Who is Dr. Shadyfellow? Meet the Defenders’ Day icon in Baltimore County

Olafur Nelson wraps his gunpowder in scraps of pages ripped out of vampire romance novels.

It’s not period accurate, per se, but details, even the ones that just make you chuckle, are important for this War of 1812 reenactor.

That’s true for Nelson on and off the battlefield, when the Baltimore County native sheds his British redcoat for Dr. Shadyfellow’s blood-speckled frock. The 44-year-old will attempt to pry a musket ball — a cone-shaped bullet with a lead tip — from the hindquarters of a frozen pig he purchased from the local Amish market.

Nelson is a member of the Dundalk-Patapsco Neck Historical Society, which commemorates the Battle of North Point, the initial clash between British and American forces in the Yankee troops’ defense of Baltimore during the War of 1812.

In addition to reenactments, the dedicated troupe, which just celebrated its 40th Defenders’ Day anniversary at Fort Howard Park, hosts demonstrations on 19th-century living — from cricket to blacksmithing and fencing to medical procedures.

That’s where the good doctor comes in.

On Friday, after inducing the predeceased swine with several era-appropriate bullets — in preparation for the following day’s surgery — Nelson zipped the pig inside a body bag before placing it on ice.

“I’m probably on some sort of watch list because of what I buy off of Amazon,” he joked.

Nelson acknowledges there is a gross-out factor when using any animal for surgical procedures, but he argues a hands-on history lesson encourages even skeptics to consider how Baltimoreans lived and died while defending their newfound country.

“If you’re not being actively involved ... then it just fades away,” Nelson said. “It becomes something that’s listed in a history book and something you never think [about] outside of school.”

Man behind the scalpel

A phlebotomist by trade, father of two and amateur armorer, Nelson defies convention.

He tucks his long hair into a ponytail, keeps a salt-and-pepper goatee and sports a pair of baby blue-tinted sunglasses conjuring the image of a 1970s Elton John.

He initially thought about becoming a doctor but said it wasn’t financially possible, and he wound up married young.

“I did the family thing,” Nelson said.

His father, a retired Baltimore Police officer, taught Nelson how to shoot and take care of guns when he was 5. Nelson’s older sister dragged him to his first Defenders’ Day weekend in the late 1980s.

It was a natural fit to later repair, maintain and transport the reenactors’ replica muskets and rifles and perform in the battles himself, he said.

But his interest in medicine started with studying old textbooks, collecting 19th-century surgical tools and visiting the National Museum of Civil War Medicine.

Jennifer Egan, a Defenders’ Day Committee co-chair and historical society board member, said after the COVID-19 pandemic the group wanted to draw people back to North Point Peninsula with an attraction outside of reenactment.

That’s when Nelson’s demonstrations began.

“We try to break it up like a college course,” he said. “You have clinicals one day and lectures the following.”

Defenders’ Day legacy

Egan, who plays mortally wounded British Maj. Gen. Robert Ross during the reenactment, said Defenders’ Day has been difficult to maintain.

Many of the company’s original members are too old to drill. Carrying rifles while dressed in wool and loading cannons in the muggy September heat is not for the faint of heart.

“Nothing’s guaranteed,” Egan said. “I may not be here next year, you may not be here next year, but the history, the history, is always here.”

Egan and her co-chair, daughter Amanda Nebel, have done their best to recruit the next generation, but volunteers are down. When Egan started, there were 50-60 participating reenactors.

Back then, they could much more accurately represent how 3,000 Maryland militiamen strategically delayed the British, according to a National Park Service online history. Despite any tactical loss, the Americans deterred the enemy after everyone gathered at what is now Patterson Park.

Some 200-plus years later, Egan said, the Defenders’ Day Committee is lucky to get a dozen or so folks to don the wool.

“The kids aren’t interested in history,” Egan said. “History isn’t one of their things.”

Operating table

Nelson isn’t sure he’ll be here next year, either.

Still, he stressed there is no better way to absorb history than by bearing witness and experiencing it firsthand.

Saturday featured three procedures: trepanning, an ancient surgery to relieve pressure in the brain by drilling a hole in the skull; a dissection — to prove amputation was necessary; and, of course, the actual sawing off of the pig’s hind leg.

“The idea is to bring history out into the public so that people can actually put hands on items that you wouldn’t see outside of a museum,” he said.

And that is particularly poignant when you consider that conflict was consistently the catalyst for scientific and medical advancements, Nelson said.

“Being able to actually take out a bullet, take out a bone fragment and show that to the public,” Nelson said. “It’s a lot better than just trying to show a picture or trying to do this with a dummy.”

Plus, he added, the pig would have been destined for a luau or roast anyway.