Took the plunge

[OC Richard]

Welcome to the world of re-enacting!

I've been at it (on and off) since I was a teenager.

I've done US Civil War, WWI, and WWII. But never 18th century.

It's very rewarding, for me anyway, that quest to get everything as "right" as you can get it.

See you in a few days! I'll try to drop by the historical encampment.

I'll be up there with the Long Beach Pipe Band.

[Alan H]

Welcome to the world of re-enacting!

I've been at it (on and off) since I was a teenager.

I've done US Civil War, WWI, and WWII. But never 18th century.

It's very rewarding, for me anyway, that quest to get everything as "right" as you can get it.

See you in a few days! I'll try to drop by the historical encampment.

I'll be up there with the Long Beach Pipe Band.

It'll be good to see you! Come on over and play for us!

I'm just doing this because I'm friends with the GuildMistress. She's the chairman for the Ardenwood Tartan Day Games, which I've been the athletic director for, for about 6 years now. I'm a bit old to compete in the 50-59's this year, so I figured I'd help her out. She's just glad to get another male in her encampment!

[grizzbass]

I love history and always feel a little tug when I see groups. looks good.

[figheadair]

No being a re-enactor but having once or twice been invoved in re-enactment events I'm curious as to why so many of those that choose to do Highland (Jacobite) era costume make such an historical faux pas a lot of the time. Go an visit any national re-enactment regiment (Britsh, French, German etc), the drive for historical accuracy is evident and the results generally very good. Not so with many Highland outfits.

I appreciate that because military clothing was regimented then there is a right and wrong type of this or that, colour of facing etc that means re-enactors have to try and emulate it o be correct. Highland clothes were not regulated in the same way but there are some things that are definitely wrong; plaid brooches, knitted hose etc., and not forgetting of course Jaobite shirts have all been mentioned. Why is it that we some often see rhings that are completely out of place? I guess some people will be following historically incorrect information, modern prints of historical costume/events are a prime source; others will no doubt do so because they use what the have/can afford (nothing wrong with that when starting out) and others I guess just don't care. Or am I being too harsh?

[Orvis]

Peter,

Having been in 18th c. reenacting since '89, I agree with most of what you said. For military units, there is usually some level of documentation available, but that varies. I had a very difficult time discovering the details for the 1757 1st Highland Battalion (later the 77th Foot, or Montgomery's Highlanders). For a unit that was as widely travelled in American as it was, there was precious little concerning the details of its dress. It turned out that there was a fire at Horse Guards in the late 18th c., and Lord Montgomerie told me (at a Scottish games) that any regimental records or artifacts that had been preserved at Eglington Castle had been destroyed in a 19th c. fire. So we had to rely on company order books and educated guesswork. And, we discovered, the uniform had been changed in 1759 by the Board of General Officers to include regimental lace. We had no idea what that looked like. So, we chose a look and stuck with it regardless of the period in the war we were portraying. The same held true for the 42nd RH Regt of the American War of Independence period. Records were scant and we learned that the ships carrying the 42nd between postings sank (on three separate occasions), taking all correspondence down with the ship. Then there was that pesky Horse Guards fire to cope with. So a lot of educated guesswork went into the creation of our uniforms. As to the plaids and philabegs, we were going on information that we could find, and that included a lot of the romantic mythology that came out in the 19th c. It took a long time to get right.

As to reenactors, my observations showed that there are generally three different types: First, there are the authenticity zealots (we called them "thread counters") who would settle for nothing less than maximum authenticity in dress, conduct, and all other aspects of portraying the unit. Secondly, there were those who did some research but had limited financial resources and whose goal was to get appearance and conduct "good enough." Last, there was the reenactor who was just out to have fun at a weekend and would turn out with minimum authenticity - mostly they would just do what they were told. I fell in between the first and second category. As I got more books and was exposed to research (such as yours), I slowly moved toward the first category.

As to Jacobite Highlander reenactors, I maintain that all three categories exist, but it's mostly due to younger guys with families not having sufficient financial resources to lay out on such things as custom repros of 18th c. tartan, swords, dirks, and other things. Mostly it's the older guys who can do that, and I have. My group has a very nice library of research material and we use it. For example, we discourage the use of any identifiable clan tartan, post 18th-century weapons, and we research the cut of our clothing pretty closely. Also (unlike military portrayals), we are not locked into a "uniform" appearance. So we can appear as everything from gentlemen of the clan with the full panoply to clan humblies wearing nothing but a ragged shirt and a dirty plaid carrying a "sickle on a stick." The same applies to our ladies. If we have a fault, it is that most of our members tend to attend events dressed too finely, when the opposite was probably true. There are probably some things we do wrong (not enough Gaelic, for example), but we correct things as we learn. Most of our events are at local Scottish games, so one thing we try to do is demolish the romantic myths and educate people (which results in interesting conversations with guys who swear that their clan has worn this tartan since Julius Caesar invaded Britain), so we welcome a variety of "looks" and try to keep things simple for the visiting public.

[Luke MacGillie]

Peter,

Having been in 18th c. reenacting since '89, I agree with most of what you said. For military units, there is usually some level of documentation available, but that varies. I had a very difficult time discovering the details for the 1757 1st Highland Battalion (later the 77th Foot, or Montgomery's Highlanders). For a unit that was as widely travelled in American as it was, there was precious little concerning the details of its dress. It turned out that there was a fire at Horse Guards in the late 18th c., and Lord Montgomerie told me (at a Scottish games) that any regimental records or artifacts that had been preserved at Eglington Castle had been destroyed in a 19th c. fire. So we had to rely on company order books and educated guesswork. And, we discovered, the uniform had been changed in 1759 by the Board of General Officers to include regimental lace. We had no idea what that looked like. So, we chose a look and stuck with it regardless of the period in the war we were portraying. The same held true for the 42nd RH Regt of the American War of Independence period. Records were scant and we learned that the ships carrying the 42nd between postings sank (on three separate occasions), taking all correspondence down with the ship. Then there was that pesky Horse Guards fire to cope with. So a lot of educated guesswork went into the creation of our uniforms. As to the plaids and philabegs, we were going on information that we could find, and that included a lot of the romantic mythology that came out in the 19th c. It took a long time to get right.

As to reenactors, my observations showed that there are generally three different types: First, there are the authenticity zealots (we called them "thread counters") who would settle for nothing less than maximum authenticity in dress, conduct, and all other aspects of portraying the unit. Secondly, there were those who did some research but had limited financial resources and whose goal was to get appearance and conduct "good enough." Last, there was the reenactor who was just out to have fun at a weekend and would turn out with minimum authenticity - mostly they would just do what they were told. I fell in between the first and second category. As I got more books and was exposed to research (such as yours), I slowly moved toward the first category.

As to Jacobite Highlander reenactors, I maintain that all three categories exist, but it's mostly due to younger guys with families not having sufficient financial resources to lay out on such things as custom repros of 18th c. tartan, swords, dirks, and other things. Mostly it's the older guys who can do that, and I have. My group has a very nice library of research material and we use it. For example, we discourage the use of any identifiable clan tartan, post 18th-century weapons, and we research the cut of our clothing pretty closely. Also (unlike military portrayals), we are not locked into a "uniform" appearance. So we can appear as everything from gentlemen of the clan with the full panoply to clan humblies wearing nothing but a ragged shirt and a dirty plaid carrying a "sickle on a stick." The same applies to our ladies. If we have a fault, it is that most of our members tend to attend events dressed too finely, when the opposite was probably true. There are probably some things we do wrong (not enough Gaelic, for example), but we correct things as we learn. Most of our events are at local Scottish games, so one thing we try to do is demolish the romantic myths and educate people (which results in interesting conversations with guys who swear that their clan has worn this tartan since Julius Caesar invaded Britain), so we welcome a variety of "looks" and try to keep things simple for the visiting public.

I hate to disagree with you a little bit, but there are tons of unexploited resources when it comes to the F&I Highland regiments. Montgomerie's actual papers are in the Library of Congress and I was just gifted copies of a couple of those documents that has information regarding the number of yards of tartan per man, what type of selvage that tartan had, what the tartan was, regimental shoe and stock buckles, that the regiment had purpose made garters, not just cut off pieces of wool twill tape and a bunch of other stuff. That information has been sitting right there yards, ok a few miles from where we have lived off an on, and we never knew it :-)

I still have to get to London to access the Lloyds of London archive to see the 42nd Officers clothing book and the 78th regimental papers, but Im not going to have to travel to Manchester as I found out there is a copy of Murray's correspondence in Montreal.

The internet, I love it!

[Orvis]

Great stuff, Luke! Actually, I worked at the Washington (DC) Navy Yard for 15 years and never knew that material was at the Library of Congress. I was friends with an historian at the Early History branch of the U.S. Navy Historical Center and he was working on his masters dissertation about the French & Indian War-era 60th (Royal American) Regiment of Foot. As a professional historian, he had borrowing privileges at the LOC and allowed me lunch-time access to microfilms of historical papers. In this case, the material about Montgomery's Highlanders that I had access to was found in the Forbes Papers (1758) and in Montgomery's letters to the British C-in-C in America concerning his campaign against the Cherokees in South Carolina in 1760. I was amazed that as a Regimental Colonel (and the son of an earl), Montgomery wrote all his letters (hard to decipher). He clearly did not want to be in the South Carolina back country when the major campaign of the war was being carried out in upstate New York and the St. Lawrence Valley. I was also surprised at how sympathetic toward his Native American enemies he seemed to be.

Anyway, even though I'm no longer reenacting the 77th/Montgomery's Highlanders, I'd love to know what you've found concerning their uniform details. Did you happen to find anything specifying their post-1759 regimental lace? I know that the 78th/Fraser's was ordered by the Board of General Officers to adopt regimental lace, despite Colonel Simon Fraser's reluctance to order it (probably due to a desire to save the regimental money), resulting in censure from the Board until he complied.

[OC Richard]

I'm curious as to why so many of those that choose to do Highland (Jacobite) era costume make such an historical faux pas a lot of the time... there are some things that are definitely wrong; plaid brooches, knitted hose etc., and not forgetting of course Jaobite shirts have all been mentioned. Why is it that we some often see things that are completely out of place? I guess some people will be following historically incorrect information, modern prints of historical costume/events are a prime source; others will no doubt do so because they use what the have/can afford (nothing wrong with that when starting out) and others I guess just don't care. Or am I being too harsh?

I've often had to bite my tongue in fear of giving offence but yes this sort of thing very common with Highland reenactors of any period, of people doing Highland costume in general.

As I've said before, it's as if Highland costume, in the minds of many, floats in its own world disconnected from time.

Countless times I've seen the very people who do their homework and make sure everything in their costume is period-correct throw all that out the window when they do a Highland costume.

A pet peeve of mine is people incorrectly doing the uniform of the 79th New York State Militia in the American Civil War. For whatever reason they freely mix elements of the 79th NY's post-war uniform with elements of the 79th Foot of Scotland from various periods. Neither uniform corresponds to anything the 79th NY would have worn during the Civil War. There's no excuse for this because clear photos showing the uniform exist, and more than that a near-complete pre-war uniform exists which has been widely photographed (in the Gettysburg museum).

One will see all sorts of anachronisms such as wearing blue hackles, wearing kilt aprons, spats, the wrong hose, wrong sporrans, wrongly pleated kilts, wrong cap badges, on and on it goes.

Much of the problem is that the uniform of the 79th NY has been incorrectly illustrated in a number of books on Civil War uniform, and photographs of existing post-war uniforms in museums have been included in such books. (The pre-war and post-war uniforms were different in almost every detail.)

Getting away from that specific case, one sees anachronisms all the time, people freely mixing Victorian, modern, and quasi-18th century bits in their Scottish costumes.

BTW I never buy the "I can't afford it" excuse for inaccuracy, because in most cases it can be shown that the inaccurate thing they're wearing cost just as much as an accurate thing.

Two more reenacting peeves of mine (while I'm on a roll) are 1) wearing modern eyeglasses and 2) musicians playing modern instruments.

Period-correct eyeglass frames are far cheaper than modern ones. I've picked up a number of original frames from the 1920s and 1930s on Ebay for as little as $6 each. The person wearing $150 modern frames telling you they can't afford historical accuracy is simply not telling the truth.

About instruments, there was a guy playing modern-style Highland pipes with his otherwise correct early Highland costume. He told me he couldn't afford a period-correct pipe. The pipes he was playing were top-notch vintage pipes, made around 1900 as I recall, worth $5,000 or so. He could have bought a reproduction of mid-18th century pipes by a very good maker for $1,500. Once again the "I can't afford it" plea was bogus.

[Ben Pierce]

Good lookin crew! Are the kilted Lebowskis related to the little lebowski urban achievers??