Civil War Remembrance at Greenfield Village!!!

One of my two all-time favorite places to visit in the world is Greenfield Village! For the last fourteen years plus my grandparents have kindly taken my family and I there every summer, and lots of fun family memories have been made! For those of you who sadly haven't heard of it before, Greenfield Village is an outdoor living history museum in Detroit that Henry Ford created way back in 1929. Some of the highlights include the Wright brother's home and cycle shop, Ford birthplace, and Edison's New Jersey lab. All of these major original buildings of American history Ford bought, disassembled, and then reassembled in Detroit at Greenfield Village. Add a steam train, Model T car rides, and a 1913 carousel, you got a really immersive trip into the past. For a major history buff like myself, it's pretty much heaven! ;)

Anyways, throughout the summer Greenfield Village hosts a number of special events. Even though I have visited the Village many many times, we have not been able to visit a whole lot to coincide with the special events. Over Memorial Day weekend, Greenfield Village invites a whole bunch of Civil War reenactors to basically invade the place and transport folks back to the 1860's. Thanks to my grad school professor very kindly letting me have Memorial Day weekend off, and the fact that I live in Michigan rather than Tennessee (read: less than half as long of a drive to get to my grandparents' place!!), and my grandparents' great generosity and hospitality...now do you see why I wanted to come visit my grandparents over Memorial Day weekend?? :D

Oh yeah!!!!!!

Greenfield Village really does live up to its' tagline of "America's Greatest History Attraction", and I was really excited to go experience the Civil War programming - especially because I would be with my grandparents! So without further adieu, as pictures are worth a thousand words, enjoy my visual diary of my day in the past...

(several of these pictures are taken my grandfather; I very much appreciate his letting me use them in my post here!)

 If you ever wanted to know what I look like while I'm filming an intro for one of my videos...!!

 Photos at the fountain with Grandma.

Oooh, there's a long line already, we better get in line ourselves!

Toot, toot! Side note: I used to love trains so much as a kid I called myself "Big Choo Choo Man". Yah...silly it is, but what great memories! ;) For a long time, Greenfield Village only had two steam engines running; in the last few years they added this one, but I had never visited on a day when it was running. So it was great fun to actually seen this engine in operation myself!

 After photographing the train, we then headed to get an authentic  Model T ride!

 A "Frequent Rider's of Model T's" club meeting will now be called to order!! :D

This Civil War historian was one of the friendliest and most knowledgeable people I have ever met. I thoroughly enjoyed hearing him discourse on all different aspects of the Civil War. A definite highlight to the day!

In another area of the Village there were various artisans and shopkeepers of the time period. Here I enjoyed talking to a man who was sharing how a tintype shop would run, and explaining the difference between tintypes and photographs!

 This man was portraying a recruiter.

These two sweet old folks were running an old-time music shop. They were kind enough to play me a song - see below for an exclusive behind-the-scenes shot! ;)

Of course, there were lots of reenactors portraying Union and Confederate soldiers - I especially liked the cavalry!

 Some soldiers were rather tired though! ;)

 The fife and drum crew were fantastic!!

 There were also a number of folks portraying civilians.

This (above) is one of my favorite photos I took all day long. I love all the lighting, the line of trees and green, and when you look closely, the soldier sitting in the right hand bottom corner. It's an interesting reflection, thinking about what real Civil War soldiers might have been thinking when they were in camp...

Tennessee!! 

 I really like the symmetry of this shot.

 The troops are on the move...

 A tired little drummer boy...oh! It's time to go!

 We finished off our day in the Village with watching a bayonet demonstration.

And, just like little ducks in a row, when closing time came we all paraded out of the Village and back to our cars. Another wonderful day at Greenfield Village in the books!! :D

For those of you interested, below is a link to the video footage I captured. Some aspects of the day were captured better in still images, some better with video, and some captured fairly equally with both mediums. I think it's worth a watch and that you'll really enjoy it! There were a lot of cool period music groups present, something which I captured on video but is of course impossible to share through pictures and the written word.

Series concluded.