Dan Choszczyk of Black River Blades talks about blacksmithing during the Civil War Friday at the Michigan Iron Industry Museum. School groups learned about Civil War life at various stations throughout the day. (Journal photo by Christie Bleck)

NEGAUNEE — Where there’s smoke, there’s history.

That was the case at least on Friday when Lakeview Elementary School fourth-graders visited the Michigan Iron Industry Museum to learn about “Iron Ore and the Civil War.”

Things like blacksmithing, cannon-firing and medical treatment during Civil War battles — or the lack thereof — were part of the lesson plans for area students who visited the museum Thursday and Friday.

“I think it’s kind of a sensory experience of camp life in the 1860s,” said museum historian Troy Henderson, who noted that experience provided a way for youngsters to realize how much has changed, and hasn’t changed, since the Civil War, an event that drastically altered the country.

“It’s a good event to learn about a lot of different aspects of the Civil War for these kids,” Henderson said.

Students from Lakeview Elementary in Negaunee on Friday morning first listened to the husband-and-wife duo of Dan and Deb Choszczyk of Black River Blades, based in the Champion-Republic area.

The two set up a makeshift mobile camp on the museum grounds as if they were following the Army during the war.

“If they have anything that’s metal at their camp that needs to be fixed, repaired, remade, I will do it for them, and they will pay me,” Dan Choszczyk said.

As a blacksmith, he could make things like hatchets, tongs and knives, but not pots and pans, which were made from casts.

Mobile blacksmithing had to be accomplished in the 1860s, when wagons were a mode of transportation.

“All the metal pieces of the wagon, if they break, I can fix them or I can make new ones,” Dan Choszczyk said. “All the harnesses and the bits for their horses, they’re all made out of metal. I can fix and work on those.”

Being mobile, the two would have had to move at times to a mining camp, or more likely, a logging camp.

“If they go to a logging camp, my wife will cook for them,” he said. “She will do laundry, do mending. I will do the same thing I’m going to do here.”

Dan Choszczyk asked the students what type of logging tools he would make, with axes and two-handed saws being two correct answers.

He added a bit of levity as well.

“Did somebody saw chainsaw?” he asked.

The duties assigned to women and girls might sound traditional, but they were challenging, especially when the men and boys were off to war.

“It left the women and girls back to do everything at the farm or the homestead, and what you see here is basically what I have to do,” Deb Choszczyk said. “I have to sew and make the clothing that I’m wearing, take care of the clothing that we do have.”

That meant wearing the same clothes every day until she found time to get and heat the water to wash the clothes.

Food could be dry, natural or smoked, with bread, beans and dried meat staples, she said.

Her duties also included chopping wood and butchering an animal for processing, and taking care of wounds.

Then there is the occasional surprise visitor.

“A mouse got into one of my covers — my blankets — so I had to sew that,” Deb Choszczyk said.

That’s OK; those types of incidents kept her busy, she said.

The students then watched a Battery D Living History Encampment where they learned about the difficulties of battle, one of which was soldiers wearing warm but scratchy wool coats during hot and cold weather.

Getting wounded wasn’t a good proposition during the Civil War either, with getting shot in the chest a death sentence, and getting shot in the arm a cause for amputation.

The men portraying solders in the encampment, which included a campfire where a robust pot of coffee was being made, shot a cannon several times, although it was just noise being produced.

That noise, though, was enough to make the kids flinch.

The morning concluded with a talk by Ann Arbor-based Michael Deren, whose presentation was titled “The Past in Person.”

Displaying instruments of the era such as a saxhorn, bugle and fife, he talked to the students as if they were volunteers at Camp Negaunee in 1865.

“Three cheers for President Lincoln!” he shouted during the interactive talk.

However, Deren talked to them about the less savory facts of the war, which claimed hundreds of thousands of lives.

He also gave them hope.

“I hope it’s going to be done in a week,” Deren said, pretending the date was April 1, 1865. “Then we can send all you volunteers home.”

The entire experience was, as Henderson said, sensory in a variety of ways, with Deren playing assembly on bugle.

The odor of smoke at the outside blacksmithing demonstration affected fourth-grader Justin Knueppel, but in a good way.

“I love the smell of this,” the boy said.

The Michigan Iron Industry Museum is located at 73 Forge Road in Negaunee Township.

Christie Bleck can be reached at 906-228-2500, ext. 250. Her email address is cbleck@miningjournal.net.