Henry Bryant of Fort Vause has organized & run the Great Road Encampment in Elliston for 3 years now. It is held on the 1st weekend in August & is free. This is the 1st time I’ve been able to go. I had hoped to go as a participant but that wasn’t in the cards, so I went on Saturday & just took photographs.
The site is a county park laid out behind the fire station. Its a nice large level site with ample parking and woods on 2 sides. The fire station had food for sale in the picnic pavilion too.
The Encampment presents various facets of colonial life along the Great Wagon Road. This road ran parallel to & south of the Blue Ridge Mountains. It started as a Native American footpath, was widened into a horse trail and then a wagon road.
The stocks were popular all day with plenty of “miscreants” imprisoned. Photo opportunities abounded.
There were several men portraying Long Hunters. Visitors came & went throughout the day. It was an excellent venue for participant/visitor conversations.
This hunter had a square oilcloth pitched as a plow point overnight shelter with his gear laid out in display.
Two More Hunters
Two Long Rifles and a Canoe Gun
The longer guns are plain “Poor Boy” style flintlock rifles of the kind that were made in Virginia prior to the Revolutionary War. The short gun in the center is a half stock percussion rifle of a later era.
Hunting was not only a profession but a way for a farmer to augment his larder and earn money by selling the deerskins. Deerskin breeches were a fashion rage in Europe.
This man has his hunting gear all laid out along with various deerskins & common fur animals. He was very knowledgeable on the colonial hide & fur trade.
Demonstrations of various kinds went on all day. This walking wheel is the big brother to the foot driven wheel most folks have seen in museums and at museums.
The predecessor to the spinning wheel was the drop spindle. Drop spindles are as old as the earliest techniques for weaving cloth.
Before wool or cotton is spun its carded. Carding is a combing action that gets the strands laying parallel to one another. It also lets you get leaves, twigs and the like out of the wool or cotton before its spun. (I don’t know if flax is carded before spinning.)
Cloth isn’t the only thing that can be made with thread. A lucent is used to weave thread into cording. This one is un unusually large, but it made it very easy to see just how it worked.
This lady had several colonial children’s games set up & ready for kids of all ages & sizes.
Her area got very busy once it was obvious it wasn’t going to rain.
This man had a nice display of personal possessions which would be typical for any Monacan man to own.
He had a great presentation on the Native American trade network that used the Great Wagon Road long before it was a wagon road.
Soapstone is plentiful in the Nelson county area of Virginia. The Monacans traded soapstone far & wide. It makes an excellent cooking surface.
This lady cooked half a dozen seasonal Monacan dishes which were available for tasting. She can cook for me anytime anywhere. (OK, I admit I’m not much for cooking on my own.)
The kids were intrigued by the various hides the Monacans & Long Hunters had.
A Recruiting Sergeant had his tent & equipment to entice any willing lad to enlist.
A Future Grenadier?
Here’s a likely lad although he’ll have to grow into that musket first.
Doctors & Surgeons were separate occupations in this era. This is a nice set of common surgery tools.
This wall gun is getting cleaned and readied for a historical society museum. The markings on the piece are in Sanskrit scrip. The story it could tell!
The most important in every hamlet, village & town was the local blacksmith. He is using an common anvil design.
A smith at work always has an audience.
Henry was pretty busy all day keeping things running smoothly. The weather was threatening rain until mid afternoon but never actually got around to raining on the proceedings. Which was very very nice.
Henry had his shop set up for those who wanted an anvil, leather goods or sundry other things.
The Augusta Gunworks & Forge was open also.
Augusta had shooting bags, horns and a few tomahawks.
They also had some fine rifles for sale.
Horn was made into more than just horns.
Powder horns aren’t all that hard to make, but a nicely done horn does take a fair amount of trimming and scraping.
Seams Colonial was there with their fine selection of colonial wear. They were showing one and all just what the folks using the Great Wagon Road would have been wearing.
As the day came to an end these 2 fawns came to get their dinner.
I hope to attend this event in 2015 and stay for both days. I’m trying to figure out something to demonstrate, plain sewing probably.
