Colonial history comes alive at Bushy Run Battlefield event

The Graham family of Madison took time Saturday to see a slice of 18th-century colonial life on the Western Pennsylvania frontier — guns, knives, compasses, a canteen, powderhorns, bowls, woodworking tools and a variety of animal pelts — at the living history event at the Bushy Run Battlefield Museum in Penn Township.

“We homeschool our children and we just really like the 18th century,” said Laura Graham, who was with her husband, Allen, and their daughters, Skylar, 13, and Addison, 11.

The girls said they learned a lot. Their father said he was much intrigued by an ancient Indian stone made into a knife.

The Grahams were part of a steady stream of visitors to the museum.

And that was without the benefit of a reenactment of the August 1763 battle, in which a contingent of Native Americans were unable to stop British troops and colonial Rangers from lifting the siege of the British Fort Pitt during Pontiac’s War.

Last August, the annual reenactment had to be canceled because a tornado that whipped through Penn Township in late June felled numerous trees. That made it unsafe for people to move around the battlefield.

The living history event Saturday had reenactors set up tables with items symbolic of the 1700s. It was designed to bring people back to the battlefield, which did not reopen until September.

“We wanted to let people that we are open,” said Bonnie Ramus, president of the Bushy Run Battlefield Heritage Society, which operates the museum and the battlefield reenactment. The site is administered by the Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission, in partnership with the nonprofit battlefield heritage society.

“It was devastating. It was so bad we could not get into the gate,” Ramus said, referring to the entrance off Route 993.

While some of the trails at the park remain closed because of the downed trees, Ramus said Saturday the organization plans to hold its reenactment from Aug. 2 to 3.

One of the reenactors participating in Saturday’s event was Dan Balzarini of Jeannette. He brought guns, knives, tomahawks, wampum beads, a bowl made of a dampened bull’s horn that was stretched into shape and an iron skillet with a flexible handle that folded into the pan for packing in a backpack.

Balzarini has performed at several battlefield reenactments at Bushy Run as a member of Hannastown-based Proctor’s Militia. He showed visitors how a colonial soldier might use a piece of cloth dipped in a tin of brick dust, then used to polish a bayonet attached to the end of a gun to make it glint in the sun.

“It’s the original Brillo pad,” Balzarini said.

Henry Bowden of Turtle Creek portrayed a fur trader like John Fraser in the 1750s, whose home along Turtle Creek provided shelter for a young George Washington on a trip in the 1750s to the forks of the Ohio.

Bowden, who said he got into reenacting through his desire to learn more about Fraser, brought along a bundle of pelts: bear, beaver, deer, squirrel, rabbit, otter, coyote and raccoon.

The pelts were a lifeblood for the trappers, Bowden noted.

“They trapped them, skinned them and then sold them for supplies or cash,” Bowden said.

Marilyn Backus of Elizabeth Township, a reenactor with the Elizabeth Township Historical Society, said she wanted to visit the living history event to see how the Bushy Run heritage society presented history.

“I’m always interested in colonial history,” Backus said.

A visitor closer to Bushy Run, Michele Klingensmith of Trafford, said she is “a lover of history of all sorts.”

“I have not seen Bushy Run, and it’s close to my house,” Klingensmith said. She liked seeing how the colonists used nature in their life and how animal pelts were traded.