How I Got Involved in Living History

[SgtErv]

Back when I was in second grade, I had the fortune of seeing living history for my first time. Down in the Kanawha Valley, a group put on a program called "The Mary Ingles Trail." May Ingles Draper, as you all may know from "Follow the River," escaped Shawnee captivity and walked along the Kanawha River and New River on her way back to Draper's Meadow in Southwest Virginia.

Seeing those folks in period dress, experiencing their camps, and listening to the stories instilled a love of living history. I'd always been a history buff, but this was different, and it gave me a different perspective on history, making it much more real.

Fast forward more than two decades and I'm volunteering to do interpretation at Prickett's Fort as a militiaman. One October weekend we hosted a group of Native living historians, including this gentleman on the left. (Who does quite a few different impressions). Lo and behold, he's the man responsible for the Mary Ingles trail, and his mother was the second grade teacher that took us to see it all.

Reckon we've met on the trail in a roundabout way after all these years.

 

[Silky921]

Nice man. Cool to see stories come around full circle like that. Hopefully you do the same thing and inspire a whole bunch of youngsters.

 

[pargent]

:thumbsup: :hatsoff: :applause:

 

[DOUBLEDEUCE 1]

Great picture and story! :thumbsup:

 

[Grumpa]

A great picture, and a truly heartwarming account. Blessed are they who portray "living history", you keep history alive.

Sincerely,
Richard/Grumpa :hatsoff:

 

[Cowboy]

That's cool SgtErv!

Love the story and your picture is definitely worth framing! That day was full of great memories, I'm sure!

Thanks for posting the story and the pic to go along with it my friend! :thumbsup:

Respectfully, Cowboy

 

[Artificer]

What a GREAT Story!! I'm sure when the NA reenactor tells his Mom about this, it will do her heart very well.

Every now and then at Living Histories, something really neat happens. It makes the other times well worthwhile, besides helping others better understand our history ”“ and especially for the Bairns.

In 1982, we were doing a living history at the NPS Manassas Battlefield (Bull Run for our Northern Forum Members). One of the questions I got was on the number of wounded that had to have amputations done. I had purchased a soft cover book on Medicine in the Civil War, earlier, so it really helped out. I explained that Doctors and Surgeons actually could do more reconstructive surgery than we normally think they could, but the sheer volume of wounded troops demanded amputations to save the most lives, because of the critical shortage of Doctors, etc., etc.

One Distinguished looking Older Lady in the crowd was listening very intently and asked more really good questions about Medicine/Surgery in the times. It became clear she had been medically trained. After the “talk/question/answer” period was over, she came up to me and told me she had been a Military Nurse in WWII in Europe. She informed me that on more than one occasion, they almost had to resort to mass amputations or other “cut and hack” surgery, because of the huge numbers of casualties.

I had an extremely nice and educational chat with her and before she had to leave, I asked her what was her rank? She informed me she had retired from the Army as a Colonel. So I begged her leave to wait a few seconds more. I called my Unit to attention, informed them we were in the presence of an Army Colonel who had been a Nurse Angel of Mercy to our boys in WWII in Europe. We the saluted her, en mass, in appreciation of what she had done.

I don’t think any of us had an extremely dry eye. She thanked us most graciously and whispered to me that she had always found her patients from the South to be real gentlemen and she was glad to see it was still true.

This was one of, if not my fondest memory while doing living history.

Gus