Living History Along The Trail
by Scott Scanlon

Eric Bloomquist could have decided to become a banker, a lawyer, maybe even a teacher. But instead of picking a job inside an office or a school, he chose work in a fortress. His classroom is a lakeside landscape; the tools of his trade a musket, dry wit and funny clothes. Several days each week, he straps on tight pants and an undercoat, a vest, stockings, and buckled shoes, a regiment coat and a cocked hat, and readies himself to talk about the rugged old days.

Bloomquist is among dozens of people along the Seaway Trail some might argue were born a century or two too late. This collection of characters brings history alive from Erie, Pa. to Ogdensburg, and several points in between. The group includes interpreters in period dress, like Bloomquist, who shares Revolutionary War tales with audiences at Old Fort Niagara, and re-enactors, like Barbara F. Blaisdell, an actress who often portrays Susan B. Anthony at events in and around Rochester. “We can get better answers to people if we have an actual, live person to answer their questions,” Bloomquist said. “We tend to give more entertainment this way, as well.”

These living historians are often well-educated and take their jobs seriously, poring through books, old diaries and sites on the Internet to make visits for Seaway Trail travelers more informative and memorable. They know even the smallest details, and can spin a pretty good yarn, or two.

“People love it,” said Richard LaCrosse, interpretive site manager at Fort Ontario in Oswego. “Rather than just reading about history, they can touch it and smell it and get a real feel for it.”
Erie County, PA

One of the newest attractions along the Seaway Trail might be one of the best stops to start a trip into the living past. As is the case with most of these stops, admission is charged. The Erie Maritime Museum, along Lake Erie in Erie, Pa., plays home to the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania’s flagship, the U.S. Brig Niagara, a 198-foot sailing vessel that is often, but not always, in port. The ship is on a goodwill trip this year until August, although the two-year-old museum, built in a former power plant, is worth coming to see anytime. Part of the Erie County Library and Museum, the maritime museum features nearly 30 re-enactors, a War of 1812 exhibit and a reconstructed midship that gives a sense of life on the water in the early 19th century.

Among special attractions this year is the “Living History Series: The Sixty Years War,” June 16-18, in which re-enactors will encamp on the north lawn of the museum and commemorate Colonial days.

Chautauqua County, NY

The McClurg Museum in Westfield is a restored frontier mansion and well worth a visit. Completed in 1820, James McClurg’s zeal to build his ornate home was dubbed “absurdly Quixotic” at the time. On Saturday, July 8 a visit to the Museum is free. The park in front of the the home also comes alive with a Civil War encampment with re-enactors from the 49th, 72nd and 9th Volunteer Cavalries.

Erie County, NY

Those looking to slide into the rest of the 19th century can head north into New York State and make a stop at the Amherst Museum near Buffalo. This 35-acre campus includes 10 historic and two reconstructed buildings that give visitors a taste of small-town life in the days when farms and small trades fueled the economy. The museum includes a Women and Washday exhibit and children’s Erie Canal Discovery Room, and features guild workers, quilters, weavers and a Victorian Dance Society. Special events include a quilt festival in early May, herb festival in early June, Scottish Festival in mid-August and Harvest, Halloween and Victorian Christmas programs late this year.

Niagara County, NY

One of the oldest and most breathtaking sites along the Seaway Trail, Old Fort Niagara started its life in the 1720s as a French trading post. Here, along the mouth of the Niagara River, one could easily lose track of what century he is in, if not for the Toronto skyline shooting upward across Lake Ontario 27 miles away.

Interpreters like Bloomquist add life and meaning to the fort’s collection of stone buildings, casements and weaponry. Bloomquist, who holds a bachelor’s degree in historical studies, has made this site his workplace for the past 11 years. He and fellow interpreters whisk visitors back to 1779, when Native American villages stretched for miles outside the fortress walls and the population inside reached its maximum—1,200 British and Royalist soldiers, many of whom clung to this patch of land until 1796.

Dressed in garb from the King’s 8th Regiment, circa 1774, “when soldiers would spend their days burning down a barn and killing a cow,” interpreters spend their days doing infantry drills, firing cannons and cooking on open fires.

Some days, the fort also hosts special music or sporting events, as well as a growing number of weekend battle re-enactment groups that recount life from French-and-Indian to Civil War days. Among the most popular is the Grand Encampment of the Brigade of the American Revolution, the second weekend in August. Among Bloomquist’s jobs: firing his 75-caliber musket and explaining through clouds of gunpowder why Revolutionary War soldiers dressed in such bright colors. (They didn’t want to be shooting at the wrong side.)

Monroe County, NY

Genesee Country Museum is well worth the short drive off the Seaway Trail into southern Monroe County. America’s third-largest living historic village, in Mumford, also features a nature center and gallery of sporting art. Once a farm, the 175-acre site holds 57 restored and fully-furnished homes and buildings that have been moved here from elsewhere in the Genesee River Valley. Favorite stops include a log-cabin farmstead built in 1809; George Eastman’s childhood home, an 1870 mansion; an octagon-shaped house;

Victorian gardens and a cobblestone blacksmith shop; as well as a village square lined by government buildings, a church, several homes, a general store and two taverns. Animals dot the site and interpreters wander through most of the buildings answering questions, making goods and baking bread.

If the town doctor is in, he can even show you some of the tricks of his trade, including leeches. “Here, you can really forget you’re living in the 20th century,” said Anna Worden, a museum assistant who claims to have spent more of last summer in 19th-century clothing than the late 20th-century variety. “This definitely becomes a lifestyle,” she said. “I’m addicted.”

Further north, in Rochester, you might spot Susan B. Anthony at the museum that bears her name. For more information about performances by the woman who portrays one of America’s foremost women’s rights advocates, contact the Susan B. Anthony House at (716) 235-6124 or www.SusanBAnthonyHouse.org.

Cayuga County, NY

A cast of hundreds of haughty, bawdy and sometimes naughty characters who speak the Queen’s English and mix humor, magic and music, re-create a European faire weekends from early July to mid-August on a rolling hill in Sterling. Meet them at the Renaissance Festival and Summer Marketplace as you stroll past the gift shops, rustic stages and games of chance. Or be like them. For an additional fee, visitors can rent clothes and join the ranks of wenches, pretty maidens and gentlemen. 

Visitors can feast on turkey legs, hot apple dumplings and steak-on-a-stake. They can throw tomatoes at the town troublemaker, as he spews insults, and bow to Queen Elizabeth I as she wanders through the festival grounds accompanied by her ladies, gentlemen, jesters and minstrels. This child-friendly environment includes a live chess game, puppet shows, pillow fights, street performers and daredevils. The jousting field alone is worth the trip. Watch two knights on horseback try to gore each other while wise-cracking announcers whip the crowd into a frenzy.

Oswego County, NY

Fort Ontario is known in historical terms more for the role it played in the late 18th and early 19th centuries, but its preserved stone buildings and star-shaped ramparts look today much as they did during the Civil War era, when Fort Ontario was largely a peaceful place.

The Co. F 42nd Civil War Veterans Corps is interpreted here, and this group of soldiers and their attending women—about a dozen in all—take their roles very seriously. The men drill at various times throughout the day and help the women lead tours.

Music is part of the fort’s allure, from “Revelry” in the morning to “Retreat” when the 36-star flag is lowered at closing time. Dave Brown, a high school biology teacher, spends his summers and spring and fall weekends playing the bugle and British alto horn, much like John Mahoney, the Cork, Ireland native who served as the fort musician from 1868-9.

Across the Oswego River, on the city’s West Side, the H. Lee White Marine Museum hosts various programs by museum founder and City Historian Rosemary Nesbitt, a retired distinguished theater professor from the State University College at Oswego. Among her most notable performances: “Tales of the Haunted Harbor.” Call the museum at (315) 342-0480 for more information.

Jefferson County, NY

Sackets Harbor Battlefield is site of a living history encampment 10 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. Wednesday through Sunday, mid-June to mid-August. Several members of the 1812 U.S. Army 23rd Infantry Regiment and their aides drill, make candles and cook. The site along Lake Ontario also includes an 1850s Naval Yard that contains an 1860-furnished commandant’s house, an exhibit on the 1813 Brig Jefferson, and herb and flower gardens. Guided or self-guided tours are offered.

St. Lawrence County

Every George Washington birthday weekend during the mid-1980s, the city of Ogdensburg came under siege by an odd collection of Canadians dressed in red military clothes. Jim Reagen, a reporter with the Ogdensburg Journal, wanted to put an end to it. "I wrote that Redcoats were invading Ogdensburg every February and it was kind of sad nobody on the American side was opposing this invasion," said Reagen, now managing editor at the paper. Thus, Forsyth's Rifles was born. The 30-member group re-enacts the First Light Artillery and First U.S. Rifle Regiment of the early 19th century, and participates in encampment weekends across the country. This year, they will host their annual re-creation of the 1813 Battle of Ogdensburg on Feb. 19-20 at Lighthouse Point. The group also will host a French and Indian War encampment at the same site the third weekend in July. The group is among those that support the rebuilding of Fort La Presentation at Lighthouse Point, a fort the British often used to stage attacks on Rome, Oswego and other parts of New York State during the late18th and early 19th centuries.

Scott Scanlon holds a bachelor’s degree in history and English from the State University of New York at Buffalo and a master’s degree in history from SUNY Binghamton. He is Assistant Regional Editor with The Syracuse Newspapers and president of Safe Haven Inc., which houses an exhibit at Fort Ontario Park that commemorates the only camp for Holocaust survivors on American soil during World War II.