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  • This weekend the Lewiston Council on the Arts will present the latest installment in its “Marble Orchard” franchise with a free program of in-character monologues about the local personalities involved in the burning of the settlement during the War of 1812.

    Marble
July 24, 2011

Characters of War of 1812 coming to life this weekend in Lewiston

Staff Reports Associated Press

LEWISTON — Nearly every community in Western New York has a cadre of amateur and unofficial historians dedicated to exploring and clarifying their hometown’s past. Leave it to the Village of Lewiston to turn theirs into art.

This weekend the Lewiston Council on the Arts will present the latest installment in its “Marble Orchard” franchise with a free program of in-character monologues about the local personalities involved in the burning of the settlement during the War of 1812.

The presentations on Saturday evening and Sunday afternoon, entitled “The Spirits of 1812,” will take place in the Hennepin Park Gazebo at 4th and Center streets, and might be considered less a history lesson than a ruthlessly-researched theatrical production.

A cross-section of Lewiston’s residents, circa 1813, will gather to explain themselves, their times and that curious attempt by the United States to invade Canada. Each of the accurately-costumed actors is a modern-day resident of Niagara County, and the intended effect is a back-from-the-dead narrative to better explain the village’s remarkable history to the populace and tourists of Lewiston, 2011.

And you thought Lewiston was all about antiques, restaurants and Artpark.

Written primarily by Arts Council members Tim Henderson and Eva Nicklas, with considerable input from Lewiston Library genealogist Michelle Kratts and others, the show is structured around personalities, most notably that of peacemaker Chief Sacarissa, “Tuscarora chief of the Turtle Clan.” Played by Jay Clause, he brings Native American wisdom and music to his narrative, as well as the obscure story behind the rescue by the Tuscarora of Lewiston’s settlers while their town was burning at the hands of the British and the Mohawk tribe, particularly instructive since the Chief is well-known in Lewiston although his biography is not.

According to auteur Nicklas, it was librarian Kratts who “not only kept us honest, but discovered Sacarissa about three years ago. The Odd Fellows Hall in the Opera House on Center Street is named for him, but no one knew his story.”

They will after this weekend, as well as that of Sophia, fiancée of British general Isaac Brock; Alexander Millar of the “Mudball Heroes”, a band of patriotic American hoodlums who shot mud balls at passing British ships; and the bawdy saloonkeeper Catherine Hustler, who inspired a character in a James Fennimore Cooper book and claims that, by mixing up a drink in her 8th Street tavern and stirring it with a rooster feather, she invented the cocktail. There are others, each with a story to tell.

This is the 18th installment in the “Marble Orchard” series, which has been extended to include historic walks and macabre “ghost walks,” in addition to the Lewiston Council on the Arts’ program of arts festivals, concerts and gallery exhibitions. The “Marble Orchard” scripts are rewritten every year to highlight various aspects of history and the assortment of local legends buried in Lewiston’s “marble orchards,” which is a euphemism for graveyards.

The cast includes about a dozen members whose soliloquies were written to match their talents; 16 year-old Kelsey Jeffs’, for example, will include a song.

The public’s fascination for “living history” long ago superseded its appetite for textbook history, and many would likely not be aware of the fascinating tales and collections of heroes, villains and eccentrics of a place like Lewiston without this sort of human-interest theater. One could read about the War of 1812 or hear it explained to him by a “local” whose house burned to the ground during the war.

This short, evocative and well-researched piece of theater serves Lewiston — a community with layer after layer of history — very well.

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