BIDDEFORD — When Steven Eames was a young child, he used to enjoy watching John Wayne westerns, TV shows about frontiersman Daniel Boone other programs about America’s past.

“I’ve been a complete and utter nut on history since I was kid,” Eames said.

The North Berwick resident parlayed that childhood past time into a career, he’s a retired history professor, as well as a hobby, he’s a military reenactor with Harmon’s Snowshoemen and has been performing reenactments for 46 years.

Over the weekend, Eames was one of a dozen men who set up camp on land owned by Eve and Peter McPheeters and the Biddeford Pool Community Club in Biddeford Pool. The event was held in conjunction with the Biddeford Historical Society.

The reenactors wore the clothes, used the tools and gave a glimpse to the public of what life was like for New England frontier soldiers in the 17th and 18th centuries.

Some portrayed members of Benjamin Church’s Company, who were most active in the late-1600s. Others portrayed members of Harmon’s Snowshoemen — named for John Harmon of York — who were active in the mid-1700s. Both groups fought in New England, including Maine.

“Benjamin Church was one of the first Europeans to adopt the Indian way of war,” Eames said, which involved spreading out, going into the woods, taking aim and taking cover.

Both companies fought in wars and conducted raids against the French and the Native American’s aligned with them on behalf of the colonial government. They did so, Eames said, to protect their families and community. The soldiers were involved in fighting that occurred from Portland all the way down the coast of Maine and New Hampshire and beyond.

He said that initially the Massachusetts government — Maine was part of Massachusetts from the 1650s until 1820 — would send soldiers from Massachusetts to Maine and other parts of the frontier and pay them for the entire time whether they fought or not. It was economical, Eames said, to use men who already lived and knew the frontier and only pay them when they were on the move.

These companies of frontier soldiers “had no uniforms, they wore their everyday clothes,” Eames said. They were required to have their own blanket, a sack of provisions, a rifle and if it was winter they needed snowshoes. Usually they added to their provisions by hunting or fishing and they slept under the stars. If they needed protection from the elements, “like natives them made shelter by stripping bark off trees.”

Other than the tents set up on the Biddeford Pool site (which the soldiers didn’t use), much of what the reenactors wore, and the weapons and tools they had with them, were very similar to what the frontier soldiers used, Eames said.

While you can buy these items, he said he made the clothes he was wearing and even made his rifle.

Another member of the snowshoemen made the men’s knives that they had with them on Saturday and Sunday.

And Richard Rausch, a custodian from Georgetown, Massachusetts, made a number of tools that would have been used by a joiner, an all-around carpenter, in the 1600s and 1700s. He said his goal is to make a complete set of tools.

Rausch said he has been a reenactor for nearly 30 years, he started when he was 14 years old.

He said he took up the hobby because of “a love of history and a love of early American trades.” While Rausch performs in reenactments of many time periods, all the way up to World War II, reenacting in the wars of the 17th and 18th centuries are his favorite, he said.

“I enjoy celebrating how America became America, and the French and Indian war was a big part of it,” Rausch said.”

George Monteith who works in the Biddeford Code Enforcement Office helped organize the weekend reenactment. Monteith has been a reenactor for almost 20 years because, like the rest of his counterparts, “I always liked history.”

He likes performing in reenactments, he said, because by wearing the clothes, using the tools and living for a short time like the men he’s portraying “you can experience a little bit of what they did.”

Bringing the reenactors to Biddeford was a good opportunity for the community, especially for young people to learn about Biddeford’s frontier past, Moneith said.

“There’s a lot of stuff that happened in this area,” he said, meaning Biddeford and specifically Biddeford Pool. There was a fort built at Hills Beach several hundred years ago during the wars with the Native Americans, Samuel de Champlain sailed up the Saco River and into Biddeford Pool in the early 1600s, and much later there were gun placements along the Pool during WW II, he said.

Biddeford’s origin is in Biddeford Pool, initially called Winter Harbor, said Biddeford Historical Society President Dana Peck. He said Richard Vines started the first European colony when he and 32 other men stayed through the winter at the Pool. He began a permanent settlement in Biddeford in 1630 when he secured a land grant for the area.

Peck, who asked Monteith to bring the reenactors to Biddeford Pool, said he did so “to educate the community on the history of Biddeford since it’s changed so much in the last 10 years.

“The whole point of this is so the people can see the genesis of the community was down here,” he said.

In addition, Peck said, the Historical Society “wants to take the history of the city out from the back rooms of the McArthur (Library) and bring it out into the city.”

To that end, the Historical Society will continue to have history programs throughout the year and hopes to have its own facility one day, Peck said.

— Associate Editor Dina Mendros can be contacted at 282-1535, ext. 324, or dmendros@journaltribune.com.