It was on a dark, cold and dreary day in 1811 when it happened. At 4:00 AM on that day a band of Indians snuck up and engaged a US army brigade in a hard fought battle. The Indians surrounded the sleeping soldiers who half expected an attack and slept with one eye open and with clothes on and rifles loaded. The out maneuvered Indians lost that battle at Tippecanoe in Central Indiana just a few miles north of what is now Lafayette, Indiana, home of famous Purdue University. That was the Indians Folly. Twenty-nine years later General Harrison, who was the hero of the foray, would use this battle to catapult himself to the presidency of the United States.
One hundred and ninety-six years later in June of 2007 a group of people gathered under those same 300 year old stately oaks for the 35th annual Fiddlers Gathering. That was the Fiddler Frolic.
Among the many musicians in attendance was a lady who in later life decided to learn how to play the violin. She was there to attend the workshops to learn how to fiddle. She and her husband were also there to enjoy the concerts by professional string instrument players. That would be more Fiddler Frolic.
The lady was Marilyn Buller, who was there to improve her violin skills and a good time was had by all at the 35th annual Fiddlers Gathering!
They started building on a Monday morning and by Friday evening 200 men had completed the framing, the roof was on, installed all windows and doors and locked the place up and went home. That's old fashioned barn-raising.
The entire Interpretive center takes about 1-2 hours to go through. In future blogs we will show some rooms and explain the multi-media presentations as they depict the history of three groups of people coming out of the reformation: the Mennonites, the Hutterites and the Amish.
