Guiding the next generation from his dorm room | Frontier Trading Company
Today we have a special guest, we're talking to Alex from the Frontier Trading Company Youtube Channel. If you have any interest in muzzleloading or living history on Youtube, I would hazard a guess that the frontier trading company youtube videos have been recommended to you here lately.
Alex poses with his family heirloom muzzleloader
Alex brings a fresh perspective to the Living History community and muzzleloading by association. He's just recently built his first flintlock lock muzzleloader to go along with his interpretations and his videos. Now, as school starts back up Alex heads back to the concrete frontier but that isn’t stopping him from making videos and sharing his passion for history.
Alex spent 4 summers as a staff member at a local scout camp near his home in Northwest Ohio.
“I was raised in Scouting, I was actually was raised in the city in the suburbs and both of my parents had come from the country and wanted to see me get a good kind of grip on real-life skills and the things that can only be learned out at summer, camp and stuff like that, and so it was scouting for me as a young guy, and I got into that program in kindergarten. I believe and was involved all the way through my Senior Year in high school.”
He says his natural trajectory lead him to working there as a staff member, giving back to the program. While the camp had several “Program Areas” to educate and keep campers occupied, Alex’s favorite area was the “Frontier Trading Company”, where staff dressed up in Buckskins, threw Tomahawks and shared traditional craft skills like blacksmithing. Inside the camp, a small frontier homestead was established at a cabin. Staff would use this area as a place to teach the scouts classes like “American Heritage”, “Indian Lore”, and Wilderness survival. Alex fell in love with this area as a scout, and would later work there as a staff member for 4 years until leaving for college.
“I’m also the son of a history teacher. I grew up on Daniel Boone and Davy Crockett and all those shows that kind of mentored along the generation before me in this hobby, and so I kind of have similarities in that way to some of the older guys that are involved. Growing up really valued history and working in that program. When it was time for college, I wanted to keep the momentum going you know, and so something I did was I started this Youtube Channel named after Frontier Trading Company, which was this program, are that I loved so much”
Alex poses with his mother in front of his teepee, circa 2018
Those early years as a scout and then a demonstrator were very important for Alex, they helped him get his start. Admittedly, he wasn’t doing everything right and he recognizes that but much like his videos now share with his fans, he wants people to know it’s okay to not be perfect at first. Alex is making a conscious effort to make muzzleloading and living history welcoming and approachable for enthusiasts of all ages.
Alex teaches beading to a young scout
Sadly, Alex’s enthusiasm for the program area wasn’t enough to keep it going and after he left the area to attend college, the area was shut down.
In several ways, Alex is an agent of the Frontier Trading Company, guiding it into a new frontier. Muzzleloading and Living History are still growing online and Alex is helping spearhead that effort. At nearly 5,000 subscribers at the time of publishing, Alex’s Youtube channel is reaching thousands of viewers each day, calmly and professionally sharing history with them with each video.
With videos sharing demonstrations on traditional frontier skills and history lessons from frontier historic sites around Ohio, Alex was missing one thing, a muzzleloader. During 2020, Alex’s school was locked down due to the COVID 19 pandemic. Stuck in his dorm, Alex needed an outlet and muzzleloading was that outlet.
Alex owns a family muzzleloader, but it’s not the kind of thing he wants to take on his treks, he was looking for something more fitting for the era he represents online. Youtube served as a great place for him to learn and to study. In short, Alex spent months watching videos on muzzleloading from Jim Kibler and the NMLRA, becoming familiar with the terminology used in muzzleloading so he could make informed decisions about his first muzzleloader.
Ultimately, Alex went with the Kibler Colonial, a popular pick for many enthusiasts in 2021. These kits aren’t cheap, and neither are the tools. Once again, Alex had to be creative with how he could bring his first muzzleloader to life. Like any historian, Alex began to research. He found a scholarship through his school that would fund an “Artistic endevor” between semesters and after some creative writing about the art behind the American Longrifle, he was set with funds for his kit and some left over for a class from the NMLRA at Western Kentucky University taught by none other than Wallace Gusler.
To hear more of this story, listen to the podcast linked above. Alex is wonderfully articulate and more than professional in all regards. I’d say muzzleloading and living history are in good hands if Alex is one of the stewards of it as we head into a new age.
You can follow Alex’s work on youtube, and support his channel through a money donation via Patreon.
“I would say that there’s a really satisfying feeling of legacy, there’s there’s definitely an established generation of people who have taken this hobby seriously and they’ve developed it into what it is today and when you can step up and act as a steward for all of their efforts. It gives you a really good sense of purpose and responsibility.
Of course you want to do them proud, and you also want to keep on advancing the hobby yourself, so it feels good to be caught in the middle between those two groups, between the past and the future and to be carrying on this knowledge. It definitely gives you a sense of pride,”
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