Welcome!

Welcome to my little corner of the world!

I started reenacting almost 9 years ago. But my obsession with history began far, far earlier. For as long as I could remember, I've been in love with history. When I was little, I learned to read early, and my favorite books were those which were historical in nature - the American Girl series, the Little House Books, Anne of Green Gables. Anything historical, I was interested in it. I learned a lot of handcrafts early on, because it made me feel like a pioneer girl.

When I was in middle school, I started volunteering at a historical site nearby. That gave me some of my history fix - but the customer service aspect was a real downer - people were always getting in the way of my history high.

In 8th grade, I went with my class trip to Washington DC. The last day, we drove down to Williamsburg, VA and I got to spend a day in Colonial Williamsburg. I can pinpoint this as the moment that I was sort of reborn - there were people there, pretending like they were back in time! The buildings were historical! They were working with recreated tools! It was like a historical mecca - everyone there was just as enthusiastic about history as I was! But Williamsburg was located on the East Coast - and I really didn't know about anything near where I was. I figured I would attend college out east, in order to gain access to that kind of environment.

Fast forward a few years, one of the last summers I spent volunteering at the historic site. I saw a program put on by my current club about fashion in the mid 19th century. Things started clicking into place in my mind - it was living history, going on right in my neighborhood. I signed up immediately, though it took me almost a year to get up the nerve to attend a meeting.

That was that. It took a long time for my feet to hit the floor - through high school, through college, and into my first year out of college, I didn't really have the time or money to put into living history. Now that I'm a bit more settled, this past year has featured a rededication of my efforts towards living history.

My goals in living history are several. First, I want to educate myself, through research and constant questioning of what I know, or think I know. My second goal is to educate others, the public and my fellow living historians, by sharing what I know. Thirdly, I want to experience what it was truly like to live back in time, and have a ton of fun doing it.

So, to mark my new era in living history, I've started this blog, to track my research, projects, acquistions, and of course, all the events I attend. I hope you'll join me!

With Kind Regards,

Betsy