6th Pennsylvania Regiment

08/28/2026

Roll that Patriot ball, knock over some red-coated soldiers. They look quite surprised!

08/25/2026

Each year we "assemble the troops," pull everything out of our trailer, thoroughly clean it, then back into the trailer it goes, read for another year.
As a way of thanking them, the unit hosts a dinner featuring grilled items. It's a nice social gathering

08/21/2026

08/19/2026

Marching along Skippack Pike, following the road the Continental Army followed to and from the Battle of Germantown.
Then we wheel right toward a church graveyard to honor the Rev War soldiers buried there.

08/18/2026

18th century writings can be hard to decipher.

I've read diary entries from the time, and the first hurdle is deciphering some of the faded quill scratches.

Then there's the problem of non-standard spelling. Sometimes a word is spelled phonetically, sometimes it's a word that's been abbreviated in a confusing way, or a letter in the word which appears as a superscript.

Now add to that the way words were understood in their time. A classic example is the description of troops at Valley Forge being naked. It does not mean n**e. It was the word they used to indicate someone who is not fully dressed.

"The past is a foreign country. They do things differently there." - L.P. Hartley

08/07/2026

You know you're a reenactor when you grade your coffee not by medium or fine ground, but by FF and FFF.

08/06/2026

Ferguson Rifle.
See how quickly you can load. You don't load it from the barrel. It's a breechloader!
You pour gunpowder into the hole in the barrel, and as the plug rises it discards any excess powder

08/04/2026

Our surgeon awaits the next victim... I mean Patient!

07/29/2026

Humor in the Ranks:
One time we were reenacting the Battle of Germantown:

At the end of the event the event organizer took the microphone and publicly thanked the Crown Forces and then thanked the Continental troops.

Then he started talking on a new topic, but suddenly stopped and gave his thanks to the Hessian troops.

Behind me I heard someone say, "It's always polite to thank the hired help."

07/29/2026

A miniature or toy musket (1650-1700) found by eye, on the Thames foreshore. It is made of brass and exactly as it was found, beautifully preserved by the Thames mud. The hole in the top would have been for gunpowder, since it could also be 'fired'. Other examples have been found with split and burst barrels, which suggests they weren't the safest toys to play with!