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Kitty Calash

~ Confessions of a Known Bonnet-Wearer

Kitty Calash

Tag Archives: Saratoga

Saratoga Summary

23 Monday Sep 2013

Posted by kittycalash in Events, Living History, Reenacting

≈ 8 Comments

Tags

10th Massachusetts, 18th century, Brigade of the American Revolution, common soldier, living history, Reenacting, Revolutionary War, Saratoga, weekend

Mr S buttoning his overalls

Wow. Yet another learning experience up on the Hudson River this past weekend. It was as up-and-down a weekend as the rutted field in which we were camped, where walking felt more like swimming over the ground, and social calls were well nigh impossible. Also, we had considerable wind. By Sunday, Mrs P said we should feel grateful we never camp with a dining fly, because we knew it was wrong to feel smug that we hadn’t had to chase a fly down. Yes, every possible pun of “fly” got an outing.

Coats

The Coats, Grouped Around their Colors, Prepare for Action.

The coats turned out quite well, and there would have been one for the Young Mr if only I had not spent the past two weeks on a petticoat and patterning a gown for What Cheer Day at work. I have some regrets about that, just because they looked so very well in those unusual coats. They weren’t just a fashion statement, either: I know Mr Cooke answered a lot of questions about them, and I did, too (women ask women about the guys…). They’re a really good interpretive hook to talk about supplying the troops, and the differences in uniforms over time, and the kinds of documents historians and costume historians use in their work. Also, those coats are just plain handsome.


Down in the corner, in a lovely white gown, holding her hat on head, is Cassidy. The wind was hard on headwear.

The Battle, well, there was chaos on the public side of the battlefield, and it was difficult to see. The wrenching ground made visiting difficult (and we don’t have much of a parlor in our camp) so I did get to meet Cassidy in person but not much more.

Mr S, the Young Mr and I were grateful for Mr H’s excellent assistance with the fire.

My friend Mrs H and her husband, Mr H,  and I walked back from the battlefield to work on dinner. I’m not sure what we’re contemplating here, but the kettle is on and we’re thinking about something (probably what to add next).

As you can see in the photo, we had no iron “s” hooks. I don’t know what box they’re in, but they weren’t in the kitchen box. Mr FC made us hooks from branches he discovered on the way back from his car. They held up well, and were even better and more authentic than the “s” hooks would have been. With this, we were all delighted and not at all smug.

After dinner and washing up, we participated in the hospital vignette for the public tours. (By ‘participate,’ I do sort of mean ‘first person bombed’ the scenario.) In working this out, the Adjutant wondered which of the men was the smallest and lightest. His first thought was the Young Mr, but Mr S and I soon disabused him of that notion, and after I said, “It’s you, Mr C,” and we determined that even skinny Mr S was 5 pounds heavier than Mr C, we had our victim: Mr C. He became the wounded captain carried up by Mr S, the Young Mr, Mr FC and Mr McC on a litter made from a tent and poles. I carried the lantern.

At the hospital tent, we demanded attention for our wounded captain, who had taken shot in the groin, ‘near the back.’ (We covered the wound with a coat.) The men and I were insistent upon the Captain receiving attention, despite the enlisted men requiring attention to their head wounds and amputations. Although he was given laudanum, and the ball removed (ba-thump, yes, we’re here all weekend, tip your waitress), the captain developed a fever. We demanded rum and water, but he vomited upon the very noisy private with a head wound, while down the line another private cried out, “Why, captain? Why did you do this to us?”

After he vomited, the captain’s delirium increased, and the doctor bled him. He called for his wife, and reached for me, though I am but the lowly woman with the army. I held his hand and stroked his head to ease his passing while he talked of his wife and his son, “with the angels now.” After he died, the men were summoned again to remove him from the hospital and they carried him away.

Ready to leave with the entire kitchen on my back and in my hands.

The captain’s story may have been too quiet and subtle for the public to see in the dark, but around us nurses and doctors were busy and patients were yelling, and the scene presented was one of chaos and misery (and some humor). I’ll have to analyze it more later, because there’s a strand for the reenactors and another for the public and it’s hard, sometimes, to know if they combine satisfactorily for all. I know we were pleased with our dying captain, and the boundaries it pushed for those of us newer to the first person world.

On Sunday–well, less said the better, perhaps–some of us failed to eat or drink enough and felt quite ill until mid-morning and a second cup of coffee. It’s a lesson in having protein bars stashed in pockets and haversacks, and in how wretched the soldiers and women must have felt, and how limited their decision-making capacities. That’s the argument for officers getting better food and accommodations: they make the decisions, so they need fuel and rest for their brains. The rest of us just go where we’re told.

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See You in Saratoga

20 Friday Sep 2013

Posted by kittycalash in Events, History, Living History

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Tags

10th Massachusetts, Brigade of the American Revolution, Events, living history, Research, Revolutionary War, Saratoga

AN00176337_001_lNot quite what our camp will look like, but one can hope.

Baking nearly done, Mr S has gone to draw fresh meat and flour.

We’ll be packing as light as we can except for the kid’s supremely heavy biology textbook, but at least he’s game for a weekend of reenacting mixed with homework. Mr S looks forward to sporting his new coat, and I’m looking forward to camp cooking and meeting people In Real Life.

Fingers crossed for the lightest of traffic and rain…

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Saratoga!

11 Wednesday Sep 2013

Posted by kittycalash in 1763 Project, Events, Living History, Reenacting

≈ 3 Comments

Tags

10th Massachusetts, Brigade of the American Revolution, living history, maps, Reenacting, Saratoga, uniforms

Rough Sketch of the US Camp

Rough Sketch of the US Camp

Saratoga is 10 days away. Only 10 days away.

In more exciting news, there’s a map of the American camp so we’ll know where we’re stumbling to in the dark. (We can’t leave town until about 3:00, when the Young Mr will finally be released from school.)

We’ll be with the Lights, in two of those proposed eight tents, near the oval designated “horses.” With a sketch map in hand, we won’t have to remember Lochee while grappling with mallet and flashlight. Well, not too much, anyway.

The coat is done, and while I would have had time to make another for the Young Mr, I took a three-day break from sewing instead. The finished size 40 fits him, in any case, so if there is a spare, he can appear in brown and green with the rest of the company. Now that he’s swimming two days aweek, I don’t epxact him to stay a size 40 for long enough to justify his own hand-sewn, two-events-per-year-max coat…yet…

For me, the next few weeks will be spent sewing for What Cheer Day and thinking about the “People of 1763” event in Boston. Sew18thCentury will be joining me for that, as I play her maid. We’ll be at the Old State House in Boston where I know a very lovely Grenadier’s Cap is on display.

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An Unusual Coat

03 Tuesday Sep 2013

Posted by kittycalash in Clothing, Events, Living History, Making Things, Reenacting, Research

≈ 5 Comments

Tags

10th Massachusetts, 18th century clothes, authenticity, Brigade of the American Revolution, common soldier, living history, Reenacting, Revolutionary War, Saratoga, uniforms, Wasmus diary

DSCN4288In 1777, the uniforms of the Continental Army remained largely uncodified and, well, non-uniform. At Ticonderoga, German accounts from the spring of 1777 state that “Few of the officers in General Gates’ army wore uniforms, and those that were worn were evidently of home manufacture and of all colors. For example, brown coats with sea-green facings, white linings, and silver dragons(epaulettes or shoulder knots), and gray coats with yellow buttons and straw facings, where to be seen in plenty.”

Brown coats with sea green facings. There’s one in our regiment, and it is a lovely thing. The Adjutant thought it would be interesting for the troops to turn out in these coats at Saratoga, an event to which the coat can be documented (being soon after Fort Ticonderoga) and an event that will take place on the historic site. So we’re making them, in a project that started Saturday, and here we are: ready to have the lapel width adjusted, because my eye tells me it is too big, and yes, I’m told that it was cut a but wide. So this morning, a lapel trim is in order.

An American Soldier. ca.1852 copy of a ca.1777 watercolor by Hessen-Hanau Captain Friedrich von Germann. Niedersächsisches Staatsarchiv, Wolfenbüttel, Braunschweig

An American Soldier. ca.1852 copy of a ca.1777 watercolor by Hessen-Hanau Captain Friedrich von Germann. Niedersächsisches Staatsarchiv, Wolfenbüttel, Braunschweig

But really, these coats.

Here you can see the style that we’re making, with applied lapels and shanked buttons, simple turn backs on the front skirts, and flat collars. The cuffs are also applied, non-functioning cuffs that come to a point in front. (Also, documented blue stockings!)

These coats will be worn with overalls, waistcoats and shoes, because we know from John Buss’s letters that the regiment was issued overalls and shoes in the summer of 1777. No visible stockings, sadly.

This is the kind of project I can get pretty stoked about, with its combination of aesthetics and documentation. A coat described in a German diary, made in pettable wool broadcloth that will be unlike anything else on the field? Of course I want to help make that vision real.

Imagine a moment on the field, with these documented coats, so unusual (the sea green may have been a faded blue, but sea green is what was seen), worn in a place where they were worn. I don’t need to remind you about the authenticity/commemoration thing, do I? Because it’s pretty clear that’s what’ll happen three weeks from now in New  York.

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