.m., the following brief address was given to an assembly of visitors in front of the fort gate:

“Traditionally, Memorial Day has been an occasion not only of remembering our war dead, but also an occasion for forgiveness, for putting old enmities to rest, for burying the hatchet.

Looking back at the wars which we are remembering here today — the Indian wars of the 1760s and ‘70s, the Revolutionary War and the Civil War — for the families who lived here on the frontier, all these wars were wars of Americans fighting Americans. Whether it was colonial Americans fighting native Americans, colonial rebels fighting colonial loyalists, or northern Americans fighting southern Americans, in every case it was Americans on both sides fighting for their homeland, fighting for their idea of what America was and what it should become.

In this gathering of Americans here today it is a safe bet that many of us had ancestors who not only fought in those wars, but fought on both sides in those wars. Old enemies who spilled one another’s blood had descendents in whom that same blood became mingled.

Memorial Day had its birth in the aftermath of the Civil War. It began with a small article from 1867 in the New York Tribune, which noted: ‘…the women of Columbus, Mississippi have shown themselves impartial in their offerings made to the memory of the dead. They have strewn flowers alike on the graves of the Confederate and of the National soldiers.’

Not long after this, a northern speaker referred to the same incident: ‘…the widows, mothers, and the children of the Confederate dead went out and strewed their graves with flowers; at many places the women scattered them impartially over the unknown and unmarked resting places of the Union soldiers…’

Within a year the response to this story had resulted in one state after another passing a law which recognised ‘Decoration Day’, a day for decorating the graves of the war dead with flowers. In time, these state Decoration Days would become a single federal Memorial Day, a day for remembering the war dead of the nation.

Memorial Day Observances at Pricketts Fort to be held on Monday, May 25

Memorial Day observances at Pricketts Fort will feature interpreters at four separate stations arrayed across the Pricketts Fort grounds, representing the following four wars in which men from Pricketts Fort or their descendents, saw service: The French & Indian War; Lord Dunmore’s War; the Revolutionary War and the Civil War.

Each interpreter will be dressed as a militiaman or soldier from his respective war, and will speak to visitors about the role of men from Pricketts Fort and the surrounding area in each conflict.

In the case of the French & Indian War the interpreter will be a Shawnee warrior.

At 11 a.m. and at 3 p.m., a wreath-laying ceremony will take place, together with a militia firing. Interpreters will be at their stations throughout the day, from 10 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. The public is encouraged to attend.

From Sheep to Shawl: visitors witness the entire process, start to finish…

Visitors to Pricketts Fort on Saturday, May 16th, were able to witness an archaic activity from the eighteenth century which, in its essentials, has changed little from Biblical times: the manufacture of a woolen garment from sheep to finished product

First, the shearing of the sheep with hand shears, resulting at the end of the process, in a pile of shorn wool known as the “fleece”.

Next, after the fleece is thorougly washed and dried, the wool is “picked” — that is, the “locks” of wool are separated into fluff, which prepares it for carding and permits any extraneous debris to fall from the wool.

Next, the wool is “carded”, which pulls the fibers straight and parallel.

The carded wool is then laid carefully into a basket, in readiness for spinning.

Here the carded wool is being spun (twisted) into one long continuous strand and wound onto a spindle.

Here the spun wool is transferred from spindle to shuttle, in readiness for weaving.

Finally, at the loom, the weaver adds “woof” to the “warp” by means of sliding the loaded shuttle (woof) back and forth through the lengthwise threads (warp), a basically simple process which is actually remarkably complex.

Meanwhile, the shorn sheep are led back to their pen with the promise of an early supper. For a while the lambs all bawl in distress, unable to find their mothers and alarmed at finding themselves in the company of unrecognisable strangers. Only gradually do they grow to realise that the strangers are, in fact, their own father and mothers.

At the same time the shorn adults are similarly confused, and not a little annoyed, at finding themselves among strangers, and irritatedly shove one another about without the least sense that they themselves are equally unrecognisable.

Finally, once the true identities of everyone are realized and peace returns to the pen, the three adults and three lambs settle down happily to the business of eating . . .

Sheep to Shawl Day, this Saturday, May 16

Our new lambs say: “Come watch how sheep are sheared and then see the various processes involved in preparing wool including carding, spinning and weaving!”

Regular admission applies. Contact: info@prickettsfort.org, 304-363-3030.

Strolling through the Old Camp Ground: the Civil War weekend, continued….

There are really two different periods of American history to be found here at Pricketts Fort. The first period, of course, is the frontier period, centered around the year 1774 during the uprising of the Mingo and Shawnee tribes under Chief Logan and Lord Dunmore’s War which immediately followed. This was the year when the original Pricketts Fort was built. The fort and its militia remained active during the years of the Revolutionary War.

The other historical era represented at Pricketts Fort is the Civil War period, centered around the Job Prickett House which was built in 1859, eighty-five years after the construction of the original fort. Many of the same families who provided men for the Pricketts Fort militia during the colonial era, also sent men eighty-five years later to serve in various West Virginia units during the Civil War, families such as the Pricketts, the Morgans, the Ices, the Lemasters, the Robinsons, the Snodgrasses, and the Springers, to mention but a few among many.

Today, visitors to Pricketts Fort can see artifacts and activities spanning three key generations of American history, from the late colonial frontier to the cataclysm of the Civil War, from the era of hand tools to the era of industrial mass production. The middle of these three generations would have been born on the frontier and lived to see the wilderness obliterated by all the dubious fruits of Progress: factories, railroads, timber-barons, lawyers, politicians, bureaucrats and bankers. The world of the 1860s would have appeared inconceivably alien to the pioneers of the 1770s, yet this span of unprecedented transformation was bridged by a single generation: many of the sons and daughters of men who served in the Revolutionary War lived to see their own grandsons march off to fight in the Civil War.

For this past Civil War weekend, members from the Jacob’s Meadow Battery, including the 11th PVI, the 140th Pennsylvania and the West Virginia Light Artillery Co. F provided historic displays. Friday the 24th was set aside especially for school tours.

The following day, Saturday the 25th, Jacob’s Meadow Battery members set up stations to demonstrate the following subjects: Artillery, Infantry, Cavalry (dismounted), Ladies Activities, Ladies Wear and the Drummer Boy. Music from the Civil War period was provided by Wha-ke-we-nn. Tours of the Job Prickett House were also provided.

As can be seen, the photographs for this post were taken during a lull in the activities, when the re-enactors could settle more completely into their period personae, and the atmosphere of bygone days insinuate itself more thoroughly into the nooks & crannies of the Old Camp Ground.

Jones Imboden Raid Civil War Day

 

In April 1863 Confederate forces invaded Fairmont, Virginia (now West Virginia) in an attempt to gain control of the strategic B&O Railroad and capture Francis Pierpont, Governor of the Re-Organized Virginia.

On April 24th and 25th, Pricketts Fort commemorated this raid with two days of Civil War events and activities.  I am still in the process of gathering together photographs from several photographers and, once I have done so, I will mount a proper photographic tour of the event here on this blog.  Please check back in a couple of days.

Frontier nativity scene

At the original Nativity, sheep were only innocent bystanders, witnesses to a mystery they could not comprehend. At the Pricketts Fort stable, however, the infant at the center of attention was herself a sheep. And the day of her birth was not Christmas, but Easter (hence her name, “Esther”). And don’t her parents, Atticus and Sara, look proud? Only it isn’t Sara who is her mother, but Nellie, who is somewhere just out of the picture, doubtless looking after Sara’s twins, who are also nearby. It’s all a bit confusing. Atticus, for his part, isn’t a bit confused, as he is sire to all the lambs. He’s waiting for the Three Wise Farmers to show up, bearing oats & hay.