“Colonel! I come with a message from Generals Arnold and Wooster. General Tyron is destroying our supplies hidden in Danbury. Half the town is burning! We need your regiment!”
“My men are all at home, asleep in their beds,” said Col. Ludington. “Someone must wake them and call them to muster! I must stay here to ready the men to march.”
“I don’t know where all the men live,” said the messenger. “I am cold and my horse is tired. I cannot go.”
“I can go, father,” said Sybil. “I can ride my horse Star.”
That’s the start of Sybil Ludington’s ride to alert patriot militia in nearby New York to join what became the Battle of Ridgefield in April 1777, as re-enacted in the Keeler Kids program at the Keeler Tavern Museum.
Bringing history to life is the goal of the Keeler Kids programs — there were actually two, one for younger and one older children, over two weeks in July.
“You want to get them excited about history,” said Hildegard Grob, the Keeler Tavern Museum’s executive director.
“You want kids to understand the history of their town, and family,” she said.
“And the history of their country — democracy! There’s more to being a citizen than shopping.”
The kids learned about local history — Sybil’s ride, the Battle of Ridgefield, patriot tavern-keeper Timothy Keeler — but also about colonial life in its more everyday aspects, churning butter, making paper, playing colonial-era games.
Kids in the first week’s program — elementary school age — learned about colonial era trades, and built a colonial village with a cobbler, bookseller and wig-maker.
“We’re the bakers,” said Oliver Cooper and Finn Baudendistel.
“We learned how to make biscuits, buttermilk and soap.”
“These are gluten free,” Oliver said showing off some biscuits. “And these are all eaten — these are the non-gluten free ones.”
Tyler Wall worked as a cabinet maker, making stools.
“We hammered the nails in,” he said, “and then we got fabric and a cushion and then we hammered those in.”
Even in dramatic times like the Revolution, history is about real people, who aren’t all villains and heroes — though some, like Sybil Ludington, have their moments.
There are two sides to every story, as Grob noted looking ahead to the program’s second week, when kids of middle school age would be given more complex look into colonial politics.
“We’re going to emphasize that it took Ridgefield three votes to join the Revolution,” she said.
The kids, of course, enjoy seeing the cannonball lodged in the north-facing wall of the Keeler Tavern, a token of British artillery fire aimed at the inn whose proprietor was a known revolutionary.
“Timothy Keeler, we call him the ardent patriot,” Grob said.
“The man next door was a Tory — was actually his uncle, and was a Tory. He’s the one who came out and said to the British: ‘If that tavern’s set ablaze, there’s a north wind: Guess what happens to my house…’
“That’s the irony of history: It’s not black and white.”
Though people living the events may see things in stark terms, rather than shades of gray.
Tavern lore says that after his Tory uncle got the British to help put out the fire they’d started, Timothy Keeler’s still refused to show gratitude, saying: “I’ll be damned if I’ll thank a Tory for anything! I’d sooner thank Providence and a north wind!” (Various historical sources report that quote slightly differently.)
The Keeler Kids program’s director is Caitlin Schneider, a seventh grade teacher at Our Lady of Fatima School in Wilton, and the co-director is Chris Browne, the Keeler Tavern’s college intern. Both grew up in Ridgefield, learning about the “cannonball house” as the Tavern is sometimes called.
With their help, kids learned a little of what it was like to live 250 years ago, when people couldn’t just run to the supermarket and pick up something to eat.
“They made biscuits yesterday,” said Schneider. “They churned butter — they made butter out of whipping cream.
“Then, we’re making ice cream and lemonade tomorrow. We have all the kids use an ice cream churner.”
Yes, colonial people also found ways to enjoy themselves — as the kids learned while having “ladle races” where they ran as fast they could without spilling water from ladles just a few inches deep.
“Games from times gone by,” said Grob.
“They learn to pay ‘Jacob’s ladder’ and they get a yo-yo — those are colonial games.
“A lot of it is being outside — not plugged in. And learning about how people were back then. Kids enjoyed games. They had families and had to make a living.
“What they played, traditions, games, customs, what they grew in the garden, clothes,” Grob said.
“The older kids, especially, they love costumes, and dressing up, so that’s part of doing a history program.”
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