Thursday, December 29, 2011

volunteering Keli

The next weekend that I did candlelight tours it was the "civil war period" the civil war is a popular thing around here so there were a LOT more re-enactors and people seemed very excited about this.
During the civil war, the people that lived their were Quakers, the men fled to Alexandria and Washington DC to avoid going to war or to avoid be killed because they were also Northern sympathizers being from New York. They left the women at the house..
one morning Jeb Stuart came by and he asked to be fed. They fed him breakfast and he camped there.. he also left behind some wounded men.
I met my tours on the porch..I led them into the dining room where to "confederate soldiers" were talking and telling the story of when Jeb Stuart was in the area.. they were pretending to be part of Jeb Stuarts men. They told how Jeb Stuart tricked the Yankees by telling them he was going south but really going north.. and how he cut a telegram line. ( a little kid on my tour asked what's a telegram?)
We then went into the parlor where we talked about how people would entertain guests back then we had a man in their playing the fiddle ( my favorite instrument) he talked to the people about music of the time and then played two songs for them.
We then went out into the hall and I talked to them about the lamp that we have out there and how they might have dances there sometimes.
We then went upstairs where in Cornelia's bedroom we had a young girl dressed in period clothing cutting out snowflakes that were going to be on the tree downstairs ( Christmas trees were just coming into vogue) We had a Northern Re-enactor in there talking about how he had been wounded and he was a POW and he was writing letters home to his brother..
The next room had some other young ladies dressed in period clothing and they were singing Christmas carols they sang us a few songs and then I led my tour downstairs where we looked at the tree and I told them it was from "The Victorian era"
each guest could make a cornucopia with paper and put candy on it to hang on their tree.
The guests were then invited to go outside and look in the kitchen and laundry room where their were people in period clothing making food and cleaning up. Their were a lot of confederate soldiers camped on the yard and they stayed in character the whole time. We also had people walking around in period clothing caroling..
We also had a tent set up where you could get hot cider and cookies..
One of the best parts about this tour was that my friend Dawn Roop and her sister-in-law came. They were not on my tour,but I am grateful they came and were able to enjoy themselves.
The next night we had a world war II Christmas but I am not able to report on that because it was Sunday and I did not volunteer.

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