“Raid on Township #1” in Monterey, 18-19 Sept.

This weekend, 18-19 September, the Bidwell House Museum in Monterey, Massachusetts, will present “Raid on Township #1,” a two-day Revolutionary War living history event.

The event description says:

Visitors will experience a recreation of raids conducted by British Regular Forces along with Native and Loyalist allies in the Mohawk Valley after the Saratoga Campaign. From 1778 to 1783, battles were fought all over upstate New York and the “frontier” over control of land that had long been in dispute between the Native Americans and colonial settlers.

Visitors will be able to view:

• two public battle reenactments (tactical demonstrations) 
• American and British/allied camps 
• Cooking and sewing projects, and talks on clothing 
• Demonstrations of muskets, artillery, and other weapons
• Sutlers (vendors) 
• Military medicine and midwifery
• The roles played by women and children who either followed the army or struggled on the home front

The schedules for both days start at 10:00 A.M. The tactical demonstrations will take place in the early afternoon. The camps will close to the public at 4:00 P.M. on Saturday and 2:30 P.M. on Sunday. Food will be available for purchase on the grounds.

People who wish to attend this event must buy tickets in advance for one or two days’ admission through Eventbrite. There’s limited parking, and thus limited attendance. A day’s admission for an adult who isn’t a member of the museum costs $20, but that daily price goes down if you buy a two-day ticket or join the museum. All kids under the age of twelve can get tickets for free. The museum asks that all visitors wear masks while on the site.

The Bidwell House Museum is set on 192 acres of forests and trails in what was once Housatonic Township #1 in the Berkshires. The oldest part of the house was built around 1760 for the Rev. Adonijah Bidwell (1716-1784), the first minister of that area. Back in 2012 I shared a news story about a museum intern cracking Bidwell’s cipher to understand one of his sermons.

The township’s original meetinghouse was located just to the south of the minister’s house, and both stood near the Boston Post Road. Later, the community split into the towns of Monterey and Tyringham, and then New England’s farm economy faded, leaving the house (expanded somewhat in the early 1800s) in sylvan isolation on the Boston Post Road.

In 1960 clothing designers Jack Harris and David Brush bought the Bidwell house, restored its exterior, and furnished it in late 18th-century style using the minister‘s probate inventory as a guide. After that couple’s deaths, their house opened as a museum in 1990.

Something to Take Pride In

I’m back in greater Boston after my trip to California, including the Monterey peninsula, and catching up on news, including an impressive tale out of Monterey, Massachusetts.

As reported by the Berkshire Eagle, fifteen-year-old Shelby M. Sebring tackled the mystery of the Rev. Adonijah Bidwell’s surviving papers while working as a paid intern at the Bidwell House Museum. The first impressive thing is Sebring’s accomplishment. The second is that a small history museum could offer a paid internship.

The Rev. Mr. Bidwell (1716-1784) left only a few “sermons in a private code: a mixture of early forms of English, Greek, Latin, symbols and shorthand.” (Descendant Edwin M. Biddle described seeing a diary with accounts of his service as a chaplain and fill-in minister in the 1740s, before he settled in what became Monterey.) Bidwell’s Wikipedia entry, last updated in March, says, “his shorthand code is too complex to gain more than the basic feel of a sermon.”

Using Fred B. Wrixton’s Codes, Ciphers and Other Cryptic and Clandestine Communication: 400 Ways to Send Secret Messages from Hieroglyphs to the Internet, which she had received as a Christmas gift, Sebring set out to fill in the gaps of the Bidwell manuscripts. The Eagle stated:

She also used an online guide to 18th-century shorthand and penmanship, Biblical references and “common sense” to chart the four-page sermon, titled “Proud.” It is labeled with three dates: 1759, 1761 and 1783.

Sebring filled three notebooks, first by writing down all the recognizable English, then mapping the numbers and symbols, and then trying to substitute words for the symbols in a way that made sense.

“There was a lot of guess and check,” Sebring said, noting that she has no background in Greek, Latin, middle English or the Bible.

Eventually, she figured that the numbers in the sermon referred to Bible verses. Ultimately, Sebring revealed an eight-page typed sermon about why people should be wary of exhibiting pride.

I suspect the three dates indicate when Bidwell preached that sermon. A chaplain on the Louisbourg expedition of 1745 and other campaigns, he might have responded to the British military victories of 1759 and the Treaty of Paris in 1783, but I’m not sure what could have prompted the 1761 call. A local history says that the minister’s infirmities meant he needed assistants during the last two years of his life.

This fall Sebring will be a sophomore at a military prep school in Virginia. The Bidwell House Museum is hosting a colonial garden party on 11 August.

[Image of the Bidwell House Museum above courtesy of Passport Magazine, which features lifestyle in the Berkshires and Litchfield County.)