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.
