As the nation approaches the 250th anniversary of independence from Great Britain, the Frontier Culture Museum in Staunton is considering the unique contributions of the people of Virginia’s frontier to American independence. WMRA’s Meredith McCool attended an "Evening With Crockett’s Battalion" and filed this report.
COSTUMED INTERPRETER: Take aim, fire! Company, to the right, about face!
Along a gravel road, two lines of would-be soldiers take turns leveling wooden musket replicas at the facing trees. Mustered in front of a small log house chinked with orange clay, they might be mistaken for Lieutenant Colonel Joseph Crockett’s Western Battalion, charged with patrolling against British allied Native American nations along the Ohio River during the Revolutionary War. Like many militiamen who joined Crockett’s Battalion in the 1780s, the assembled are wearing their everyday, common civilian clothing – cocked hats replaced by baseball caps.
COSTUMED INTERPRETER: Alright, company, return your muskets to the crate that we got them from. Dismissed!
During this evening event, museum-goers had an opportunity to experience the American Revolution on the frontier. It’s one of many events the Frontier Culture Museum has planned, in collaboration with the Virginia 250 Commission and other local organizations, to commemorate the events leading up to the American Revolution and the signing of the Declaration of Independence. Paige Hildebrand is the director of events at the Frontier Culture Museum.
PAIGE HILDEBRAND: It's a really unique opportunity to show the people of the area what our ancestors would have been doing here to support the war, even if they were not actively fighting in it. This is especially true since there were no battles fought in the Valley during the Revolutionary War. So people don't always think of it as a super important area, but it was. They were raising grain, they were providing storage for gunpowder. And then they were also housing, at one point, prisoners of war in this area.
The Western Battalion first mustered and trained at the Albemarle barracks in Charlottesville–the area known as Barracks Road today–in the spring of 1780. Their first mission was to guard the roughly 4,000 British and German prisoners of war known as the Convention Army, who had been captured at the Battle of Saratoga in New York.
[sounds of forge bellows, hammering]
In the museum’s Irish forge, a blacksmith pumps the bellows and the coals glow red as waves of heat fill the building. According to a publication from the National Park Service, at the time of the Revolution, British law prohibited the manufacture of any iron product except rough bars. Frontier blacksmiths often ignored this regulation and produced mass quantities of tools and weapons, many of which contributed to American independence.
Much of the funding for the museum's semiquincentennial programming comes from state grants.
HILDEBRAND: The state has been extremely generous in their support of VA250 and has offered grants through the Virginia Tourism Corporation, which we have applied for and have received funding for that Road to Revolution signage. … A lot of the resources that VA250 provides is also provided at no cost, so we have been definitely taking advantage of those.
Because those tourism grants are funded by state revenues, they aren't subject to federal funding cuts that have hit other VA250 Commission members, such as Virginia Humanities.
According to Hildebrand, the Frontier Culture Museum’s programming seeks to include different perspectives. For instance, the Evening With Crockett’s Battalion events include interpretation at both the American Indian farm and the 1760s farm, where the stories of the men who joined the militia and the women who followed them are told.
HILDEBRAND: We are really focused on Crockett's Battalion and those camp followers, because it is such an integral part of the local history. That's one of the unique stories that we can tell, and we have those primary source documents. Our costume interpreters have done a fantastic job in researching those primary documents to tell the most accurate story possible in relation to those men that fought in the battalion, as well as the camp followers … the women who came to do all the duties that the men did not want to do: the laundry, some of the cooking, doing that kind of day to day work.
Primary sources also document the less valorous aspects of Crockett’s Battalion, including over 30 court-martials, which were held on a variety of charges from desertion to stealing local livestock. An entry in Crockett's orderly book dated May 15, 1780, details a garrison court-martial where a sergeant was found guilty of stealing a hog and sentenced to pay the owner.
Many of the documents that have served as resources for developing the Crockett’s Battalion events will eventually be archived in the American Journey Gallery as part of the museum’s expansion. The new facility will feature a permanent gallery, rotating exhibit areas, a research library, flexible education rooms, and an indoor/outdoor pavilion.
The final Evening With Crockett’s Battalion extracurricular night at the Frontier Culture Museum is this Friday, August 15, from 5:30 to 7 p.m.
