A Trip to the Past

Our family took a short drive last Saturday to an area very close to where we live called "Wilson's Creek Battlefield". It is a national park and is an area where a battle took place during the Civil War. Today, August 10th, is the anniversary of that battle, and because of the anniversary there were some special activities that went on there this past weekend.

The first thing we did was watch a movie that was about 20 minutes long about the battle that took place at Wilson's Creek 148 years ago today. I'm not much of a history buff, but I do admit the movie was quite interesting. Missouri was one of the only States that was split on its decision whether to stay with the Union, which was the Northern States, or go with the Confederates which were the Southern. The battle was considered a victory for the South, but it was not a strong enough victory to take Missouri away from the Union.

The next thing we did was park the car and walk a beautiful scenic route back to the site of a mill was called Gibson's Mill. As you can see, it was a beautiful, sunny day and a nice day for a walk. Doesn't the creek look inviting?

The beautiful, green path we walked.

After this, we went to see a house that was actually there during this famous battle in Missouri. There was a family that lived there called the "Ray" family. There were 12 people who lived in this small house, and then a slave and her 4 children that occupied a cabin in back of the house. The house has been redone but still has the original fireplace. The house was occupied till around the 1960s. During the battle, most of the family stayed in the cellar which was under the house. When the battle was over, they left the cellar, only to find all kinds of dead and wounded soldiers all over their yard and fields. So, the house served as a hospital during and after the battle.

The original fireplace.

The house of the Ray family.

The next thing we watched was a demonstration of how the soldiers shot a cannon and how the infantry loaded and shot their weapons. This was very interesting to me. The cannon took around 6 to 7 men to operate it. In both this group and the group of men in the infantry we took notice of how there were even very young men, practically still boys, who participated. This is not unlike what it would have been like back then.


There was lots of other things to do and observe, but by this time, we were 2 hours past our lunch time. So, we decided to call it a day. Tim and Dillon went back the next day and went to the museum and to a seminar on how to trace your ancestry back to Civil War times. Tim really enjoys tracing his ancestry and has done this for many years, but that will be a topic for another post here soon.

Tomorrow, I'll try to post some more pictures of this adventure, as there were just too many to post in this one post.