The crew first is working to disassemble the blockhouse, located inside the fort at George Rogers Clark Park, 936 S Tecumseh Road, to repair the the damage has happened over the last 45 years roughly.
“The first thing we have to do is just take it apart,” Campbell said. “So then we have to cut the logs and reassemble in a couple weeks time.”
>> PHOTOS: Log cabin restoration work begins at George Rogers Clark Park
They started with the roof Thursday and began on the logs Friday.
The work will be done in time for use in the annual Labor Day weekend Fair at New Boston.
A blockhouse is a fort with holes in it that allow for forces inside to fire at approaching enemies.
Jim Campbell was part of the crew that helped build the blockhouse in the 1970s, and Friday he was at the park as parts of it were removed.
“We are repairing the cabin that we put up probably in 1974-75, and there’s been a lot of damage to it over the years,” he said. “So we’re gonna take the top bunch of logs off that are damaged and repair them, and then put them all back in.”
He said the blockhouse is a facsimile of what George Rogers Clark would have found when he came to the area and fought the Battle of Peckuwe (pronounced “Pick-a -way”).
“I was I was one of many that put this together. The Ninth Virginia Regiment at that time were about the only reenactors for the Revolutionary War, and they were the ones that primarily worked hard to get that done,” Jim Campbell said.
He credited his friend Floyd Barman for twisting his arm and getting him out for the original building work.
“At that time, I was I was more interested in I high-wheel bicycles than I was flintlocks and cannons,” Jim Campbell said, going all in since on the Fair at New Boston and its lifestyle. “I’m having a ball.”
A pivotal battle of the Revolutionary War, the battle involving the Shawnee village of Peckuwe was fought on Aug. 8, 1780. The battle stopped the British from controlling an additional front that could have devastated the continental Army.
Credit: Bill Lackey
Credit: Bill Lackey