Put-In-Bay, where’s that? It’s in Ohio, on the shore of Lake Erie. And, on Sep­tem­ber 2, 2013, I hope it will be in the news.

At Put-In-Bay

The news won’t be that my hus­band and I spent a cou­ple of days there in 2006. That his­to­ry is much too recent. True, we docked our boat at Miller Mari­na. We vis­it­ed the muse­um and Per­ry Memo­r­i­al where we watched a reen­act­ment of an 1813 battle.(Unfortunately, I did­n’t have my cam­era with me.) We went to DeRivera Park, ate ice cream, bought post cards and mailed them, and rent­ed a golf cart to tour the area. We even cel­e­brat­ed Christ­mas in July!

But the his­to­ry for this post goes back a lot far­ther, back to 1813 with the Bat­tle of Lake Erie. I’ve col­lect­ed a few links to tell you the sto­ry. The first is a link to The Bat­tle of Lake Erie Bicen­ten­ni­al cel­e­bra­tion. It is being held at Put-In-Bay now, with events through Sep­tem­ber. The reen­act­ment of the his­toric bat­tle will take place on Sep­tem­ber 2, 2013, dur­ing the after­noon. It will fea­ture tall ships on Lake Erie, and a lot of enthu­si­as­tic reen­ac­tors. See the bicen­ten­ni­al site here

There are many YouTube pre­sen­ta­tions cel­e­brat­ing The Bat­tle of Lake Erie. I’ve select­ed three to rec­om­mend. For a two and a half minute video with song and reen­act­ment photos–including tall ships, see this link For a five-minute musi­cal pre­sen­ta­tion with his­toric images, see this link And final­ly, for the full his­to­ry told and illus­trat­ed with a vari­ety of images, this sev­en­teen-minute pre­sen­ta­tion will relate the com­plete his­to­ry of that bat­tle as well as events before and after. See it at this link

This is the his sto­ry of our coun­try two hun­dred years ago–when it was young. On Lake Erie, they remem­ber this his­to­ry. Most oth­er parts of the coun­try have no local his­to­ry to com­mem­o­rate. The War of 1812 is almost The For­got­ten War. It is remem­bered around Chesa­peake Bay, for 1813 is the year the White House was burned and our Nation­al Anthem was writ­ten. I want to remem­ber it too, with the mys­tery book I’m com­plet­ing. It is set at a reen­act­ment of The War of 1812 on Chesa­peake Bay. In 1813, dur­ing that war, the British under Admi­ral Cock­burn raid­ed, burned, and some­times even paid for the pro­duce and ani­mals they took to feed their troops. But when the war end­ed, our coun­try and Great Britain became friends and have remained so to this day. In fact, as the long YouTube link ref­er­enced above says, the bor­der between the Unit­ed States and Cana­da remains the longest, peace­ful bound­ary between nations any­where in the world.