The final Civil War re-enactment

Journal Record, The (Oklahoma City), Apr 4, 2002

FREDERICKSBURG, Va. (NYT) -- It may be the ultimate act for the nation's legions of Civil War re-enactors, those buffs in uniform who worshipfully trek the old battlegrounds from Fort Sumter to Appomattox: They can now buy a burial plot in a new cemetery being carved from the hallowed earth of the Battle of Chancellorsville.

"Choose a final resting place that will connect with your life's passion for the War Between the States," declares a sales brochure for the cemetery, which offers Johnny Reb or Yankee Bluecoat plaques and optional North-South burial sections for those who prefer to leave the issue that way for ever and ever.

"So these guys over here surprised those guys, and those guys backed off in the final outcome" is how Joe Barreiro, at a war map, tersely summarized the three-day battle. Barreiro, a transplanted New Yorker, is cramming on his Civil War history as he develops the 373- acre theme cemetery.

"When I saw 1,000 lots to the acre, it drove me out of my mind with excitement," said Barreiro, who previously financed housing in New York. "Where else can you get zoning like that?" he asked with a grin of genuine graveyard humor.

The Chancellorsville Memorial Garden cemetery "is not at all about those people flying Confederate flags and that other racist stuff," said Richard C. Beasley, 44, a new plot buyer whose family roots are solidly antebellum, with a slave quarters still on his mother's farm near here. "Most of those jokers with the flags are from the North anyway," Beasley said, emphasizing that the cemetery attracted him as a good investment in land preservation in an area being overrun with suburban sprawl. "The point is, there was a war, we lost it; get over it," Beasley, a farmer, said, pleased with the four plots he bought for $3,000.

The land is not part of the nearby Fredericksburg and Spotsylvania National Military Park. But it includes some of the open fields where Stonewall Jackson led his Confederate troops in a flanking movement 139 years ago that surprised the Union forces of Gen. Joseph Hooker, said Blane Piper, a Civil War historian.

"There was actually fighting on that cemetery property, and there's a lot of interest in it beyond the re-enactors," said Piper, who is the proprietor of Lee's Headquarters, a military paraphernalia store in this hotbed of Civil War mania. He has been giving history pointers to the sales staff, hailing the cemetery as "this historic site of American tragedy and triumph."

Some 2 million Americans are deeply interested in the Civil War, trade professionals say, and scores of thousands of them are engulfed in the hobby of re-enactment, serving as virtual cannon fodder and prancing generals in weekend commemorative battle tableaus.

Merchandising Lewis and Clark

BILLINGS, Mont. (AP) -- Some Montana sheep ranchers are weaving history into business, hoping a line of wool blankets similar to those Lewis and Clark carried across the West will boost their profits. "We wanted to take advantage of a naturally occurring marketing avenue and build a following for our wool," said Jane Lambert of Montana Shepherd's Market, a group of four family producers that is turning the soft wool from about 750 sheep raised in the Bitterroot Valley into long, luxurious blankets.

Lambert said the idea came from both necessity -- business has been hurt by a drop in lamb and wool prices -- and an interest in the Lewis and Clark expedition as the bicentennial of the journey approaches. "I know we're on the Lewis and Clark trail. So I figured they'd have to have had wool blankets," she said.

Lambert took her idea to Billy Maxwell of the Lewis and Clark Interpretive Center in Great Falls, Mont. Maxwell was able to give her details of colors and sizes of the explorer's blankets, gleaned from their journals and inventories. In a little more than a year, the producers have developed a relationship with an established mill and an online business. They plan to market their blankets along the Lewis and Clark trail and to expand the product line to larger blankets that can be used as bedspreads. "We are, in a way, still finding our legs," Lambert said. "It's very satisfying to have a dream turn to an idea turn to reality."

Lambert searched the Internet for mills that could turn the shorn wool from their Targhee/Merino sheep into blankets. She found one in Minnesota, about 50 miles south of the Minneapolis-St. Paul area. About 6,000 pounds of wool were sent to Faribault Woolen Mill Co. last year to make about 450 blankets.

Catherine Meyer, the mill's director of product development, said the Merino wool is known for its soft, luxurious feel. And she said the blankets, thin but warm, could serve as something of a sleeping bag. Sales of the blankets, priced at about $350, were strong until Sept. 11, Lambert said. Since then, prices have been cut to revive interest.

I haven't got time for the pain

NEW YORK (AP) -- Today is the 94th day of 2002. There are 271 days left in the year. Here are some business and legal highlights from this date in history: