Living History
A Step Back In Time
I am not your average teenager. I live in two different times, two different worlds. I live in both the twenty-first century, as well as the nineteenth century. I am a Civil War reenactor with the Seventeenth Michigan Infantry Company E. With the help of other reenactors and living historians, I bring the nineteenth century alive to people.
With the two times being very different, there are many resulting differences for me as a person. First off, I have to wear a dress 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, compare to being able to choose between wearing pants, skirts, dresses, shorts, or whatever I choose. In the twenty-first century, teenagers have a choice over who they court and can marry at whatever age they want to, whereas in the nineteenth century, girls could be married by the time they were fifteen years old. Girls also have a choice as to how they wear her hair, but back then, a girl wore her hair in braids or down her back until her father thought that she was old enough to be courted. At that time, she was then expected to put her hair up and dress more like a woman than a girl. The expectations of the parents on the children were also much higher, as by the time a girl was ready to be courted, she could fully take care of the running of the household and all of the work included in it.
