Welcome to 1838: Reenactors offer portal into Florida’s past

Last major battle of Second Seminole Indian War to be staged Jan. 24 at Loxahatchee River Battlefield Park in Jupiter.

A time-traveling army of history buffs, a passionate band of brothers and a few sisters, will invade a 63-acre park in Jupiter in less than two weeks. They’ll be hard to miss.

Dressed in period-authentic military uniforms and Native American longshirts, they’ll emerge from the sawgrass and thicket south of Indiantown Road firing muskets, rifles and cannons as they reenact the Battle of the Loxahatchee, the final major fight of the Second Seminole Indian War.

Unlike the actual battle, fought on the very same land on Jan. 24, 1838, between 1,500 U.S. soldiers and 300 Native Americans, no blood will be shed Jan. 24 at Loxahatchee River Battlefield Park. 

It’s a mock battle, choreographed and using blank ammunition — black powder charges without projectiles but with the same roar of gunfire and smoke. 

The public is invited to watch. Admission is free. 

The mission of the 25 or so reenactors: to step back 188 years and share a richly detailed interpretation of events that shaped the Florida we know today.

“The barrier between the past and present is somehow worn thin at Loxahatchee,” said reenactor Mike Heitman of Loxahatchee Battlefield Preservationists, a nonprofit that since 2017 has hosted the event.

“There is a certain you were there moment that occurs. It’s a really neat thing,” he said. 

LBP was formed out of a fight by founding members decades earlier to save the battlefield from development. Their work led to the county in 2010 carving out 63 acres of Riverbend Park and designating it the Loxahatchee River Battlefield Park. They plan to build a museum. They offer battlefield tours and monthly lectures throughout the year, but their biggest event is the annual Battle of the Loxahatchee. 

The mock battle is waged with help from a loose army of history buffs from outside Palm Beach County who participate each year in living history demonstrations and reenactments across Florida. 

The circuit includes the early January reenactment of Dade’s Battle — known as Dade’s Massacre — in Sumter County, where Seminoles ambushed a column of 107 soldiers on Dec. 28, 1835, sparking the start of the Second Seminole Indian War. And the February portrayal of the Battle of Okeechobee, fought on Christmas Day 1837 setting the stage weeks later for the Battle of the Loxahatchee. Both are larger than the Jupiter reenactment.

“We try to support each others’ events and go from one to another,” said Heitman, an attorney with the law firm Sachs Sax Caplan, who trades his office clothes for a blue 1830s infantryman uniform and hog slaughterer’s hat. 

For the love of history

Among other everyday folks in the reenactors ranks: an appliance repairman, a firefighter, a retired Pratt Whitney engineer, an elected municipal official, a state Department of Revenue auditor, a retired preacher and an electrician. Others are Seminoles, including Matt Griffin, a Black Seminole descendant, and Jake Tiger, who travels from Oklahoma to participate at the Battle of the Loxahatchee.

“Most of us who do this love history,” said Okeechobee Mayor Dowling Watford, who has portrayed an artillery private. “We want to preserve that history and make sure that the next generation of people just coming into Florida understand that history.” 

That history goes back to 1830 when Andrew Jackson’s Indian Removal Act called for the forcible removal of all indigenous groups east of the Mississippi River to reservations in present-day Oklahoma. 

The order was met with resistance. The result: the longest and costliest war between the United States and Native Americans, a conflict fought by future U.S. presidents and Civil War generals.

Tapping their encyclopedic knowledge, the reenactors eagerly explain how the Seminole Indian Wars shaped Florida much more than the Civil War. Fort Pierce, Fort Myers and Fort Lauderdale are among the cities named for Seminole War forts and soldiers. 

Lake Worth Beach, the Lake Worth Lagoon and Worth Avenue in Palm Beach are named after William Jenkins Worth, who declared an end to the Second Seminole War in 1842, three years before Florida became a state. 

Military Trail originated from a roadway cut after the Battle of the Loxahatchee by Maj. William Lauderdale south to the present-day city bearing his name.  

“It changed our geography, it changed our place names and changed landscapes,” said Heitman, a Florida native.

But it’s not as widely known as such events as the arrival of the pilgrims, the American Revolution and the Civil War. That’s what motivates the reenactors to wage mock battles as a way to help educate the public about the Seminole Indian Wars.

“A lot of the local stuff never gets to the history books. I learn more history (through) reenacting than I ever did in teaching school,” said James “Doc” Gipson, a retired history professor who honors his family roots by portraying a Seminole warrior. (He said his grandmother was a Choctaw in Oklahoma.) 

Authentic down to the eyeglasses

Reenactments like the one in Jupiter can be powerful learning tools. 

“It is the best way to engage people who don’t know anything about Florida’s history,” Heitman said. “They can talk to you and ask questions. It’s so much better and easier than reading names and dates of dead white men in some book.” 

Reenactors are sticklers for detail. They wear period-authentic clothing and wool uniforms. They carry accurate replicas of the weapons, along with hog-slaughterers’ hats, canteens and other battlefield accoutrements. 

Wristwatches, smartphones, Ray-Bans, even modern-day eyewear are forbidden. Those items are considered “farby” — a derogatory term used by reenactors for anything not authentic. 

“A lot of us are pretty serious about what we do,” said Keith Kolb of Ocala. “I have antique frames that I put my prescription lenses into.” 

That collective strive for authenticity can conjure a kind of time-traveling magic, transforming the park into a portal to 1830s Florida, before the arrival of Henry Flagler, air conditioning, Disney and Interstate 95. 

“It’s important both for the reenactors and for the public to get into the mindset of the period, so that they are mentally transported back to that time in the past,” said Heitman. 

“If you have ‘farby’ things, it destroys the illusion,” he said. “I’ve seen  — not at Loxahatchee, thankfully —  reenactors after they’re supposedly shot dead, they’ll sit up with a smartphone and take pictures of what’s going on in the battlefield. It totally destroys the effect.” 

When done right, Watford said, “it is absolutely like you are stepping back in time, like you are going back and appreciating what they went through. How they survived in Florida back then is just beyond me. Of course, they were a lot tougher than we are.” 

Go-to Seminole War-era fashion guide

But authenticity comes with a price. 

Some Jupiter reenactors might step on the battlefield with roughly $2,500 in gear, purchased from thrift stores, antique shops and specialty vendors called sutlers, a historical name for the civilian merchants who followed soldiers with food and supplies. 

Their go-to fashion guide is the aptly named “Seminole War-Era Clothing,” a meticulously researched book, available on Amazon, by LBP member James Flaherty, a 40-year reenactment veteran whose film credits include playing an extra in the 1989 Academy Award-winning Civil War film “Glory.”

A collector of antique guns, Flaherty is one of the few Seminole War reenactors who will fire an original 1816 flintlock smoothbore musket at some events. 

“I can go through the whole battle and not have a misfire,” he said with pride. “If you have a reproduction, you will have a misfire after every tenth shot because the architecture and the geometry of the lock is not the same as the originals. The springs are very, very light.”

Hard-core reenactors hand-sew their uniforms and period-authentic A-frame tents. (The sewing machine didn’t hit the mainstream until the late 1850s.) 

At Loxahatchee and other sites, many reenactors will arrive a day early and camp overnight on the battlefield, connecting with the spirits of fallen soldiers and Seminoles. 

“In the early morning, when you are camping out and the mist is rising off the fields, you have a certain sense that they’re still there,” Heitman said. “It’s a spooky thing, but it’s true. It is something you can really perceive when you are at the Battle of the Loxahatchee.”

Sleeping outside is where some veteran reenactors draw the line.

“I’m at that age where I don’t camp out anymore,” Gipson said with a laugh. “My wife likes to camp out at the Holiday Inn.”

What to expect

The weekend kicks off Jan. 23 with School Day, when reenactors will offer lectures and weapon demonstrations for students.  

There will be drum-and-fife performances, honoring the upcoming 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, and World War II reenactors offering insight into Florida’s role in that conflict.  

There will also be a few modern conveniences such as food trucks and live bluegrass music performed by the Cadence Hollow Band. 

Saturday’s festivities kick off around 10 a.m. with more demonstrations and lectures followed by the main event — the mock battle — at 2 p.m. It will last about a half-hour. 

About 200 folding chairs will be available on the grass; visitors are welcome to bring blankets and beach chairs. 

Like other Seminole War reenactments, the Battle of the Loxahatchee will unfold with help from an emcee. Through loudspeakers, LBP President Derek Hankerson will guide spectators through the action. 

Although the reenactor ranks will be made up mostly of men, a few female warriors might slip onto the battlefield.

LBP Secretary Laurie Corry will wear a period-authentic civilian dress as “the Lady of the Loxatchee,” representing the women who helped establish settlements. 

Veteran reenactor Dick Kazmar is looking forward to reprising his starring role as Maj. Gen. Thomas Jesup, whose eyeglasses were shattered by a Seminole bullet as he led U.S. forces on Jan. 24, 1838. 

“I can’t wait,” Kazmar said with a grin. “I get shot at and everything.”