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Students receive living Civil War lesson

The annual school-day preview of the festival gave the youths a chance to learn about such topics as the weaponry and deadly food rations of the era.

By BETH N. GRAY
Published January 16, 2005

	[Times photo: Maurice Rivenbark]
	Steve Fowler of Palm Harbor stands at a post as students walk by during a light rainfall at the Sand Hill Scout Reservation in Spring Hill Friday morning. Fowler was dressed as a Confederate Marine Corporal.

SPRING HILL - Huddled inside her pink plastic poncho, 7-year-old Summer Nichols didn't flinch when re-enactors at the Brooksville Raid Festival fired an ear-splitting round from a Civil War cannon.

But the Cypress Elementary School student from New Port Richey had taken a cue from the gunners, clamping her hands over her ears and drawing her poncho over them.

In the uniform of the 21st Arkansas Infantry, Terry Maynard of Mascotte circled the youngsters, ordering as the cannon fuse was lit: "Open your mouths! Open your mouths!"

Jaws obediently dropped to avoid pressure from the noise that could be heard for miles. Up close, the shot prompted umbrellas to pop in the air.

For a time Friday morning, it appeared the cannon and cavalry demonstrations might be rained out for the annual school-day preview of the Brooksville Raid Festival, which runs from 10 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. today. But festival chairwoman Judy Everett and president Jan Knowles of the Hernando Historical Museum Association, along with volunteer re-enactors, put their heads together and came up with an alternative to the usual station-by-station outdoor visits for the schoolchildren.

About 700 kids, teachers and parents, from as far away as Orlando, gathered to sit hip to hip on the dormant grass under a big tent at the Sand Hill Scout Reservation.

"We'll bring the demonstrations to them," Everett said, "so they don't have to go out in the wet."

She was dismayed that many of the invited schools from four counties had canceled their trips before the 9:30 a.m. start. But a half-dozen more buses trundled in by 11 a.m. amid a light mist, bringing attendance to nearly half of what was expected.

Presenters who had performed in the tent before the late arrivals repeated their spiels outdoors for the newcomers.

Topics included a biographical and democracy-thumping speech by Abraham Lincoln re-enactor Joseph W. Ames of Manchester, Mich., demonstrations of a field hospital's operations, rations and foods of the period, fashions and dress customs, codes of mourning, regimental attire and gear, musket loading, fighting strategy and women's roles, especially their success as spies, in the North-South conflict.

"I liked the one about the food," said Natalie Glenn, 14, a student at Seven Hills Middle School in Pasco County. "Pretty tasty," she said facetiously of greens that had been dried and formed into a sort of vitamin bar.

Classmate Leslie Motill, 13, was amazed to learn that the soldiers' three-day rations of food sometimes killed them. Any food preservation was likely insufficient and unsanitary.

"The food stunk," said Miss Carol, a re-enactment nurse. "They didn't understand the germ theory."

She added that more soldiers died of disease in the Civil War than of battle wounds.

Ty-Oshay Owens, 11, of Brooksville Elementary School was amazed to hear one re-enactor say that young boys wore girls' dresses from infancy to age 8 or 10, when they were deemed old enough to don short pants.

"I liked the ones where they shot the guns," Rebecca Plottner, 10, a fellow Brooksville Elementary student, said of the demonstrations.

She referred to the precision loading, priming and aiming of the smooth-bore muskets used in the early years of the war. When the demonstrators merely pretended to fire, the young crowd groaned in disappointment.

"I didn't know there's these old-fashioned guns and how they loaded them," said Tyler Ryan, 10, a Spring Hill Elementary School student.

Michael Nesserella, 12, already zeroing in on war history as a favorite subject at Spring Hill Elementary, was taken by the display and explanation of how a Confederate field hospital operated.

"I didn't know they had morphine," he said.

The women's huge 1860s-era hoop skirts were an eye-opener for Shaun Nicholson, 12, of Spring Hill Elementary.

"The girls' dresses were popping out," he said.

He was also intrigued by the soldiers' varied uniforms, whose jacket cuts, buttons, sashes and patches identified and defined their regiments and ranks.

Some teachers had taught lessons on the Civil War before Friday's field trip. Fifth-grade teacher Lynn Yurschak of Spring Hill Elementary assigned students to choose a person in the war and write a journal in the first person. The children conducted research on the Internet and read social studies textbooks for information. The youths also wrote plays about the Civil War, Yurschak said.

Program moderator and re-enactor Scott Hope of Brooksville had a more personal history on which to draw.

His great-great-grandfather, William Hope, a founding settler of Hernando County who arrived in 1836 after a three-year trek from Georgia, suffered the burning of his two plantations during the Union raid over several days in July 1864. The plantations produced salt by boiling gulf water; cattle were raised for beef.

"I got into re-enactment because it is a part of my family history," he told the youngsters.

Further piquing the interest of the school-age audience, Hope asked: "Do you know who first spotted the Union troops?"

A small Union fleet had landed at Bayport, discharging about three dozen troops, whose aim was to burn farms and destroy lines of food supplies to the Confederate army.

Hope answered his own question: An 8-year-old boy ran from Bayport almost to Brooksville to notify everyone that the Union was invading. Some in the youthful audience gave small gasps of amazement.

Ames, the Lincoln re-enactor, added that at least 50 boys age 13 or younger served in the war.

The right or wrong of North and South is not an issue for the 4,000 Civil War re-enactors taking part in this weekend's festival, Hope said.

"We don't portray hatred. We portray history," he said. "We play Union and Confederate, but we are all Americans."

WHAT: 25th annual Brooksville Raid Festival and Civil War re-enactment.

WHEN: Concludes today.

WHERE: Sand Hill Scout Reservation, State Road 50, Spring Hill. The reservation is about 11/2 miles east of U.S. 19 on the south side of State Road 50.

ADMISSION: $5 for adults (18 or older); $2 for children (ages 6 to 17); free for children 5 and younger and for Scouts in uniform.

INFORMATION: Spectators may bring chairs; rental chairs will be available for $2. Coolers will be permitted on the grounds, but alcohol is prohibited. Food and drinks will be sold. For information, call 799-0129 or visit the event's Web site at www.brooksvilleraid.com

Today 10 a.m.: Camps open/church services

11 a.m.: Battalion drill

1:30 p.m.: Grand review

2 p.m.: Battle re-enactment

4:30 p.m.: Camps close

[Last modified January 16, 2005, 00:33:22]