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September 7, 2012
9 am – 1 pm
Welcome to the Painted Stone Settlers’ Day Camp program! We hope you will enjoy our program as much as we enjoy bringing it to you.
Note: All groups will combine at 11:00 am for a group presentation at the bleacher site. A program introduction will be given at this time to familiarize your class with the history behind Painted Stone Station. While students are assembled at the bleacher area, a cannon demonstration will be given to offer students a look at military tactics in the 18th century.
Teachers , please instruct your students not to touch items unless a re-enactor tells them to do so. Many items are authentic (meaning they are very old or hazardous to those unfamiliar with them).
Students will have approximately 15 minutes at each station (excluding the Native American camp, where they will have 30 minutes & be combined with more groups). This 15 minutes includes travel time to the next station. Alignments have been made to Core Content Assessment requirements for each station. All stations are broken down into categories based on the following topics: Survival Skills, Home & Hearth Skills, Entertainment, and Native Ways. Time has been built into your schedule to have a lunch break and bathroom breaks.
Section #1: SURVIVAL SKILLS:
The stations that fall under this category depict many of the skills employed by frontiersmen. Many times settlers were farmers during crop growing seasons, and would take to the woods after harvesting their crops to produce additional income by trapping. Often they would be gone for months or even years on hunting or scouting expeditions, thus earning the name Longhunters. Kentucky provided prime hunting grounds for this type of occupation. Our re-enactors practice the skills and dress as their 18th century counter-parts would have.
Section #2: HOME & HEARTH SKILLS:
These basic skills were common to every family on the frontier to keep a household running smoothly. Oftentimes skills were gender specific – children learned the same tasks as their father or mother. Children might have the opportunity to earn a living practicing these skills once they matured. These stations provide greater insight into the colonial way of living and daily routine experienced by the settlers.
Section #3: ENTERTAINMENT:
Entertainment, or leisure time in general, was scarce on the frontier. We have provided you with an overview of colonial era entertainment to give you a taste of 18th century arts and humanities. Entertainment was usually in the form of singing or playing a musical instrument on the frontier. This was a simple way to convey ideas not written down, a creative form of storytelling. Annual colonial “Trade Faires” were a common site throughout the 18th century in larger towns east of Kentucky. A carnival-like atmosphere would often accompany these faires.
Section #4: NATIVE WAYS (NATIVE AMERICAN CAMPSITE):
Native American re-enactors will be on hand to speak to students about the Native American way of life. Students will gain a better understanding of how settlers often relied on the Native American society to survive. Tribes in Kentucky in the 18th Century were referred to as Eastern Woodland Indians, primarily a mixture of Shawnee, Mohawk and Iroquois. These tribes lived in the eastern part of the United States. As forest dwellers, they lived and learned from the land. Even though settlers and Native Americans clashed at this time, in previous centuries in America settlers had learned valuable ideas and adopted ways of doing things (such as crop planting) from the Native American culture that helped them to survive.
Since not all school may have time to visit all stations we have mingled stations from different sections – so students will get a cross section of life in the 18th century.
Station 1: Indian Camp. Re-enactor Michael Fields will discuss the Native American lifestyle, which includes face-painting, clothing and survival. He will reveal why a Native American looks, dresses and thinks the way he does.
Station 2: Bead working (also in Indian Camp). Painted Stone Settler member Rebbie Holtzworth will relate the history of bead making and looms, and demonstrate how to weave beads on a loom. She will speak about colors and patterns common in the 1700s.
Students may wish to spend more than 15 minutes at the stations in the Indian Camp-this area can accommodate more than one group at a time.
Station 3: Magic Dave. Master magician Dave Cottrell, who resides in Shelbyville, will astound students will his slight of hand tricks. Magic in the colonial era was a form of street entertainment. In Europe, itinerant performers traveled the countryside as magicians performing cup & ball (colonial game), coin, and card tricks.
Station 4: Guns/Trade on the Frontier. Indiana re-enactor Jay Kell will have on display common trade goods (blankets, kettles, European beads, trade guns, knives, axes, lead, powder) that were shipped in mass number to the Ohio Valley area during the 18th century. He will also give a brief discussion on the British governments need to secure trade with the native people, and how arming them to keep settlers out of this area was a very important part of securing this network of trade.
Station 5: Surveying. Learn about the skill of surveying from Fort Boonesborough’s own Daniel Boone - Scott New. He will reveal the instruments and equipment used by men such as Daniel Boone and his younger brother Squire as they surveyed land in Kentucky. Squire surveyed and sold 5,945 acres from Shelby and Henry Counties in March 1786 to the Low Dutch Company.
Station 6: Horse-Sense. Re-enactor Larry McQuown will demonstrate his knowledge of horsemanship. Horses were very valuable as a means of packing supplies used by longhunters and bringing back hides from hunting trips. Horses were useful when moving into Kentucky, via the Cumberland Gap, as they could be loaded down with household goods, etc. if not ridden.
Station 7 – Break Area. This area includes our food vendor and port-a-johns.
Station 8 - Storytelling. Join Storyteller Mandy Dick as she spins a good yarn about the Colonial Period. In the 18th century, storytelling was a valuable way of teaching and learning in a time when not everyone could read or write. Oral traditions saved history for the next generation.
Station 9: Spinning & Weaving Shelby County’s own Michelle DeEsch will demonstrate spinning & weaving. After the flax was prepared it was spun into thread. Spinning was a necessary skill and usually taught to all young girls on the frontier. The next step in the garment process was to weave it into cloth. This task could be performed by men or women. On the frontier it was most often performed by a woman and her daughters. The yarn could be dyed before weaving or the finished piece could be dyed afterwards.
Station 10: The Doctor. Tennessee re-enactor Albert Roberts portrays frontier doctor John Knight. He will display a standard surgical kit of the time period, which includes dentistry tools and instruments to remove lead balls. Students will be able to compare and contrast 18th century medical and surgical tools to modern day instruments.
Station 11: Children’s Games. Re-enactors Scott and Kristi Heasley will show you what children did for fun in the 18th century. Learn about the games we play today that have their origins in the 18th century. Students will learn that toys were handmade and very scarce on the frontier, and day to day activities were quite different for children.
Station 12 Flax. Oldham County re-enactor Rod Smothers will demonstrate the necessary 18th century commodity of flax. Early colonists grew flax for the production of fabric (linen clothing), twine and rope. The Puritans introduced flax to North America, a fiber that dates back to the time of ancient Egypt.
Station 13: Wool Dying. Oldham County re-enactor Ellen May will demonstrate wool dying over a fire using a dyepot and various natural materials. May has used walnut hulls, grasses, flowers and cochineal bugs to create color for her wool. On display will be yarns and items dyed with natural dyes.
Station 14: Broom making. Elizabethtown re-enactor Margrit Copeland will show students how she creates handtyed brooms. Brooms were necessary for cleaning a log cabin floor & could also be a source of income for frontier women.
Station 15: Customs. Painted Stone Settler members Pam Phillips and Joan Hundley will give students a glimpse into the customs of the times. Similar customs were shared by settlers, including ideas, beliefs, traditions and a general way of life. Diverse cultures combined on the Kentucky frontier to give us the heritage we now have.
Station 16: Songs of the Period. Singing troubadour Brother Jonathan will demonstrate the value of songs in the 18th century, long before recordings were available. Songs were not merely pleasant to the ear, but also used as a method of handing down traditions, recording history and a creative means of storytelling.
Station 17: Laundry. Pam Eddy, an employee of the National Park Service at Cumberland Gap National Historical Site, will demonstrate laundry techniques of the 18th century. With no modern conveniences available, women had to do all the work by hand, which included making the soap used to clean the clothes. Special concoctions were made to remove stains and this was an all-day chore.
Station 18: Inkle loom. Re-enactor Debbie Jenkins Bales will demonstrate her handiwork on the inkle loom, a period tool for producing strips/bands of hand-woven warp-faced cloth. These decorative strips were used for belts, bag handles, headbands or straps to tie items together. When sewn together, the strips could be turned into bags.
Station 19: Cooking - Frontier Style - Information coming soon.
Station 20: Firestarting. Re-enactor Vic Bitter of the Painted Stone Setters will demonstrate a skill known to man since pre-historic times. Necessary in any type of weather and a necessity for any campsite or cabin dwelling, firestarting (without matches) is achieved through a certain technique and diligence.
Station 211: Blacksmithing. A blacksmith was an essential figure on the frontier. Join our blacksmith as he demonstrate these skills, and see why he benefited all around him. A blacksmith made agricultural tools for farming (hoes, rakes, axes), barrel hoops for wooden barrels, and household items such as pothooks, locks and utensils. Some tools employed by a blacksmith were: forge, anvil, hammer, tongs, vise and file.
Station 20: SAR- History of our flags. Members of the Isaac Shelby Chapter of the SAR (Sons of the American Revolution) will display different flags while relating the history of the American flag. Symbols on each flag have different meanings and were created at different times in our country’s history to signify the growth and status of our nation.
Extras
We invite you to enjoy our roving entertainment offerings as well during your stay.
Snacks and drink can be purchased from: Dennis Newton, Convenient Food Mart, Food & Drink Vendor at the entrance to the camp.
We hope you have enjoyed your visit to the 18th century Kentucky frontier and will visit us again next year on the second weekend of Sept., 2013.
*****Presenters/stations are subject to change, based on availability for the day.
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