The Best $2

The collection of tents and general commotion drew our family to investigate what turned out to be the Continental Army, 8th Pennsylvania Regiment.

On Labor Day weekend, my eldest son enlisted in the Continental Army, 8th Pennsylvania Regiment. I have his enlistment papers in his portfolio. I watched as he stepped up to the officer and made his mark and was promised 100 acres and twenty Spanish-milled dollars if he completed his tour of duty.

His brother was less inclined to enlist; he would have had to slip a piece of paper with the number “16” in his shoe anyway.^[1] So I enlisted him on my behalf and made my mark “Mom.” Perhaps he was struggling to apply Romans 13 to the revolutionary cause, because he was less than pleased with me.

This was the fateful ad that alerted my children to the Continental Army’s need. One stepped up immediately to serve.

We found the army camp and the officer accepting enlistments at a special event called the Revolutionary War Encampment at the Oliver Miller Homestead, located in Allegheny County’s South Park. The Oliver Miller Homestead is a small site featuring enthusiastic guides in 18th century dress who teach about early settlers in Pennsylvania. Admission as of writing is an astounding $2 per person (cash only) on special event Sundays like this; on all other Sundays it is only $1 per person to see the site.

We toured the home and learned about the Miller family, who were among the first pioneers to come to the area when it opened for settlement. Also known as the Stone Manse, the Miller family hosted the local Presbyterian church in their home before a separate church was constructed in what is now the nearby suburb of Bethel Park. Guides shared about the economic decisions and workload required to manage a frontier home, including growing flax, weaving cloth on a loom so as to make clothes, and more. My son was delighted to know that he had started whittling younger than a pioneer boy might have…but less than pleased with being taught how to whittle a broom out of a hickory branch–especially when he discovered that I expected him to make me a broom! We also learned about 1700s “refrigeration”–the spring house–a separate building on the lot and the oldest building in the county’s public parks system.

It was just an ordinary day when we set out to visit the Oliver Miller Homestead and learn about pioneer life.

We sat in a reconstructed log cabin and learned that the typical pioneer home did not have any closets because they would be taxed on the number of closets they owned. As frontiersmen, the prevailing thought was that no one needed to own so much stuff. Two or three sets of clothing per person was typical and whatever clothes that you weren’t wearing would hang on a peg. The pioneers understood the work it took to make clothing and embraced the scripture that we “brought nothing into the world and…cannot take anything out of the world. But if we have food and clothing, with these we will be content” (1 Timothy 6:7-8).

Among its many artifacts and models, the Oliver Miller Homestead boasts a loom on which reenactors make fabric, reminding us of the great blessings we have today!

From material possessions to workload to government and revolution, the Oliver Miller Homestead provides plenty of opportunities to contemplate our own lives, our own blessings, and our own state of contentment. We are blessed today with closets full of assorted clothes, labor-saving devices to keep those clothes clean and our food cold, and a safe and peaceful country to call our home.

We arrived at this special event just after the homestead opened and we closed the day with them. We just couldn’t help it! The reenactors were so knowledgeable and eager to answer our questions about early life in western Pennsylvania that we didn’t have time to see the entire site before it closed. It blessed us not only with a chance to “experience” history, but also the opportunity to experience gratitude for our lives today. When there is another special event or when we are starting to feel entitled by our modern American lifestyles, the Oliver Miller Homestead is there to welcome us back and readjust our perspectives.

It’s a good thing this was the best $2 we ever spent.

^[1] To avoid lying, underage boys aspiring to be soldiers would write a number on a piece of paper and slip it in their shoes. Then, if questioned about their age when they were enlisting, they could reply, “I’m just over 16.”