Reenactment group showcases family life in 18th-century Belchertown

For a day, the Stone House Museum in Belchertown transformed into an 18th-century reenactment, showing what family life was like around the time of the Revolutionary War. The day was complete with chicken roasting on a shovel over a fire, wool spinning, apothecary remedies, tin-lantern making and grazing farm animals.

The annual event was held this year to commemorate the 250th anniversary of the 1776 start of the Revolutionary War. The museum hosted the Green Valley Homestead Reenactment Group to showcase the traditions and ways of life during that time period in New England.

The Belchertown Stone House was built in 1827, and past years’ historical demonstrations have often centered around that time period. But since several organizations are holding events this year honoring the anniversary of the Revolutionary War, Belchertown trustees wanted to hold an event for locals looking to learn more.

“We’re a nonprofit, so we have to do fundraising all year long,” said Sally Shattuck, Belchertown Historical Association trustee. “This is one way of bringing in a little bit of money, but also getting the community to experience history.”

Greeting guests as they entered the grounds were three friendly sheep, a goose and two ducks, as well as a silver rabbit and two quail in carriers. Historical reenactor Heather Lieber, who took the sheep out of their pen to graze on grass and say hello to visitors, said many people in the colonial era kept animals for meat production — although some, like the silver rabbit, could have been kept as pets, too. 

Near the animals, Richard Eckert was making a punched tin lantern, which was cheap at the time and was used outside like a modern-day flashlight to prevent a candle from getting blown out in a breeze. In the late 1700s, the raw material was made in England out of iron with a tin coating and shipped to the colonies. 

On the other side of the museum, Jennifer Heim was cooking traditional foods, including a dense fruited hunter’s pudding filled with flour, raisins, currants, candied orange peel, cream, eggs, rum and spices, which was then boiled over a fire for a few hours. It was a common menu item for 18th-century cooking, she said, describing the pudding as a “carbohydrate bomb with fat — it’s really tasty.” Leftovers could be cut and reheated on a grill or a shovel. 

Shovels were a common cooking instrument; earlier in the day, Heim also made cornmeal cakes on a shovel. For lunch, she roasted a chicken hanging on a string over the fire, and the parts that were underdone were also finished on a shovel.

“It was military-style cooking; you used what you had,” she said. 

During that era, some women got jobs following and cooking for the troops, which was a privilege, since women could earn an income that way while being with their families, Heim said. Children as young as 10 also worked, gathering kindling and firewood or performing other age-appropriate tasks.  

Colonial women also worked sewing garments, said Jenny Green, who was inside the Stone House, wearing a typical woman’s dress of the era. 

Outfits consisted of many layers, often made of wool or linen, but they were lightweight enough for summer. When she participates in reenactments, Green wears the various layers. Remarkably, her only bout of heat exhaustion came after changing out of her reenactment gear and into a T-shirt and jeans, leaving her skin unprotected from the sun, she recalled.

In the kitchen of the Stone House, Amy Lanham was reenacting the role of an apothecary. Doctors were few and far between at the time — often living hours away or proving unaffordable — so many families had to rely on local apothecaries. Women learned the trade from female family members and routinely bartered their services for other goods.

Herbal remedies were often concocted using plants that closely resembled the body part needing treatment, Lanham said; bleeding heart flowers were used to treat anxiety and depression, for instance, while walnuts were used to treat brain ailments. While modern science has disproven some remedies of the era, certain tools — like a colonial-era tooth key extractor — remained standard for decades and, though painful, worked quite well.

Outside, Caren Harrington was spinning wool on a wooden wheel. It’s a common misconception that all women during the colonial period knew how to spin, she said. However, during the Revolutionary War, women began relearning the craft as a form of resistance against the 1765 Stamp Act. By creating homespun yarns, they could successfully boycott English textiles and avoid relying on imported goods. These home-cooked fabrics became increasingly available as more local families raised flocks of sheep. Women even learned to dye the yarn using materials like crushed indigo or native plants.

“It was a way for us to have a voice,” she said of women learning to spin and dye their own wool and linen.

Belchertown resident James Paterwic, who was walking around viewing the different demonstrations, said he has attended historical reenactments at the museum in past seasons and decided to return this year.

“It’s a great experience,” he said of the afternoon.