For want of shelter

We have been gearing up for an event at Saratoga in September. This will be an opportunity for us to live as Loyalist refugees for the weekend, surrounded by other living history people enacting the beginning of the downfall of General Burgoyne in the Fall of 1777. I have been considering what we will need to wear, but also what we will be bringing with us. And how all of this will pack, as we are not allowed to bring our pack basket. This event is an invitational, vetted event. To register, I had to send in photographs of us in our clothes, and received feedback on how to tweak it to achieve the look event staff are going for. It helps that we have a footing now with Fort Ticonderoga, and that we are a known quantity now, after working a couple of events there. People are getting to know us, this is a good thing.
Clothing has been easy. I've been working at upgrading that for over a year now. Currently, I'm working on other peoples clothes, making new gear for friends, and teaching them how to make their own clothes. We will be taking two completely new people to this event, I want them to fit right in. Alison is a close friend in my PhD program, she is a dramaturg, and we have talked extensively about how our careers have overlaps, we even read the same authors and texts when we've been writing our comprehensive exams. It will be interesting to see the event through her eyes.

At the same time I have been looking at the Revolutionary war, I have been watching our current refugee crisis unfold. It was interesting to see how people were leaving their homes in Syria for extended stays in camps in Turkey and Europe, but then the crisis got very close to home...like 50kms close. That's only a half hour drive. These refugees are coming up through New York state, following a similar path that Loyalist refugees took when escaping the Revolutionary war. They are being dropped off by taxi-cab at a path through the woods near LaColle Quebec, following the Richelieu River into Canada. Once here, they can claim refugee status. The RCMP and Canadian Border Control have set up a camp at this border to process people, as many were getting lost in the woods, and it gets cold here in the winter. They've been carrying a suitcase with all their worldly possessions. During the Revolutionary period, refugees were marched all the way up to Sorel, where the Richelieu meets the Saint Lawrence. They were then loaded on to ships and sent east and west. The British didn't want any Loyalists to stay anywhere near the border, in case they too started something...
I'm comparing these two crisis' and thinking, "we have hotels, and cars now, the Loyalists wouldn't have had those things to ease their journey". If I am portraying a Loyalist, what would I have, really, by the time I got to Saratoga? How long would I have been walking?

Now, just note that modern day Kelly doesn't sleep well under the best of conditions, camping is not 'fun' for me. I sleep with an apnea machine, and don't like to be cold. We will not have those things that make for happy Kellys at Saratoga.

And so, I have been also thinking about shelter...

Encampment of the Loyalists in Johnstown, a new settlement on the banks of the River St. Lawrence, in Canada West; James Peachey June 6th, 1784. Copied by J.R. Simpson August 12, 1925 Archives of Ontario, Ref Code: RG 2-344-0-0-89

Almost everyone who does Loyalist living history in Canada has come across this image. This lovely sketch shows people with tents, encamped, waiting for land grants and houses to be built nearby. They are not in the process of running for their lives. Their running is done. They are starting over.

I realized that having a full tent on such a trip would be a heavy prospect, not one I wanted to inflict on Pierre. That, and our tents are all sunforger canvas, following Parks Canada regulations on tentage. This event at Saratoga is a progressive event, so linen canvas or none at all. I didn't want to also have to hand stitch a full tent at this time, I still have clothes to make for Zac, Alison's husband...and now less than a month to make that happen.

Pierre and I talked about sleeping rough, after weighing modern options. We both wanted the full experience of the event, so a hotel was just not going to fly. That, and finances are too tight to be thinking about hotels for a living history event, especially with conferences coming up. I don't think I could do completely rough, with just a blanket and the stars to shelter me. Further options were considered. And then we figured a small lean-to might be a good thing to build.

Not knowing what sort of conditions we would be walking into, at a National Park, I wanted to plan for the contingency that we would not have any supplies in order to build a lean-to. What could I bring with me that I might have had in the period. A linen tarp was just the answer.

but not just any tarp...

In a past life, I apprenticed to a historical sailmaker by the name of Derek Harrison at the Maritime Museum of the Atlantic. I could build a rough sail easily enough. And with the gift of some linen canvas from another friend, Lynn Griffiths last week, I set to start.
Remember, we are considering our trek to be up the Hudson river, to the Champlain, then into the Richelieu river valleys, all along bodies of water where boats could be found.

I made up a trapezoidal shaped sail of a central rectangle and two side triangles. The central rectangle is as long as we are tall, and wide enough for us to spoon. The side triangles will make the front elevation of the lean-to and provide side shelter. I roped all the edges, as a sail of the period would have been, adding rope eyelets at each corner. The corners were also reinforces with a secondary layer of canvas at a different grain direction to support those eyelets even more. Finally, on the long edge, where we will be placing the uprights of wood, I added two grommets to help in lashing the thing together. This weekend, we will head over to the woodlot next door and cut some appropriate saplings to make those uprights. These will need to be sealed with shellac in order to cross the border. Yes officer, they are 'finished' wood, and we will bring them home with us.

A corner flipped back, you can see the eyelet on the corner, the roped edges and the reinforcing. you can also see my flat seam, otherwise known as a flat-felled seam.

the corner eyelet

my hitched grommet

Pierre inspecting my work

I completely hand stitched this piece, using the flat seam to join the pieces, the round seam to attach the reinforcement pieces. I then whipped the rope along the hemmed edges, splicing the ends together and whipping over the rough ends of the rope. I then made the little thread grommets and worked the hitched eyelets over. This is work I hadn't done in almost a decade. I think Elder Harrison would be proud of my stitching. But my hands, arms, and shoulders ache now. I think I'll take the weekend off before returning to my sewing studio.

Bibliography

Smith, Hervey Garrett. The Arts of the Sailor: Knotting, Splicing, and Ropework with 101 Illustrations. New York: Dover Publications, 1990. paper.