WHITE OAK — Harmony Hall’s “Colonial Faire” took me back to the beginning of the country with an immersive experience that enlightened me on colonial life and sent me off with gratitude for the many blessings of today.
On Feb. 22, Harmony Hall Village Plantation hosted the event in honor of America’s 250th anniversary.
The event had a selection of attractions ranging from live colonial music and dancing to open-hearth cooking to musket firing to touring antique buildings or viewing craft vendors.
In the old, quaint chapel, modern times shared a lively dance with the colonial period as
reenactors guided attendees in modern clothing in a dance number. The dichotomy from observing two dancers with a physical distance of a couple feet but a symbolic one of 250 years made me long for a time in the far past, but before I could ponder too heavily, the dancers switched partners and the newness of such satisfied the part of my brain that is accustomed to quick changes in these modern days.
While my feet absorbed the vibrations of the wooden floorboard due to the dancing, my ears captured the euphony of soundwaves being produced by the fiddle, banjo, and the two guitar players of the Huckleberry Brothers Band. Even the tambourine that was rattled by a foot, rather than a hand, could be heard holding the steady beat.
The dancing and music took a hiatus which allowed visitors to make their way down to James and Elizabeth Richardson’s front yard where demonstrations were taking place and Sunday Allen was preparing food over an open-hearth.
When not playing the role of a colonial woman, Allen is a well-versed history teacher in Bladen County.
Similar to the dancing, Allen was mixing modern foods with colonial ones, preparing her modern apple/cherry cobbler alongside chicken bog and the staple dish of dry beans and ham.
Although there was ham in the dry beans and ham dish, Allen said that “they would have done a lot of just the dried beans because you can harvest the beans, dry them, and they wouldn’t go bad. So, it is very inexpensive and very common from that time.
“They would have meat one day a week and consider themselves well to do, and that meat might have been a piece of fat back.” she said.
The pots of food were at varying heights. Allen explained that it was one of the ways she controlled the heat from the fire fueled by wood, which is the way the colonists cooked their food.
Saying ‘I do’
The part of our conversation that piqued my interest the most was the talk of the wedding season during colonial times. According to Allen, “June was the popular month for brides and weddings because by April or May, they could begin to take a full sit-down bath in a bucket of water and not freeze.”
It was not so much that June was the most popular month for weddings during colonial times as it was the explanation behind it that made me grateful that, if I should get married, the date of my wedding wouldn’t depend on when a bath was doable.
Moreover, Allen shared that “a lady who had three dresses was very well off.”
Standing in the unorthodox weather for an outside event, with the chilly winds blowing against my warm jacket, that comment stood out to me. To know that I would be wearing a different outfit the next day, but the woman in front of me would not if she had truly been from the colonial times, told me that today’s quick pace of change contrasts the colonial’s even through the everyday clothing.
Yet, some things never change because throughout our conversation, hungry men would stop by to get an update on the food. After Allen tested the softness of the beans and notified the men it would be just a little longer, they stood around the fire and waited. This, I can imagine, is not so much different from colonial times when the hard-working men would go home to food prepared by the hard-working women.
All in all, that day, Harmony Hall presented what hundreds of years looks like, from America’s baby face during the colonial times to now one of America’s many wrinkles during these modern days.
Happy 250th anniversary, America!
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