Revolutionary War Fika

We are working our way through American History and we spent the month of January learning about the Revolutionary War time period.  We decided to have a Revolutionary War themed Fika again, like last year.

I was curious to see if we had any ancestors that served in the Revolutionary War and I discovered that 2 of my 5th Great Grandfather’s did!  Laban Hall and Enos Jonas Challis.  

At first I thought that it was intriguing that both of these Great Grandfather’s of mine have names that don’t seem to be very common – but that are Book of Mormon names.  I mostly thought this was interesting since the Book of Mormon had not even been brought forth and translated yet at the time when the Grandfathers were alive.  I later discovered that the names Enos and Laban are both found in the Bible as well, although must less well known (to me at least) than in the Book of Mormon.

But after reading The Pilgrim Hypothesis by Timothy Ballard (I highly recommend this book by the way) and learning about how the Pilgrims thought of themselves as New Israel so they named their children (and towns) Hebrew names, it made a lot more sense to me why my ancestors from this particular generation (who weren’t far removed from the Pilgrim era) had Hebrew names.

Anyway, in my research on Family Search, I found a few newspaper clippings that talked about Laban’s service in the Revolutionary War.  

 

I also found photos of Laban and Enos’ grave markers.

 

Since we now know that we have a couple of Revolutionary War veteran ancestors, we represented them (and their wives, Olive and Joanna) during our Fika.  The kids switched roles a few times as well and represented George Washington, Benjamin Franklin, and Martha Washington. 

 

For the food, we had the Carrot Tea Cake that George Washington ate on British Evacuation Day (November 25,1783 when the British Army departed from New York City on Manhattan Island, after the end of the American Revolutionary War.

We also had an American flag made from strawberries, bananas, and blueberries.

We listened to Revolutionary War time period music while we ate.

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