Reenactors spun yarn, sawed logs and showed past writing materials on the Porter County Courthouse lawn Saturday to illustrate trades from America’s early days.

Catherine Davis, of Boyne Falls, Michigan, was dressed in wool despite the 90-degree heat to show what life was like in 1607, in the Jamestown colony era.

“I’m the oldest one here, at least timewise,” she said.

Davis had a tobacco pipe tucked into her bonnet, a nod to the colony’s biggest export. “It was literally the only profit coming out of Virginia,” she said.

She used a drop spinner made of cherry to turn wool into yarn. “The more you do, the more proficient you become,” Davis said as she twirled the spindle in her fingertips.

With a forked stick made of a debarked poplar sapling to hold the wool, she could move around wh

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