Men and women dressed in thick wool slacks and layers upon layers of clothing get ready for a long day around the farm in Florida’s late-summer heat. If you asked if they were hot, they would raise their eyebrows quizzically — after all, this is 1868.
Dudley Farm Historic State Park’s third Reconstruction Era reenactment this weekend was called “1868 Comes Alive.”
Forty-two living historian volunteers devised their own scripts and identities to put on the event, a first-person immersion where the characters improvise and react to the audience, like two different eras looking themselves in the face.
The park hosts the event every year to illustrate the hardships of Northern Florida citizens during the pivotal Reconstruction Era in history.
Dudley Farm Park Ranger and living historian, David Riker, 55, of Bell, Florida, has been participating in reenactments for 28 years and played the city marshal in this event. As a living historian, Riker and his fellow volunteers take on specific characters, their emotions, how they lived, thought, ate and slept.
“We’ve lived history, we’ve been in tents, we’ve seen sunrises together, we’ve fought battles together,” he said. “We have lived history as close as we can.”
Reconstruction was a very sensitive time in American history right after the Civil War; African Americans were free but not citizens.
Steve Noll, a UF American history professor, said while the event is accurate, it’s very difficult to reenact the racial conflict during Reconstruction. These are issues that the event at Dudley Farm did not address.
“Issues of race that were never resolved then still play out today,” he said.
The men returning from war were sick and without homes or jobs. Their families were left without husbands and fathers. Volunteers picked the year 1868 for this specific reason.
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At 8:30 a.m. Friday, everyone’s dressed and briefed on each other’s characters for the day. The school teacher sits on the bench furthest from the door, eating the top of her muffin and drinking from a brightly colored metal canister. Riker tells everyone to do an authenticity check.
“Alright everybody, you know the drill,” he said.
The anachronistic bunch look at their wrists and remove their watches and wedding rings. Before anything else can be said, a single cell phone goes off, and everybody laughs. The living historians take all precautions to make sure everything is as authentic and realistic as possible.
“You’ll walk in, and it’s like you’re looking at a bunch of ghosts,” Riker said.
Tom Sanders, 61, of Ocala, has been doing reenactments for 20 years. He usually goes to Civil War reenactments as Maj. Sanders. He works as a cooper, a man who makes wooden buckets and barrels by hand.
“You know they can’t make me a colonel,” he said. “The only thing they’d want from me is chicken.”
[A version of this story ran on page 8 on 9/11/2014 under the headline "Weekend Reconstruction Era: realistic depiction of post-Civil War lifestyles"]
