Handsomest bucket on the Virginia frontier

Tired of replacing the rope handle on the fort’s “old oaken bucket”, which tended to fall back into the water when not being used and was thus prone to rotting, Blacksmith Bray recently smithed and mounted a splendid little iron handle for this lucky bucket. Never mind that liberal streams of water still pour [...]

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Drop by the blacksmith shop for a look at Mr Bray’s new rifle…

A few days ago a beautiful new firearm appeared on the table just inside the door of the blacksmith shop here at Pricketts Fort. It was Greg Bray’s new rifle. Not quite a full-blown Pennsylvania longrifle from the “Golden Age”, it is based on an earlier firearm by the Lancaster county gunsmith [...]

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Winter on the Virginia frontier

The winter here on the Monongahela in recent weeks has been uncommonly hard, with temperatures remaining in the teens and even the single digits day after day, and the snow accumulating without melting. Compared with more northern regions, we have had it fairly easy, but around here it has been colder than what we [...]

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Scenes from the Christmas Market

Faithful friend of the Fort, Tom Carson, maintained a keen-eyed vigil through much of the Market, conversing with visitors and directing them from one building to another.

He was assisted at times by his compadre Queen Aliquippa, the ever-present cat-of-the-fort.
Inside the fort, the two main buildings, the Trading Post and the Meeting House, were given over [...]

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Strolling through the Fall Festival at Pricketts Fort

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First color . . .

The days have been decidedly cooler, with the result that we are all lingering a little longer beside the fires in the main cabins. There have been other signs of autumn as well: a large maple behind the Bray Blacksmith Shop took on a yellow hue almost overnight a couple of days [...]

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These autumn mornings . . .

Finally the weather has turned autumnal, with cool nights and mornings, which in West Virginia, in the river valleys, often means a heavy mist.  This shot of the fort was taken about 7:30 yesterday morning.  After the fog cleared, the day became mildly warm, sunny, and very pleasant.  Greg Bray stepped out of his blacksmith shop [...]

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The harvest begins . . .

It is now mid-August, but these so-called dog-days have been the pleasantest I can remember: more like seasonable late September than sultry mid-August. I’m sure the heat will hit us yet, but for now it has been exceptionally nice.
In the garden everything is coming rapidly into its own.   Many ears of corn are ripe and [...]

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The bolstering of a barrow . . .

As in all living history communities, the daily life of the fort goes on whether there are visitors or not.  There are always animals to be cared for, buildings to be maintained, meals to be cooked, trade articles to be made.  We don’t do much sitting around.
Recently, while mucking out the sheep pen, a job that [...]

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a fallen tree

Upon occasion a tree will fall, and one did just that sometime last night, landing close to the new wigwam. Situated as it is among a grove of mature locusts — which are not, shall we say, the most stalwart of trees — an occasional windfall such as this is only to be expected.
The fall was [...]

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