Victorian Fair brings Civil War era alive in Portland

Civil War re-enactors from the Third Maine Regiment turned back the clock outside of one of the best preserved pre-Civil War-era mansions in the nation Sunday.
More than 500 people passed through the gates last Sunday for the Victorian Fair at Victoria Mansion in Portland, according to caretakers of the Danforth Street landmark.Image may be NSFW.
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The Victorian Fair mingled views of the historic Morse-Libby House, built between 1858 and 1860 as a summer home for Ruggles Sylvester Morse, a luxury hotel proprietor, with vignettes of the era on the lawn outside.
But adding to the novelty was an outdoor encampment of Civil War re-enactors, complete with period popcorn and snacks.
Steve Henry of Winthrop played the fife while decked out in full infantry regalia.
"I'm pretty much just a private in the ranks, just an infantry private," Henry said.
The fife music gave a glimpse of life for the Third Maine, Company A, a regiment recruited early in the Civil War from several communities of Maine's Kennebec River Valley.
Music was "a very large part of their existence because they did so little fighting and so much marching and drilling and work," Henry explained. As a result, "they had a lot of free time on their hands, and music filled a lot of that; and it also was a huge morale booster.
People in the ranks would play banjo, cornets, guitars, fiddles, Irish pennywhistles, "in fact each regiment pretty much if they could afford it, would have a brass band that would put on daily concerts of popular music," he added.
At the Victoria Mansion Sunday, Henry's fife-playing infantryman was joined by Larry Williams, who played the role of a gentleman in the 1860s, and Robert Pierce, who portrayed a private in the Union Army.
"We try to portray what life was like for a Civil War soldier with the Third Maine — we're also known as the Bath City Grays — back in the 1860s," Pierce said.
Williams said, "The Bath City Grays have been around quite awhile, and when the war started they went in with the Third Maine."
The Company A, Third Maine Regiment Volunteer Infantry, according to its website (http://www.thirdmaine.org) "is a nonprofit educational and living history organization dedicated to preserving the memory of Maine's role in the American Civil War."
The Bath City Grays mustered into federal service on June 4, 1861, in Augusta, as Company "A" of the Third Maine Regiment Volunteer Infantry. The majority of the men, according to the re-enactment group, were tradesmen, shipwrights, shopkeepers and artisans, while the rest of the regiment was largely composed of Kennebec lumbermen.
"When the Seventeenth finally mustered out of service on June 10, 1865, in Portland, Maine, several veterans of the original Third Maine had served four years and one week-a total of 1,468 days of this county's most horrible and devastating war to date," the group's website noted.
On Sunday, the portrayals included "civilian ladies," who "research and illuminate the roles of women in the early 1860s," including "Maine women who served in the Maine Camp and Hospital Association and the United States Sanitary Commission."
Those included Carolyn Lawson, who helped visiting women try on elaborate Victorian era dresses.
Portland Blacksmith Guild member Sam Smith and Solomon Spiegel demonstrated how to forge metalworks on an anvil.
The Victoria Mansion will host a a special performance by Joanna Olsen: "the story of the woman for whom King Edward VII would abdicate the throne," noon on Wednesday and Thursday, Sept. 18 and 19, at the Cumberland Club. Tickets are $75 per person, proceeds from this event benefit Victoria Mansion.
For more information on the fundraiser or for visits to the mansion, visit http://victoriamansion.org.