Monday, July 16, 2007

Union Mills Homestead Reenactment

Here is a shot of my friend Linda and I at the Union Mills homestead. This is the Shriver family homestead and mill that has been turned into a museum with beautiful grounds. The museum foundation and the Shriver family that still lives across the street on the "rest" of the homestead hosted a reenactment this past weekend that was nothing like our unit had done before. Our "brother" Pennsylvania unit represented the Yankees that were resting on the grounds as they had done on the way back from Gettysburg in 1863, and our unit constantly raided them and took prisoners and stole supplies from them. Everyone in both units was fun and the guys really enjoyed "playing". We also got to meet Jim Sr, and Jr of the Shriver family, which is a very old family that has holdings all over the area including Gettysburg, New Windsor, Union Mills, and yes, Maria Shriver (Arnold's wife) and Sergent Shriver from Kennedy fame is part of their clan.
This is the last reenactment for our friends Jim and Kay and their horse "Bobby Lee". He's in the front with two of his friends behind. He really enjoys the reenactments as do the other horses and their people. There were many scenerios in which the horses got to play, and of course, the spectators petted and scratched and loved on the horses when they came into our camp. The connection to the cavalry is historical, as the homestead hosted General JEB Stuart's cavalry as they were on their way to Hanover and Gettysburg prior to the battles in both of those cities in 1863. The original mill and homestead predate the battles by quite a number of years.
Here is a shot of our dismounted cavalry getting ready to go raid the Union camp to steal some supplies. They did raids whenever the thought came to them all day and into the evening, which is definately different than having one set battle for the spectators at a set time. Visitors toured our camps and us ladies talked to them and answered questions and taught a bit of history as well.
A Union Soldier wandered into our camp right about supper time so the cook fed him but Col. Dan made him wear a grey jacket to have his picture taken. He went back to his camp and told everyone that we'd fed him some mighty fine spit roasted beef and they all wanted to surrender to us!
Here's one of the two dismounted Sergents with the new guy Dave. You might notice folks in the background looking into the weeds, eveyone was trying to catch Crawfish in the creek right in back of our camp, we got enough to steam and eat that evening.
General Bruce is the organizer of the Pennsylvania unit and a friend of our Unit. He got killed and or captured so many times on Sunday that we lost count! Everyone had a great time and enjoyed being able to play free form, we are looking forward to next year when the event will hopefully be repeated.

1 comment:

Union1861 said...

Hey, im Sgt. Good from the 16th PA and as i recall i never was captured or killed, and as i remember i almost killed your colonal from sneeking up from the rear of your camp(without being noticed and after making two of your guys retreat), but my Commander sayed back off after i yelled let them go or i'll drop your colonal like a sack of bricks from which he went and hid behind bruce "Some Confederate", Oh and this year come perpared casue we'll have a little bit more guys and the 61st Pa who the 16th is also good friends with is joining us. Oh did i metion i have another secert weapon, but i'll wait to show that til the first battle at Union mills this year.