The next meeting of the Nashville (TN) Civil War Roundtable will be on Monday, November 23rd, 2009, in the visitor’s center of Ft. Negley Park, a unit of Metro Parks, Nashville, TN. This is located off I-65 just south of downtown between 4th Avenue South and 8th Avenue South on Edgehill Avenue/Chestnut Avenue. Take Exit 81, Wedgewood Avenue, off I-65 and follow the signs to the Science Museum and Greer Stadium. The meeting begins at 7:00 pm and is always open to the public. There is no charge to attend.

This month's program:

“MAKING DO: SHORTAGES AND SUBSTITUTIONS ON THE CONFEDERATE HOME FRONT”

What if something happened that altered your access to many of the things you used daily? What would you do without your morning coffee, gas for the car, electricity and much more if it were suddenly not available due to war? This pretty much happened to the people of the Confederacy when access to daily items disappeared due to the war and the Union blockade. However, many Southerners began to seek substitutions for many of these lost items; some were quite good and ingenious while others were simply terrible, like green pea coffee! The necessities of war and a total war economy forced the Southern home front to seek out new ways of dealing with daily life from buttons to seeds; from coffee to clothing.

Karel Lea Biggs of the Clarksville and Nashville CWRTs will present her program “Making Do…,” which covers the successes and failures of these people who were trying to keep some level of normalcy in their lives as their world fell into chaos. Besides some very novel creations, these people also displayed a wonderful human spirit.

Karel Lea Biggs is a Seventh Grade Science teacher at New Providence Middle School in Clarksville, TN. An amateur historian with an interest in women in war throughout history as well as the civilians in war, Mrs. Biggs has also reenacted with a ladies refugee group and has written on the topic for some Civil War publications. This program won the “Program of the Year” award from the Joe Johnston SCV Camp in Nashville a few years ago.

We hope you will join us for this special November meeting of the Nashville Civil War Roundtable. The Nashville Civil War Roundtable is made possible by Nashville Metro Parks and the Tennessee Chapter of the Society of Military History.