Belleville ‘artist and tailor’ thrives making clothes for historical reenactors

Describing herself as “an artist and a tailor,” Nadeau has dedicated herself to creating wardrobes for historical reenactors who focus on the 18th century, and specifically on the French and Indian War period of the 1750s.

“I’m a little nutty,” Nadeau confided. “But it’s an escape from reality and I love it.”

The biggest body of Nadeau’s work can be seen at the St. Charles County Heritage Museum in St. Peters.

There, she has 35 costumes in displays depicting the Battle of Fort San Carlos, fought on the St. Louis riverfront during the American Revolution.

She also has a French Marine costume on display in a museum at Fort Le Boeuf in Watertown, Pennsylvania, and she is finishing up two more similar uniforms for a museum at Fort Conde in Mobile, Alabama.

And just recently, working in what for her is modern fashion, the Belleville resident delivered two Civil War uniforms to the Soldiers Memorial in downtown St. Louis. They are set to go up on display in the near future.

Minnows and crawdads

Nadeau talked about her work as she sat among hundreds of yards of cloth, thousands of feet of thread and eight different sewing machines in what she lovingly calls her “troll cave,” a former bedroom in her house.

She said it was quite by accident that “somewhat of a tomboy” eventually became a sought-after stitch star for a community of history buffs.

“When I was a kid, I was mostly likely out looking in creeks for minnows and crawdads, or digging around in the dirt for relics,” said the 62-year-old Nadeau (“nay-doo”) of her childhood in small-town Chesaning, Michigan.

Although her grandmother and great-grandmother were “quite talented embroiderers,” Nadeau had her sights set on being an illustrator, specifically for Hallmark.

Staying in a town of about 2,000 people in Saginaw County didn’t seem the best way to reach her goals, so Nadeau enlisted in the Army, basically, “to get away from Chesaning.”

She ended up working in patient care at a military hospital near Tacoma, Washington. That’s where she met Don Nadeau, a soldier stationed at nearby Fort Lewis.

As many stories go, the two married and started a family. “I left the Army, but Don stayed in,” Nadeau said.

And then they moved — a lot.

“We moved 17 times in 20 years. So when people complain to me about moves they’ve had to make, I tell them ‘that’s nothing,’” she said. The couple has five children and 10 grandchildren, and Nadeau proudly notes that all three of her sons have served in the military. “My oldest is getting ready to retire from the Air Force soon.”

The family ended up in the St. Louis area purely for financial reasons after Don Nadeau retired from the military. A biomedical engineer who repaired medical equipment, he got a job at Forest Park (formerly Deaconess) Hospital in 1998.

They moved to downtown Belleville, into a sprawling Victorian home that was built in 1870, with a second floor added in 1875, and the first floor expanded in 1880.

“I think the owner did all the work himself because there isn’t a right angle in the place,” she said. “And the entire back bedroom kind of goes out on a slant.”

‘I’m starting to enjoy this’

Even by then, Nadeau still was not needling and threading old clothes.

That did not begin until 2000, when one of her husband’s new friends invited the couple to the annual Rendezvous at Fort des Chartres, about 60 miles south of St. Louis in Randolph County, Illinois.

The friends were part of about 20 people who are the 68th Regiment, 2nd Battalion Guyenne of the French Army during the French and Indian War, Nadeau said.

Because her husband immediately embraced the reenacting scene, it basically required Nadeau to get interested as well. “I had to make his uniform,” she said.

Nadeau began checking out illustrations from the period, bought some fabric and outfitted her husband in historical accuracy.

“Then as I’m doing this I began thinking, OK, I’m starting to enjoy this.”

Soon, the family was heading not only to the annual Rendezvous, but also to several other reenactment gatherings in Southern Illinois, Alabama and even New York state.

“We went to Fort Niagara for the Fourth of July celebration,” she said. “That was really neat.”

Not satisfied with simply dressing as one of the womenfolk of the 1750s who cooked and minded the campfire while menfolk fought in skirmishes, Nadeau made herself her own soldier’s uniform.

Ever the stickler for detail, she even crafted a mustache made from human hair and glued it on her upper lip.

“I must’ve done a good job, because I had a woman hit on me at one event,” Nadeau said. After a relatively long time, the woman stopped and said, ‘Oh my God, you’re a woman!’”

Making money from her hobby flowed from these festivals, she said, when people began to take notice of her work.

“Someone would come up to me and ask if I could make them some breeches, or a coat, or whatever. So, the business just grew out of word of mouth,” she said.

Should one wonder about, or want, a full French Army or Marine uniform made by Nadeau, be prepared to pay between $1,000 and $1,500 and wait about four months.

Nadeau noted that she doesn’t advertise or have a website. “It got to the point that I don’t need to,” she said.

‘Had to go talk to her’

Stephen Kling, a lawyer, author and curator of the Fort San Carlos display in St. Charles, dropped into Nadeau’s life about five years ago.

In 2017, Kling wrote “The Battle of St. Louis,” which tells of the Revolutionary War battle on the downtown riverfront.

In short, on May 26, 1780, about 700 British soldiers attacked St. Louis and Cahokia in an attempt to control the Mississippi River between St. Louis and Ste. Genevieve.

Because of prior rumors of war, the villagers in St. Louis built Fort San Carlos (not much more than a 40-foot watchtower) and a trench that arched from Laclede’s Landing to Soulard.

When the British attacked, about 300 American militiamen and 30 Spanish army regulars in the trenches waged a two-hour firefight and forced the British to retreat.

Flash forward to about five years ago, when Kling was toiling to turn his book into the museum presentation which opened in 2022.

Kling said he met Nadeau several years ago at a Bastille Day celebration, held at a Gateway Grizzlies baseball game in Sauget.

“She was dressed as Marie Antoinette,” Kling said, “so naturally, I had to go talk to her.”

The two bonded right off and worked closely for the next three years to get the museum presentation to the level of excellence they both desired — no small feat, given that each describes the other as a “stickler” and a “perfectionist.”

As an example of Nadeau’s attention to deal, Kling admiringly described just one piece of her work at the museum: hand stitching the uniform of Bernardo de Galvez, the Spanish governor of the territory during the battle.

“There’s all this gold braid up and down the cuffs, up and down the vest.… Each gold bar took about one hour — and there were 100 bars.”

“She must have worked on that (de Galvez uniform) for seven months,” Kling said.

Nadeau said she and Kling “just started clicking” in their mutual desire to maintain the quality of the museum display.

“That work has my name on it, and I want it to be absolutely the best it can be,” Nadeau said

‘Just one’

Even when Nadeau is on vacation, she is working.

During a recent trip to the nation’s capital, she spent the better part of a day enjoying the “First Ladies” exhibit at the Smithsonian, which features more than two dozen gowns worn by presidents’ wives.

She gave good reviews to all the dresses but was most impressed by the one belonging to Lucy Webb Hayes, wife of President Rutherford B. Hayes (1877-81).

“Not only did it have the evening gown to wear in the evening, but it also had two separate jackets so it could be worn throughout the entire day,” she said, impressed by both its fashion and function.

Nadeau then paused and said, in a tone carrying both dream and determination, “My goal is someday to get a uniform into the Smithsonian.”

“Just one.”