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	Re-Enactor of the Month


	by Jim Cummings


	We are preserving living history today so that the past will not be forgotten. Jim Cummings


	To See Past Re-Enactor of the Month

		To nominate a Re-Enactor of the Month

About Re-Enactors of the Month for April 2005


		By Jim Cummings

	It’s been two short years since The Pioneer Times Web News started Re-Enactor of the Month. We at Pioneer Times wanted to honor men and women who have shown their love of history and there desire to act upon that love of history through re-enacting. These are people who are not just satisfied with reading about history, they want to take part and feel what it was like. These rare individuals known as living history re-enactors want to walk in the footsteps of their ancestors. They want to know what the hardships were and what it might have felt like to come through the Cumberland Gap, or float down the Ohio on a flatboat and to stake a claim in the unknown territories of Kentucky, Ohio or Indiana.

Through living history, you can do just that. Through re-enacting you can become that person if only for a weekend. Feel what it might have been like to be Daniel Boone, Simon Kenton, or George Washington. Or feel what it might have been to be just a struggling farmer or woodsman come to an unexplored frontier.

And then there are re-enactors that take it to the next level. They not only do all the above but they want to share these experiences with others. These re-enactors go out of there way to “show and tell.” They put forth their time, resources, knowledge and individual talents to bring the past to life so that others may experience the sights and sounds of the past.

For the first time we at Pioneer Times have chosen a couple as Re-Enactors of the Month,

The husband and wife team of Kyle and Laura Willyard. When you see one at an event you see the other. They are a great pair, like bookends. And what goes in the middle of the bookends is a great amount of historical knowledge. They not only re-enact living history, they talk it, promote it, teach it and partake in it. Looking at them is to take a glance into the past, at what life might have been like for a couple in the 18^th century.


		Kyle Willyard is not only a re-enactor but a craftsman and a sutler too. In addition to blacksmithing and selling his work he holds down a full time job. He has also gained some celebrity status in the process. Kyle was contacted by producers of the movie “Pirates of the Caribbean” after they saw his work on the Internet at his web site for Old Dominion Forge. The movie which starred Johnny Depp and Orlando Bloom was produced by Jerry Bruckheimer. After some phone calls and emails Kyle was commissioned to make several pieces for the movie – knives, swords and boarding axes.

	Laura, the other half of the Willyard team is one of my favorite woman re-enactors. She walks


	the walk and talks the talk. When you talk to her or listen to her talking to others at a re-enactment it is like looking through a window to the past. She takes you back in time.


	Her garments and her look have been well researched. A history major while at Indiana University – she really knows her stuff. But she is the first one to protest – that she doesn’t know nearly as much as she would like too. It is a lifelong quest. New knowledge is always coming to light. But when it comes to talking cooking or clothing few can match her.


	We considered each one individually for Re-Enactor of the Month but part of their story is their meeting as re-enactors and their marriage. So many couples in re-enacting have one who loves it and another who just goes along. But with these two it a passion for both of them and choosing one or the other was impossible. So they became the first couple to be named Re-Enactors of the Month.

Re-Enactors of the Month ^{©

April 2005}

^{Kyle and Laura Willyard}

By Jim & Kathy Cummings

Kyle and Laura Willyard were both into re-enacting before they were married. Kyle began in high school volunteering at Spring Mill State Park in Indiana. He started as they were ramping up their crafts program. But he says, “I grew up on Daniel Boone and Davy Crockett and all the Disney stuff. I always thought other times and places were interesting and I was always drawn to the 18^th century.”

During event weekends at Spring Mill I worked with the blacksmith. Back in the mid eighties they had just added a blacksmith and a leather worker and a woodworker.

“I became rather good friends with the blacksmith. He gave me some guidance over the next two or three years, and gave me some good pointers. I didn’t do a formal apprenticeship or anything – just pretty much picked it up on my own.” Today Kyle is well known for his company -Old Dominion Forge. He can be seen selling his wares at various trade fairs around the area. At his website http://www.olddominionforge.com/ you will see not only examples of his work but photos of the new workshop he recently finished. It is strictly 18^th century.

Laura too admits to always being fascinated with the past. She grew up knowing that her great, great, great grandfather had alerted Charlestown that the Indians were attacking the settlement at Pigeon Roost. Of course she continued, “I didn’t know the full story of the massacre and the atrocities committed there until I was older.” It was then that she learned the full story of the Pigeon Roost Massacre in 1812. Being a history major she later had to delve into the stories and it was then that she learned that her ancestor was Jeremiah Payne one of the founders of the settlement. She has the family bible that links her to the Pigeon Roost Settlers.

As a child she begged her great grandmother for stories of the past – how they lived, what they wore, what they ate. Her great grandmother was born in 1896.

She would ride on horseback through the southern Indiana area were she grew up – looking at the foundations of old houses, wondering what life would have been like for the people that lived in those houses, and why they came here.

She admits to driving her mother a little crazy with her passions. I used to do things like dye handkerchiefs in pokeberries in the bathroom sink when I was little. In Brownies when we

Laura in the kitchen at Locust Grove

watched a women make soft soap I was fascinated. I asked a million questions. I just had to know how she did it. Every detail.

She wanted to get more involved with living history but didn’t exactly know how. Finally at a living history seminar at Miami University in Ohio she met the right people. Frank Doughman a park ranger at Vincennes was there and helped her to find a group in Indiana that she could join. She knew that her interest was in the time period of the early settlement of Kentucky and Indiana and was introduced to Kyle who had founded the Culpeper Minute Battalion.

Culpeper’s was a militia group that was founded in 1775. Virginia had 16 districts and from those districts the militia units were formed. Unusual for a militia Culpeper Battalion was actually marched over 150 miles to Williamsburg and spent about six months there. Kyle formed the Culpeper Minute Battalion in 1991. They are members of the NWTA.

Laura (admitting to being quite nervous) called Kyle and got herself invited to the Christmas party. She joined Culpeper but she also joined Kellar’s Company because of the women like Samantha Hickle that she met there. She first didn’t think that there were many women in Culpeper’s and didn’t want to camp with a “bunch of men”. There actually are women in Culpeper’s but at that particular time they weren’t very active. We have been through periods like that; Kyle said, were the women were busy with young children or other family matters and not traveling much. Then a year or two later situations will change and we may have a year we have a lot of women participate. Laura’s first experience with them had been during one of those lulls. Kellar’s Company had more active women and even another single woman so Laura felt more comfortable there. (ask her sometime about the bad experience she had with Civil War Re-Enacting).

But Kyle continued to call and encourage her to stay active in Culpeper’s. They began to email each other and their first date fittingly was at the historic Talbot Inn in Bardstown, Kentucky.

Kyle admits never having started out with the intention of selling his wares. The Last of the Mohicans had come out and he wanted to put together more of a rifleman’s look. He just wanted to buy a knife, a really nice rifleman’s knife at Friendship, Indiana one year and couldn’t find exactly what he wanted. He decided to make it himself. That was about 1993. A new blacksmith was working at Spring Mill and was a friend of his. He thought he would let him forge the blade and he would finish it. That experienced rekindled his interest in blacksmithing.

Strictly 18th Century

A few years later, after he had made himself pretty much of everything he could think of he started to consider the idea of selling his wares. He reasoned that if he couldn’t find exactly what he was looking for then maybe other folks couldn’t either. It was after his second or third trip to the fair at Mansker’s Station in Tennessee that he thought about become a sutler.

Kyle and Laura Wilyard with her mother Janet Krajnak and niece and nephew Ashley and Wes Krajnak at the Re-Enactment of the Pigeon Roost Massacre in 2004.

Although we had seen the Willyard’s at other events before it was the first Re-Enactment of the Pigeon Roost Massacre in 2003 that we really had a chance to talk to Laura. The fact that her ancestor Jeremiah Payne was a major figure at Pigeon Roost makes it a special event for her. Although the re-enactment is part of a larger civic festival, Laura says that once the re-enactment begins she is literally transported back in time. The fact that there is a carnival going on in the next field with games and rides and all the accompanying noise and flurry disappears for her once the narrator begins the story of this early Indiana settlement.

She is pictured above with her mother and niece Ashley just before they leave the cabin during the opening of the re-enactment (at left) and at right with Ashley.

Kyle at the Fair at New Boston in 2003

Both Kyle and Laura agreed though that as much as they love stepping back to the 18^th century they love their 21^st century life together as well. Although Kyle admits he loves the simplicity of that life and could probably loose himself in his 18^th century work, there were many challenges. Getting into a car and traveling to visit friends who are three hours away is something they enjoy doing today. The true realization is that living that far from friends or family in the 18^th century would probably mean never seeming them again. Modern medicine is a big plus too for Laura. She says she’s a chicken when it comes to pain. She can’t image childbirth and other things one had to endure in earlier times. Besides she chuckled the life expectancy was so much shorter, we might already be dead if it were the 18^th century.

Kyle: My main interest is military living history. I like the companionship of a military camp compared to the solitude of trekking. I think the eighteenth century was the height of civilization - a golden age for music, art, ideas, clothing, discovery. If you look at British history which goes back hundreds of years much of their ceremonial dress and tradition are based on that period.

Laura: My grandfather cooked a pie on a camping trip and I was hooked on open fire cooking from that day on.

JC: What would you like to see in Re-Enacting?

Kyle: We just want to see quality events. A rather high bar, as far as juried events go. People need to maintain a high standard of quality, yet still have a good time and educate the public into what 18^th century life would have been like.

Editor’s Note: See the related story on The Pioneer Times web page about Kyle Willyard’s knives, boarding axes and swords being used in the movie Pirates of the Caribbean.

Link to Old Dominion Forge