Heritage Craft and Civil War Weekend
Join Quiet Valley and the living historians of the 142nd Regiment of Pennsylvania Volunteers as we host a combination Heritage Craft and Civil War Weekend.
This weekend highlights some of the traditional trade skills and heritage crafts of our forefathers, as well as demonstrates the Civil War History of Monroe County. Visitors will be able to see the demonstrators at work. Learn about the techniques involved as well as some of the history behind them. There will be demonstrations such as basket making, bobbin lace, tatting, weaving, quilling, rope making and pottery. Come learn about some of the many historic folk crafts practiced by our ancestors. You may be a future demonstrator “in the making!”
About Civil War Weekend:
When folks in Monroe County think about the Civil War, they think of it as something that happened somewhere else. But in the fall of 1864, the war came home. There were no big battles between huge armies. Instead, a guerilla war simmered between deserters and draft evaders hiding in the farms and forests of Monroe County and a unit of Union troops sent to round them up. There were ambushes, patrols, searches, shots exchanged, and two dead, one soldier and one deserter. It all happened against the backdrop of an increasingly bloody war and a national election that would decide the nation’s future – would the vote go for George McClellan, the “end the war now” candidate, or Abraham Lincoln, the “Restore the Union” President seeking reelection? And which way would Monroe County vote?
The living historians of the 142nd Regiment of Pennsylvania Volunteers is assembling both civilian and military reenactors from the mid-Atlantic and New England areas to recreate that atmosphere for Quiet Valley visitors on August 10 and 11. In addition to seeing the everyday life of Civil War soldiers and experiencing the chest-thumping thunder of their black powder weapons, visitors will get a taste of what it’s like to live in a community where war is now touching everyone right in their homes. There will be patrols into the surrounding hills to look for deserter camps, searches of the farm buildings for draft evaders, civilians trying to smuggle supplies to those in hiding, other civilians trying to help the soldiers, and a military camp where guards will have to see your military pass before you can enter.
Many Monroe County men did their duty from 1861-1865, including the 142nd Regiment, which suffered the ninth highest casualties of any of the 2,598 Union regiments in the American Civil War. But others balked. Join us in August; come experience a small slice of very real, very local history.
