Ran Away From The Subscriber: A Twenty-Year Anniversary

Time is a curious thing, especially when you spend part of your life dressing like people from the past. It’s been over twenty years since I started reenacting, but the most peculiar part about that is that I can so clearly remember excitedly waiting for the summer of 2012 to write my ten-year anniversary post. And it’s been eleven years since then??

As I wrote in 2012, reenacting has influenced my life in profound ways. My closest friends are reenactors (or at the very least they wear costumes at work). I can directly trace the path I took to graduate school and my current job at the Museum of the American Revolution back through a chain of mentors and museum professionals that I met through reenacting. That path goes all the way back to a newspaper article that appeared in my hometown paper in 2002 about a Civil War reenacting unit that was forming in town. I called a phone number, starting going to meetings, and in June of that year my parents let me go off with a bunch of people who spend weekends dressing like Civil War soldiers. It all worked out ok.

Here's is just a sample of where reenacting has taken me since my last recap in 2012:

Second Lieutenant, Union Army, July 1863

Here I am standing at the High Water Mark at Gettysburg on July 3, 2013, holding a federal officer's sword carried there on July 3, 1863.

Royal Navy Marine, 1812-1815

A film shoot for Maryland Public Television, 2013.

4th Connecticut Private Soldier, Spring 1778, Valley Forge, Pennsylvania

A National Park Service living history event in 2014.

Royal Navy Able Seaman, Caulk's Field, Maryland, 1814

A blurry photo taken in the evening as we stood with our boarding pikes, but a crystal-clear memory from 2014.

Second Lieutenant, Union Army, April 1865

The 150th anniversary living history event commemorating the surrender of the Army of Northern Virginia at Appomattox Court House.

Second Lieutenant, Union Army, Gettysburg, 1863

A tintype photograph.

Philadelphia Associator, January 1777

A January 2017 event that I wrote about here.

Alexander Hamilton, December 1778

From a film shoot for Hamilton Was Here: Rising Up in Revolutionary Philadelphia, a special exhibition at the Museum of the American Revolution.

Second Lieutenant, Union Army, Crampton's Gap, Maryland, 1862

From an event in 2018.

Tyler, New York City, Summer 2019

2019 was a busy year at the Museum, and it included both a summer-long collaboration with the New-York Historical Society that I regularly commuted up for AND me getting hit in the face by a door at the Museum, as you can see here.