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Just 199 years after a French émigré
chemist named Eleuthere Irenee parlayed that recipe into a
fortune, 15 excited and eager eight- and nine-year-olds got to
test his formula a stone's throw or so downstream from where he
first did it. To be sure, they employed some ersatz materials --
wood shavings, for example, made for a reasonable stand-in for
saltpeter -- but that didn't prevent their transporting
imaginations back a couple of centuries.
The youngsters were participants in the annual Hagley Museum
history camp -- now in its 15th year.
Lisa Marcinkowski, the museum's education coordinator, said the
camp is one of the more popular of the many educational and
cultural activities conducted throughout the year on the
230-acre tract on the banks of the Brandywine, a half mile north
of Wilmington, where the Du Pont Co. got its start.
If longevity doesn't fully speak to the impact of the experience
on the kids, Elizabeth Dempsey sums it up nicely: "It's really
fun; I've been coming here forever." The St. Elizabeth High
School student is now a junior counselor after several years as
a history camper.
Her counselor partner, Andy Houghton,
who will be an Archmere Academy freshman come September, said he
has been into hands-on history since going on a grade-school
field trip to Hagley. Chris Ball, a
current camper, said playing the roll of a 19th Century
powderman has it all over studying history from a book. Jenna
Davis agreed from her position at the business end of a laden
wheelbarrow and Gina Covelli accepted having hands and legs
blackened with charcoal residue all part of the good day's work.
If the kids fit easily into the swing of things, Dick Mickles
stayed well out in front setting an example. Styling himself as
powderyard foreman Mr. Gibbons and raving about the $35 a month
he's paid for having to work only 10 hours a day, six days a
week, the retired chemical engineer led the crew through the
proper procedures for mixing the ingredients in the large stone
mills. "This is the most-fun job I
ever had," he explained. While he
would not be exactly be willing to have swapped his Du Pont Co.
career for that of the corporate forebear he was impersonating,
he admitted the exchange would have its rewards -- such as being
the one to open the sluicegate and unleash the latten power of
Brandywine water as it cascaded from the somnolent millrace to
turn the giant stone. Climax of the
afternoon activity was getting to see black powder -- a dollop
of the real stuff this time -- perform.
More satisfying
than the explosion to the youngsters, however, was the
opportunity to actually rub some of the explosive between their
fingers after being assured that, even if they happened to touch
metal, they would not -- in the words of the powdermen who
toiled long ago at that very spot -- 'go across the crik' if
they did so.
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Delaforum visits the Hagley
Museum history camp |
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'Mr. Gibbons'
opens the gate to let the water flow and make it
happen. |
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The crew
watches as the ingredients they mixed are ground
into powder. |
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The kids get
close up and personal with the real stuff. |
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Making black
powder can be dirty work, but somebody has to do it. |
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