Things you learn at the Tampa Bay History Center during their annual Fourth of July celebration:

  • Revolutionary War soldiers from the Continental Army wore pewter buttons.
  • Marines in the Second Seminole War had to use the butt of their musket to grind up their coffee beans.
  • Suffragette colors are yellow, white and purple.

Every year the museum hosts re-enactors to breathe life into U.S. History.

They love sharing their knowledge and the era of history that they know most about, and they love sharing it with our guests,” said Manny Leto, head of Marketing and Communications at the center.

Ted Johnson has been a re-enactor for about 13 years, mostly focusing on World War II-era soldiers. This July 4, however, he looks like he is an extra in a Revolutionary War movie.

It took the Dade City resident an entire year to create his American Revolution-era uniform with painstaking attention to detail, from those pewter buttons to his English musket to his musette bag for supplies.

Along with the uniform, he brings his knowledge of the time period. Johnson says he is constantly reading about the war, and he makes history jump from books into reality.

"I’ve got four or five books in cue right now,” said Johnson. "It's different when you read it in books, or if you see it on the screen, but it's totally different effect when it's something they can see and touch and explain how it was used and what it was used for.”

Photo: Virginia Johnson, staff

The re-enactors represented every military engagement, including Florida's Seminole Wars all the way through to the wars of the modern era, and not just conflicts that played out on a battlefield.

"Votes for Women," chanted Penny DiPalma, portraying a suffragette circa 1917, the year women marched on Washington D.C. to fight for their right to walk into the voting booth. The suffrage movement represents one of the many organizations that have battled for equality in U.S. History.

"One of the things in the brochure-- it says if we can't be citizens at voting time, we won't be citizens at taxpaying time,” said DiPalma. “So, reminds you of something like maybe the 'Boston Tea Party'? No taxation without representation? Exactly."