Grand Ball provides look into yesteryear
By Arnie Aurellano
Journal Review, Crawfordsville, Indiana
The Union soldier, the dust from the battlefield washed clean off his face and his best dress blues 
pressed to perfection, extended a white gloved hand to the seated girl, the ruffles of her muted pink ballgown flowing down to the floor from her waist.
She looked into the young man’s eyes and gave a slight nod before extending a dainty hand, accepting his invitation and joining him on the ballroom floor.
Together, lady and gentleman clasped hands and smiled as they stepped, swayed and spun, the hardships of the ongoing conflict left outside the grand ball’s doorstep.
A slice of life from a century and a half ago? Maybe a scene from a History Channel documentary, or from the pages of Margaret Mitchell?
None of the above. As it turned out, it happened in Crawfordsville this past weekend. The Masonic Lodge hosted the Montgomery County Historical Society’s inaugural 1865 grand ball on Saturday, taking guests 144 years back into the past and into the world of former Crawfordsville resident and U.S. Representative and Senator Henry S. Lane.
“With Lane being a Civil War senator, we have such a wonderful connection to this time period and to Lane Place,” said the Historical Society’s Tamara Hemmerlein. “There’s so much rich history from that time period around Montgomery County that we wanted to highlight all of it by doing something a little different.”
The ball’s guests were all in period attire, with several men bedecked in Union blues and garbed in Confederate grays and women wearing their finest silk gowns. Music was provided by the Sugar Creek Woodwinds and Montgomery County Civic Band Director Gary Ketchum, who composed original arrangements based on piano arrangements of Civil War music.
The Historical Society, which had been planning the event since January, took great care to ensure that even the smallest details of the dance were accurate to era specifications.
“There’s so much you have to pay attention to that I didn’t even know where to start,” said Ann Harvey, who Hemmerlein described as the “driving force” behind organizing the ball. “There are so many customs from that era that we wouldn’t normally think about.
“For example, the men brought three pairs of gloves and they would change them as the night went on,” explained Harvey. “That way, when they danced, they didn’t touch the ladies hands with dirty gloves.”
Sure enough, many of the ball’s male participants brought extra pairs so as not to soil their dance partners’ fingers.
To help bring the event to life, the historical society brought in period reenactors from several troops, including the 44th Tennessee, 42nd Indiana, 14th Indiana and 33rd Virginia Company A.
Hemmerlein said that the ball was mutually beneficial to the society and the reenactors because it isn’t very often that the reeneactment troops get to break out their formalwear during performances.
“They told me that, usually, they’re reenacting battle scenes, so this was a real treat for them to get to wear something nice,” said Hemmerlein. “A few of them told me that we did a good job picking the right setting,” she added. “They said that usually they’d do something like this in a gym, and the basketball goals just ruin it.”
Indeed, many of the historical reenactment performers praised the Historical Society for putting together a faithful representation.
“I’m impressed,” said Carol Baker of Springfield, Ohio, a reenactor with the First Independent Light Artillery who called the evening’s dances. “They’ve done a really good job. The setting is really nice, and it’s representative of somewhere you might see an event like this. It’s a nice change — usually we do barn dances.”
“If you look at some of the things that people are wearing, it’s very accurate. It looks like everyone has really come out and captured the period.”
Hemmerlein and Harvey, for their part, were encouraged by the turnout and participation.
“We’d like to make this an annual event,” said Harvey. “I just think that if we have it annually and it catches on, it would ignite people’s interests in history.”
“I think this is definitely one we can do again,” added Hemmerlein. “I smell a new tradition.”
Used with permission from the Crawfordsville Journal Review. All rights reserved.