Danbury Museum Teaches Students How Lucky They Are!

For the past three weeks, the Danbury Museum has been hosting reenactment events for Danbury's students.  Students passed from one historic building to the next, listening to experts in colonial dress talk about Danbury's history in the military, the community and the home.  The fifth grade students at Shelter Rock Elementary School, learned a lot about women's work that was required to keep a family going.  

Spy Sil Gleissner, in colonial dress, talked about early spying techniques.  One tactic included  swallowing a large metal pellet that contained a message, and he received the expected response from the students, "Ewwwwww."

Dressed as the Commander of the Second Continental Light Dragoons, Sal Tarantino enthralled the students with his enthusiastic portrayal of times past. According to Tarantino, the Connecticut State Police still have items on their uniforms that hearken back to the times when the Dragoons were on horseback to enforce the codes of the day.  

Tarantino also talked food, and the students found out that an onion, carrot and apple was a typical lunch in the 1700s, which impressed them almost as much as finding out they would have had to share their daily single flask of water with their horse. 

Joretta Kilcourse, who rings the bell in the video, said that working with the students has been highly entertaining.  Upon entering the one room school house, Kilcourse asked students, "Who knows what the three Rs are?"

The students responded, "Reuse, renew, and recycle!"

Other interesting tid bits included an old fashioned punishment. When colonial children misbehaved, they had to stand with their toes right at a line on the floor, and stay there.  That resulting in the expression, "Toe the line!"  

Spies used to write in secret ink between the sentences of a page, which gave us the expression, "Read between the lines."

Finally, in talking about the past,  girls learned that the majority of their day would have been spent cooking and baking, and avoiding being burned in the hearth fires.  Girls were engaged to be married at age 11, married at 14, and if they were unmarried by 18, the girl's father would have to pay someone to marry her.  If that didn't work, and poor old dad was forced to continue to feed the unfortunate lass, she would have to earn her money by spinning yarn, hence the phrase, "Old spinster."

To take a little visit into the Danbury Museum's reenactments and see the student's reactions, view the video.