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Lynda Cooper, 29, of Germantown promenaded through Gaithersburg's Bohrer Park wearing a hoop skirt, calico green dress and crocheted black snood, a hair adornment that kept her locks pulled back and tidy.
"It began as fun and now it's a mixture of fun and research," said Cooper, a doctoral student in art history.
Forty locations ranging from an 18th century tobacco plantation in Sandy Spring to the Josiah Henson Historic Site in Bethesda known as Uncle Tom's Cabin, participated in the celebration.
The Gaithersburg Community Museum organized a living history day at Summit Hall Farm near Bohrer Park, a historic white farmhouse once owned by prominent Gaithersburg landowner John T. DeSellum.
"There was a historic raid here in 1864," said Wendy Woodland of Silver Spring, museum coordinator, who said that Confederate General Jubal Early's advance cavalry stole horses and livestock in the July 10 raid, one day after battles with Union troops at Monocacy.
DeSellum's sister Sarah helped save the family livelihood by hiding silver in her petticoats, Woodland said.
Within two months after the Civil War began in April 1861, 10,000 federal troops were stationed in Montgomery County, Woodland said. Gaithersburg, the county's second largest settlement, had 130 free residents, Rockville had 365 and Sunday's living history day was designed to show what daily life was like.
"Nostalgia is a tool for understanding who you are," said Michael Twitty of Rockville, who gave a food demonstration and has travelled throughout the South collecting cookbooks to study food history, particularly that of African-American slaves.
"Wars, houses, events only give you little fingerprints of history…When you're in their food culture, you know what they had to do to survive, what they had to do every day to give their lives meaning," Twitty said.
Robert Urban, 57, of Sykesville demonstrated medical advancements between the Revolutionary and Civil Wars. Matthew Ebersole, 53, of Hagerstown helped perform amputations and eye surgery on mannequins.
"It's hard to get real people to want to lay around for hours with you," said Ebersole, a former emergency medical technician, who said he started doing re-enactments to share medical history.
