The News & Observer had a bit about Civil War re-enactors that included a woman from Asheville:
DURHAM – On the surface, it might sound like high-schooler Corey Adams spent the whole weekend making trouble. He camped out in the woods with friends, fired several shots from a rifle and didn’t call his mother even once to let her know he was OK.
But the 17-year-old had a lot of supervision — he was under the watchful eyes of a few corporals, his first sergeant and his dutiful captain. And the rifle cartridges he fired were blanks.
Adams is one of the youngest members of the reconstituted 38th North Carolina Troops, a group of Civil War re-enactors who set up camp over the weekend at Bennett Place State Historic Site in western Durham.
With the men wearing woolen gray field uniforms and women in skirts and petticoats, a group of about 25 people re-created the camp life of Confederate infantrymen. Just like Southern soldiers of the 19th century, the men practiced marching, loading their rifles and living simply from the land. And that meant — sorry, Mom — Corey had to leave his cell phone in the car.
…
Though there was never a training camp or battle on the 325-acre Bennett Place homestead, the farmhouse was the site of talks that eventually led to the largest troop surrender of the Civil War — when Confederate Gen. Joseph E. Johnston met with Union Gen. William T. Sherman and negotiated terms that ended the war in April 1865.
The original farmhouse, owned by James and Nancy Bennitt (frequent misspelling drove the family to change the spelling of the surname after the war), was destroyed by fire in the 1920s and reconstructed in the 1960s on the same spot.
The kitchen, also in its original place, was where Andi Vann-Jensen and two other civilian women Sunday prepared a rice and sausage dish and sweet potatoes for the troops, using cast-iron pots they hung over a fire. Vann-Jensen, a nurse from Asheville, has been a re-enactor for nearly 30 years, she said.
“It’s a chance to slow down,” she said. “It’s a restorative time.”