How the Gettysburg re-enactment builds ‘a town in three days’

(Gettysburg) — For three days, a functioning little community emerges on Yingling Farm bordering the Gettysburg National Military Park.

The Gettysburg Anniversary Committee has arranged a large-scale re-enactment at this site for about 20 years and will be honoring the 154th anniversary of the battle with three days of festivities starting Saturday.

Essential to the plight of the re-enactors is sutler row, a microcosm of the merchants assigned to regiments during the Civil War that sold goods to the soldiers. At the re-enactment, the sutlers, located between the re-enactor campsites, set up a tiny town with 23 tents selling goods, from history books to period weaponry, to re-enactors and visitors.

“The community of sutlers is like a family,” said Walt Gaylor, who sells reproductions of historical flags and artifacts with Timeless Colors.

The community lost a significant figure last year in George Lomas, “the ultimate sutler,” according to Susan Saum-Wicklein, who coordinates the sutler area.

Lomas, one of the original organizers of the Gettysburg Anniversary Committee, died in September 2016. Saum-Wicklein called him a “walking encyclopedia” of Civil War history.

Saum-Wicklein will be managing Lomas’ long-running shop, Regimental Quarter Master, in addition to her own, a jewelry shop called Jeweler’s Daughter. Regimental Quarter Master started in the 1960s and sells mostly men’s military gear.

“He’d be disappointed if I didn’t do that,” Saum-Wicklein said.

Here are three sutlers you might find if you visit the re-enactment this weekend:

Barrancas

Traveling from Pensacola, Florida, Terry Jordan had people coming to help her set up her tent, where she sells men’s, women’s and children’s period clothing.

But their truck broke down in Florida, and Jordan began to panic. Fortunately, Jordan was able to contact her friends, whom she has met through re-enactments from the past 27 years, for help.

“We do help one another, and there’s a great network of people,” Jordan said.

Jordan travels the country in a 1981 Chevrolet van, known as “the gray ghost,” for her sutler work in a shop called Barrancas, named after a military fort.

“I travel as far west as Missouri and north as Canada and south to Key West, which means I’m a total loon,” she said, laughing.

Jordan explained that in the three days leading up to re-enactment festivities, the sutlers settle in to prepare their shops for the re-enactors, who can purchase items they need prior to the event. 

“We build a town in three days, and then we’re gone in three hours,” she said.

Jordan described Gettysburg as a mecca that calls to her community of re-enactors and history lovers.

“For me, it’s the history and the people,” she said. “That’s just what I’m about, and people call me Pollyanna. I don’t care.”

Rum Creek Sutler

Chuck Johnson has been a re-enactor for almost 30 years. When he no longer wanted to be fighting on the battlefield, he turned his hobby into a business as a sutler.

I’m not on the field anymore, but I’m still part of the re-enacting community,” said Johnson, who is from Georgia.

At Rum Creek Sutler, Johnson sells “everything that the re-enactors need,” from tent flies to boots.

“Someone walks in, they can walk out and go on the battlefield,” he said.

Rum Creek Sutler also includes a wide selection of history books for re-enactors and visitors to purchase.

Johnson and Saum-Wicklein reminisced leaving for re-enactments all dressed up and throwing “wild parties” at the re-enactment camps. Not the case anymore, though.

On Wednesday, Johnson said it would take a couple days to ready his tent for re-enactors, who might need to purchase a canteen or a cartridge box before Saturday. 

Gettysburg is a big draw for re-enactors all across the country, Johnson said.

“This is the quintessential battle,” he said. “This is the high-water mark of the Confederacy here.”

Timeless Colors

Gaylor has turned learning about commemorative Civil War flags into a trade at re-enactments.

As a result, Gaylor says he does something “a little different” among the sutlers.

Timeless Colors reprints flags, ages them to make them look like they’ve been in a battle and frames them for purchase, Gaylor said. 

“People think there’s only two flags in the Civil War,” he said. “We’ve got over 5,000 flags we’ve identified so far.”

Gaylor explained that, during the war, each unit often carried its own signature flag

The flags can get “very specific to who you’re honoring,” he said. “It can be a unit, it can be a person, it can be a school or a battle.”

In addition, Timeless Colors sells reprints of artifacts like battlefield maps, hymnal sheet music and a “cheat sheet” found in a box of artillery ammunition called a “table of fire.”

Gaylor also said his shop includes the black history of the war, including the documented history of U.S. Colored Troops and a recruiting posters for men of color.

“We want to tell the whole story,” he said. “We’re not here to sell a point of view or rewrite history. We want to tell everything.”

Daniel Young, an 82-year-old sutler that specializes in blacksmith work, walked over to Gaylor’s tent to show off “cup holders” he just made for re-enactors to use.

The cup holder was made so a person could stake it into the ground– as if it could have been used during the Civil War.

It’s this kind of ingenuity and dedication to historical accuracy that brings this group of people together in Gettysburg every year.

“We’re not a bunch of crazy people,” Gaylor said. “We’re crazy because we wear wool in the summertime, but [not] other than that.”

This story comes to us through a partnership between WITF and The Hanover Evening Sun.