Market Fair offers bargains, fun and friendships

^{By Christine Haines}

^{About five or six years ago at a festival in Perryopolis the reenacting unit I belong to, the Redstone Living Historians, learned about the 18th Century Market Fair at Fort Frederick in Big Pool, Maryland, from one of the fort’s volunteers.}

^{The next year the unit headed to Maryland for the weekend and came home with our vehicles stuffed with our purchases. We’ve been going back every year since, taking young reenactors to buy equipment and clothing and taking shopping lists for friends who couldn’t make the trip. It’s nice to be able to try on the period clothing, feel the quality of the fabric, comparison shop among vendors we normally only deal with on-line, or by catalog, and not have shipping charges.}

^{This year’s event will be held April 24-27. The nearest hotels are in Hancock or Hagerstown, Md. and you might want to make reservations now….the event draws a crowd.}

^{Since the event attracts hundreds of reenactors and even more spectators from all over the east coast, it’s a great opportunity to catch up with old friends. I’m used to seeing friends from the reenacting community there, but last year I even ran into a childhood friend that I hadn’t seen in 30 years who had brought her history-buff sons to the event from their home in eastern Pennsylvania. We were both buying homemade bread from a cart operated by a woman who, like members of the Redstone Living Historians, volunteers for the Jamestown-Yorktown Foundation in Virginia. The world gets smaller and smaller by the moment.}

^{Even if you don’t know a soul at Market Days other than the folks you come with, it’s a great time. In addition to more than 100 18th century vendors such as tinsmiths, woodworkers, gunsmiths and fur traders, there are performers balancing on low-wires, juggling, and playing everything from water glasses to fiddles. Of course, you can also tour the fort and talk with soldiers garrisoned there, as well as touring the encampments outside the fort.}

One of my favorite parts of Market Days is the children dressed in period clothing. No one has to tell them how to reenact history — hand them an 18th century toy and they are automatically historically correct!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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From valiant knights to the Virginia National Guard

Military Through the Ages Celebrates 25th anniversary at Jamestown

You never quite know what you’ll find at the Military Through the Ages event at Jamestown Settlement each March.

This year marks the 25^th consecutive year for the special event that will be held on March 15-16. Reenactors representing nearly 2,000 years of military history will be on hand, showing how soldiers dressed, armed and fed themselves through the ages. In many eras, women and children followed along, so spectators get the full spectrum of life in wartime.

The groups also demonstrate military tactics and weapons and stage skirmishes and mock battles throughout the weekend. Past exhibits have included a medieval unit slinging cabbages with a trevochet, the Devil’s Nightmare Brigade with their colorful clothing and long lances, and military checkpoints with orders barked in foreign languages.

This is an outstanding event, with numerous field demonstrations and reenactors eager to answer questions. The units are judged throughout the weekend for historic authenticity, public interaction, military skills and, for those that choose to participate, historically accurate cooking.

Visitors this year get the added bonus of the special World of 1607 exhibit which runs through April 9, providing a global view of life in 1607, with the social, intellectual and economic changes that accompanied the development of the “New World.”

Even if you visited Jamestown during last year’s “America’s 400^th Anniversary” or any of the past 24 MTA events, you’ll want to stop back for MTA weekend and the current museum exhibits. There’s always something new during this look at the past. I’ve participated in this event as a spectator and as a volunteer and I look forward to returning each year to see what the reenactment units have come up with to impress the judges this time.

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Out of the Box

By Christine Haines

Photos courtesy of Forsyth County, NC

I hate staying in hotels. They’re good for business trips, get-away weekends and overnight stays while on the road, but for a vacation, I’d much rather rent a house, or at least stay in a suite.

Everyone staying in a hotel room has to be on the same sleep schedule. Face it, it’s nearly impossible to sleep if someone sitting on the bed beside you has the light on to read or is watching television, or if the shower is running just a few feet away.

And, of course, the proximity of the shower and television applies to the rooms to either side of you, as well as to those above and below, unless the hotel is really upscale and somewhat soundproofed, so you can also be at the mercy of strangers.

All in all, I’d rather rent a house or at least a suite. It’s nice to be able to go into another room if you’re going to be staying somewhere for a week or so. It keeps nerves from getting frayed.

If you’ve been following my columns, you know that I’m basically cheap so spending tons of money on an upscale hotel suite or pricy vacation rental really isn’t on my agenda, so finding the right place to stay can take some effort. But sometimes you can find a real gem.

One of our best finds has been Tanglewood Park in North Carolina. My sister, who lives in North Carolina, found it for us when we were planning our trip that include Old Salem and a professional bull riding event at the Jerome Davis Ranch. Tanglewood is less than a half hour away from Winston-Salem, and not much more than an hour from both the Davis Ranch and my sister’s house. Those were very acceptable travel distances for us.

We didn’t have much planned for most of the week — visiting Old Salem (see “Four Museums, One Great Vacation), visiting with my sister and heading to the bull-riding event at the end of the week — so Tanglewood ended up being perfect for us.

The park has a rich history, going back to the 1750’s. An 18-room Manor House was built in 1859 and it was expanded to 28 rooms in 1921 and the estate was enlarged to 1,100 acres when it was purchased by William Neal Reynolds, the brother of tobacco entrepreneur R.J. Reynolds. The property was willed to Forsyth County in 1951 and now serves as a county park with riding stables, a golf course, public swimming pool, bike trails, fishing and boating lakes and numerous gardens and other amenities.

The Manor House is now a 10-room bed and breakfast, with each room having its own bath. The nearby Guest House sleeps 7 and can be rented by the week, as can three cottages set along Mallard Lake. We opted for the less expensive, more secluded cottages when we stayed there. It wasn’t luxurious, but it was clean and comfortable, air conditioned (very important in North Carolina in the summer) and very reasonably priced.

Cottage makes these structures sound like small huts in the woods. Nothing could be further from the truth. They are sprawling 2-3 bedroom single-story houses with large, fully equipped, eat-in kitchens and huge living room/dining room combos with a fireplace, television, and lots of comfy couches and chairs.

It was wonderful. We lounged around, read, played card games and board games, went horseback riding and enjoyed watching other people riding the Aqua-cycles on the lake. We could have gone golfing (if we golfed) or mountain biking (if we biked). The swimming pool, which is well used by the county recreation program, was within walking distance, and the gardens were absolutely beautiful. The horses were well trained and the trail was well groomed, but mostly, we enjoyed the solitude. It was nice to vacation outside of the box.

For more information about Tanglewood, log onto http://www.co.forsyth.nc.us/tanglewood/.

Share your travels by e-mailing Chris@howyouspinit.com.

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Four museums, one great vacation

By Christine Haines

After more than 15 years of historic reenacting and decades of visiting historic sites as a tourist I thought there was little new for me to see at an old site. Then I visited Old Salem.

Two of my nieces attended Salem Academy in Winston-Salem, N.C., which is adjacent to the Old Salem historic site.

Given our tendency to visit historic sites for vacation one would think my husband and I would have gotten there while they were still students and served as volunteers at Old Salem. So of course I went the summer after the youngest had graduated and headed north for college.

Salem was founded by a group of Moravian missionaries in 1766. Many of the structures in Old Salem are the original construction.

Costumed staff members still practice many of the crafts done by the original tradesmen in the 18^th and 19^th centuries.

 

The gunsmith/blacksmith can be found at his shop carving gunstocks and fitting the hardware for custom rifles. Baked goods are made fresh daily in a huge, wood-fired bake oven. They are outstanding in any century.

Visiting the tinsmith we saw something we had never seen at an historic site before: a high-intensity candle lamp, created by focusing the light through a globe of water.

I wish we would have had time to tour all four museums at Old Salem, but we had only allotted one day, so we limited ourselves to the visitors’ center, the town of Salem and the Toy Museum. Not having any young children with us we would have passed on the Children’s Museum anyhow, though those with youngsters should definitely include it. The Children’s Museum takes the concepts of the 18^th and 19^th century crafts and puts them into formats young children can experience and understand.

I am so glad we allowed enough time to experience the Toy Museum. Some of the toys date back as early as 225 A.D., though most are from the 19^th century. There are tiny tea sets, completely furnished dollhouses, even entire zoos and circuses. An early forerunner of animation, the zoetrope, is one of the many optical toys. The detail and care put into the design of the toys is amazing.

There just wasn’t time to add a tour of the Museum of Early Southern Decorative Arts (MESDA). MESDA is like a life-size dollhouse, featuring 24 fully furnished rooms with all of the accoutrements, plus six galleries. The museum features early Southern furniture, artwork, textiles and ceramics in a variety of styles.Check http://www.oldsalem.org for more information about Old Salem, including photos inside the museums where photography is not generally permitted.

Please e-mail your favorite vacation information and photos to chris@howyouspinit.com.

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