Tag Archives: 10th Massachusetts

Less is More

25 Tuesday Nov 2014

Posted by in Events, Food, Living History, personal, Philosophy, Reenacting

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Though it may seem contrary to previous posts, there are times when I really believe less is more, and that’s when we’re out in the field.

Each year I’ve tried to improve our kit and impression by replacing or removing items, mostly to increase our accuracy but also to reduce what we carry. The less we have to carry, the less I have to pack and clean and think about and the more I can think about the history. This iteration of “What the heck can I quit?” was prompted by reports of a conversation with someone I respect, which caused me to rethink what we were hauling along and how I could change it.

The Box of Doom with the Pitcher of Inaccuracy

The Box of Doom with the Pitcher of Inaccuracy

We have stripped away most of what we used to bring for the comfort of the kid; as he has grown up, he’s needed less to feel comfortable and “at home.” We traded ground pads for bed sacks* very quickly, and we never had any iron to begin with. I’ve tried to keep within seasonal and historical cooking guidelines, but the largest hurdle and heaviest literal burden is the wooden cooler box.

Feeding the Young Mr is a tricky thing: he likes what he likes, and he likes a lot of it. What he likes are carrots, apples, and meat. There’s some swapping that can be done with seasonal fruit, but the largest hurdle is meat: if I can scrap fresh, needs-to-be-kept-cool meat, I can leave the cooler box at home. (At this moment, several gentlemen are suddenly feeling empty inside, with a taste of ash in their mouths. Dirt stew, boys: it’s coming.)

No iron, but what goes into the kettle?

I had gotten about as far as pease porridge when, in a completely costuming context, I came across links to The Sewing Academy.

The squeamish and childless may writhe at the handouts on dealing with nursing babies, hygiene, and winter clothes for children, but these Civil War resources have utility for all of us trying to be more accurate in our portrayals of the past.

I had not thought about packing frozen meat and storing it underground, and though I like the idea very much, it will not suit in cases where digging is forbidden. But it is certainly a way around the cooler box, and one I’m willing to entertain. (Check “No Refrigeration Required.”) “The Progressive Questions” help sketch out a responses to a variety of situations.

“Quoth the Mavens” contains this excellent definition: A truly progressive mind-set tries to figure out the logic of what was indeed used, rather than rationalizing modern logic into a period situation.

There’s nothing more to add to that pithy statement, but a renewed sense of dedication to accuracy and “less is more” thinking.

*As accurate as my attitude would be after resting arthritic bones on the ground, no one really needs to experience that. Call it a safety measure.

Military (History) Monday

13 Monday Oct 2014

Posted by in History, Research

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Map of the town of Providence by Daniel Anthony, 1803

Map of the town of Providence by Daniel Anthony, 1803

This past weekend, I went to an NEH workshop at the Northeastern that was really exciting: Digital Methods for Military History. If you’ve been following along here, you’ll know that I don’t just love clothes, I also love history, and military history. There’s an amazing amount of work being done that looks at the past in new ways, and that can hardly ever be bad.

I took notes both digital and analog, and tried to learn as much as I could. It’s all very exciting– I tried not to leap immediately to Map All the Data, but it’s hard not to. So much potential.

On Saturday, there were papers projects on Geographies of the Holocaust, and another on Viewshed Analyses of Iberian Fortifications— I’m mangling the title, for which I do apologize–but that last was so exciting. I began to see where the Young Mr’s love of gaming, history and warfare might come together to good effect in a scholarly way. I also saw how high school student projects mapping neighborhoods could build on work kids had already done collecting oral history narratives in grade school, and that really, high school students need digital toolboxes just as much as college students do.

Georectified map of Providence, using Mapwarper.

Georectified map of Providence, using Mapwarper.

Friday’s papers on networking were also fascinating: both the Muninn Project and Quantifying Kissinger. Digging into social and temporal connections illuminates new angles on history, or even helps find and locate men lost in battle. (Easier to do at Vimy Ridge than Stony point, of course, but applicable nonetheless.) Kissinger and the word collocation analysis was funny as well as insightful, and I think the two are often found together. Word analysis gave a sense of Kissinger and his personality that you would develop more slowly reading every document, which is why you want a historian to do the work for you.

Where does this leave me? (Map all the data!) With the firm knowledge that I need to focus very directly on one small project. John Buss seems ideal: one guy with known connections and origin, one set of letters, limited movement and short duration. (At least when compared to Arnold’s March to Quebec or all of Jeremiah Greenman’s diary.)

A discrete project seems likeliest to work on something like Neatline, once I figure out how to deal with the Omeka issue. Neatline was like a mash-up of database fields and Illustrator, so I felt pretty at home.

We also learned about Mapwarper, and georectification. That’s pretty cool stuff, too.

Georectified Providence without the underlay

Georectified Providence without the underlay

The process will require distilling the letters into data (places, dates, names); collecting maps; collecting data associated with the names– and that’s the easy part. I can imagine a map with clickable areas that link to letters, other images, stories– links building on links– but I haven’t sketched it all out yet, or even imagined a final product. First, I have to find a map.

“As much so as we can”

26 Friday Sep 2014

Posted by in History, Living History, Research

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Captain Christopher Marshall Orderly Book, 1781. Society of the Cincinnati Library.

Captain Christopher Marshall Orderly Book, 1781. Society of the Cincinnati Library.

It’s been a tougher week than usual chez Calash, what with the AP Euro History and Honors English homework and struggles of the Young Mr, early mornings at work for window installation (finally, thank you!) and a round (lost) with an Orange Line Special virus brought home by Mr S.  The bright note came in the mail, though, and thank you USPS for your really reliable and right on (this) time delivery!

I have been working to get this book from the Society of the Cincinnati Library on behalf, and at the behest, of the 10th Massachusetts. The SoC have an pretty amazing collection, and they undertook a project to have their entire collection of British and Continental Orderly books conserved. These are incredibly fragile and almost ephemeral books: they’re the daily record of orders, courts martial, movements, complaints and requests for a regiment. It’s like the notes you might keep if you had to meet with your boss and other direct reports every day and keep track of many orders affecting the several hundred unruly, hungry, and possibly irritable guys under your command. But you’re taking notes with quill and ink, in longhand, and no one is going to email minutes out later that afternoon.

Bridget Connor turned up in an orderly book, so they can have a novelistic appeal (handy for those of us who approach military history from the social history world). So far, this book has produced no Bridgets, but it has not disappointed. Reader, I wept.

This book has moved me. Take this:

The disadvantage and difficulties which from inevitable Circumstances we labour under instead of depressing should inspirit us to surmount them. That we are involved in them is only our misfortune; not to make efforts to Conquer them will be our fault: and if we cannot be so well prepared as we ought at least let us be as much so as we can.

There are sketches of the “disposition of the New hampshire Massachusetts Rhode Island and Connecticut lines.” And, as I read to the Young Mr, there is unfinished business in nasty rooms.

Some part of the Camp and about the long Barracks in particular is relaxing into nastiness. Regimental QuarterMasters have been ordered to have them Clean and keep them so. An Officer of each Company has been ordered to visit the Barracks every day and to Confine & Report those who throw bones of meat Pot Liquor or filth of any kind near the Barracks. Yet all this has been done and no report has been made. it is hatefull to General Howe to Reitterate orders as it ought to be shamefull those who make it necessary.

Why, the Young Mr and I just had a similar talk last night…though, thankfully, there were no bones of meat involved.

This going to be a good read.

I know the SoC has a beautiful library and nice website, but folks, if you are into this history, throw them some love. I checked their 990s and they’re struggling just like everyone else. And if not them, please, support your favorite local historical site, organization, museum, whatever. Every place has something magical that will change your day. Your money– even a small donation– helps them do that work.

Camp Life

22 Friday Aug 2014

Posted by in Events, Living History

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The Ks, Mr C, Mr McC, and the Ss in camp

The Ks, Mr C, Mr McC, and the Ss in camp

When I don’t manage to write up the weekend quickly, I risk forgetting what happened, which is sad when you think how intense the time can be. This past weekend was a little different from others as there were more of us in camp than usual. I locked the camera in the car along with my car keys, and never remembered to ask Mr S for his key when he was present…so the images are all from other sources.

Last week I was party to the Great Oatmeal Debate by Text Message as I tried to determine whether or not oatmeal was correct in period, and if so, what kind.  Let’s call it Hannah Glasse’s “oatmeal flummery” and move on.

To make Oatmeal-Flummery. GET fome oatmeal, put it into a broad deep pan, then co ver it with water, stir it together, and let itftand twelve hours, then pour off that water clear, and put on a good deal of fresh water, shift it again in twelve hours, and fo orrin twelve more ; then pour off the water clear, and ftrain the oatmeal through a coarfe hair-fieve, and pour it into a fauce-pan, keeping it stir ring all the time with a stick till it boils and is very thick ; then pour it into difhes ; when cold turn it into plates, and eat it with what you pleafe, either wine and fugar, or beer and sugar, or milk. It eats very pretty with cyder and fugar.

We were very lucky to have hard wood for fires, and I was very lucky indeed to have Mr McC on hand to tend to the fire, especially on Sunday morning, when I did not get up and start dressing until 6:00 AM. He joined us early Saturday morning with a kettle of hot coffee in hand, proving long experience with the un-caffeinated reenactor in the wild.

We ate very well this past weekend, with contributions from Mr McC, Mr L, the family C, and purchases from the Georgian Kitchen and Sugar Loafe Baking Company.

The Georgian Kitchen and Sugar Loafe Baking Co at Walloomsac

The Georgian Kitchen and Sugar Loafe Baking Co at Walloomsac

The Young Mr eventually bought his own loaf of bread, stuffed it in his haversack, and ate from it fairly continually on Sunday. If there had been a ginger cookie as large as a loaf of bread, I expect he would have bought that instead, but bread was a reasonable choice (though I think it proven tricky to hold a musket and a loaf of bread simultaneously….)

18th century militia in small clothes

Militia in Small Clothes

18th century militia marching in New York countryside

Mr S (left handed, as you can see) following MrMcC

The 10th Massachusetts, fielding as militia, are in the second and third rows above; I was shocked–shocked!– to see them fielding in their small clothes, but it is documented, and as they said when they lay down and even left ranks before fielding, “We’re militia. We’re not listening.” (Left to right, that’s Mr FC, Mr S, Mr McC and, in the rear, Mr L.)

For me, the best part of the weekend was, as it always is, being outside of time. (I even had a nap on Saturday, when the gents were up at the battle: more delicious than stew or cookies or even quince cake.)

At Sunday’s divine service, I was reminded again of why I enjoy this, and why we keep doing this, even when it all seems ridiculous in the face of the larger world.

The old service from the Book of Common Prayer is not that different from what we used in church. The formal rhythm and familiar words always remind me of how different the 18th century was from our own time, and how small people could feel in the face of a world without electricity, internal combustion engines, and modern weapons of war. As we lined a psalm and recited the liturgy that hoped for peace, I thought of Ferguson again, and of the ways that people bind together in beliefs without regard to class or color, and had some hope (even as I recited om mani padme hum internally). A moment of grace is often more easily found stepping outside yourself, and stepping out of time and out of doors can help.

Speaking of stepping out…

woman undressing in stays and petticoats

Almost steppin’ out of the 18th century…

We had to pack up and flee back to the 21st century on Sunday afternoon, and I was caught getting partially undressed outside our tent (between my height and Natural Gace, I find outdoor dressing easier). No matter what you do, or when you do it, a healthy sense of humor about oneself is always useful.

Boil and Not Too Much Trouble

19 Tuesday Aug 2014

Posted by in Events, Food, Living History, Reenacting, Research

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Camp cooking can get old. Stew, sigh. Bread, sigh. Cheese, sigh. Apples, sigh.

Don’t get me wrong: all of the above are delicious today. Historically, New England troops are all about cheese and cider, and have much to say about the quality of beef, but menu can be repetitive and lacking in challenge.

Ever since I had boiled flour pudding at Coggeshall Farm, I’ve wanted to make it since I so much enjoyed the texture.

When I found it mentioned by Enos Hitchcock, I was particularly excited.

1777 May 24
Dined upon flowr puding & Venison Steak.

Flowr puding? I love that guy! But there it is, documented, even if eaten by the officers and not the private soldiers. It’s common enough that I think it likely almost everyone knew how to make it. The trick would have been getting hold of eggs and milk, which is easy enough for me, if not for the soldiers of 1777. Fortunately, as we drove down Cottrell Road headed for home, a flock of Plymouth Rock chickens crossed the road in front of us: there were the eggs, at least in our time.

postcard of kittens eating christmas pudding

Not your chaplain’s pudding.

The method I had tried at home worked: I beat three eggs and four spoons of milk in my tall redware mug, and added the liquid slowly to the flour and salt mixture. The whole mixture went into a cloth bag, which I tied with a string and boiled in the smallest kettle, not want to risk any damage to the beef stew. I’ll test the works at home on my nearest kin and willing victims before I loose it upon a regiment and hungry guests.

Although the pudding was a strange shape, it cooked up quickly in about 45 minutes, had a firm texture and a satisfactory enough flavor. I would have liked it to rise a bit more, which is an argument either for beating the eggs with a fork in the confined cylinder of the cup, or risking the splash of the whisk in a bowl, or, finally, for a smaller whisk.

Still, not too bad for expanding the camp cooking repertoire of Things That Can be Boiled and Eaten.