Colonial Living Week at Alamance Battleground

For the past three days I have been assisting with the annual week-long school program Colonial Living Week at Alamance Battleground, near Burlington, NC. I am impressed that the Alamance staff is able to continue this program year after year, as they only have two full-time staff members. It is a tremendous feat for them and it requires a lot of help from other sites, Division staff such as myself, and volunteers. Roughly 300 students come each day of the week and go from station to station seeing various demonstrations and doing activities such as candle dipping, blacksmithing, quill pen writing, etc. I am set up to talk about colonial sailor skills (go figure). I am talking about navigation, all the various uses of rope on board ship, shipboard life, and keeping time by the bell. I am also assisting with the daily artillery demonstrations using the site's 3-pounder. Its been a very fun and rewarding experience, not only getting to do some front line interpretation, but also having the chance to interact with site staff that I don't always see all that often. Today is my last day, but maybe next year I'll try to stay for the whole week. This is why I love my job!