SARATOGA SPRINGS — Camping normally isn’t allowed in Congress Park, but about 50 people will pitch tents there this weekend for a Civil War encampment.

The life of a Civil War soldier will be on display Saturday and Sunday with re-enactors dressed in period clothing displaying artifacts and even a medical tent.

“They’re not going to be running down to Dunkin’ Donuts for breakfast. They’ll be cooking what they eat right here,” said Lance Ingmire, who organized the second annual encampment.

He organized the first encampment last year in Congress Park to coincide with the 100th anniversary of a Grand Army of the Republic convention held in Saratoga Springs in 1907. The GAR was an organization for Civil War veterans similar to the Veterans of Foreign Wars today, he explained.

The 1907 convention attracted 80,000 Civil War veterans and their wives and children and is the largest convention to date in the city.

“I have the largest collection of ephemera from the 1907 convention, and I’m going to have that on display on Saturday and Sunday,” Ingmire said.

This year, the encampment is more a re-enactment of what the camping soldiers would do outside of battle. Such gatherings happened locally on the field that is now East Side Recreation Park during the Civil War, Ingmire said.

Local soldiers would drill and rehearse there before taking the train to New York City or Baltimore, where they were deployed for battle.

Soldiers will set up camp Friday night, sleep in the park and open to the public on Saturday and Sunday. “You’re going to see real camp life,” he said.

Local schoolchildren are encouraged to attend this weekend, and sponsor Adirondack Trust Co. will give away free T-shirts to the first 250 youngsters who attend with an adult.

Re-enactors will come from New York, western Massachusetts and Vermont.

The 125th New York Infantry will be represented, as well as a Confederate artillery unit. Ingmire hopes that members of the 6th New York, a cavalry unit based in Syracuse, will come, too.

The 77th Balladeers, a music group, will perform on Saturday.

Ingmire, 58, moved to the town of Saratoga in 2005 after retiring from his own insurance business in Pittsford, outside of Rochester. “This is my attempt to try to give something back to the community,” he said.

Ingmire was just interested in his family history when he began researching the 95th New York Infantry during the Civil War.

His great-great-grandfather, William F. Ingmire of Albany, commanded Company F in that regiment.

“I wanted to know where my great-great grandfather fought,” Ingmire said.

Thirty years later, Ingmire, 58, of Saratoga, is writing a regimental history of the 95th New York Infantry.

He’s logged over 15,000 hours researching at the National Archives and is constantly seeking photographs of soldiers and mementos.

Some of those things will be on display this weekend too.

“I was given his presentation sword,” Ingmire said of his great-great-grandfather. William Ingmire’s men gave him the sword in 1864.

A presentation sword once owned by Major Edward Pye, the 95th New York’s commander who led the first infantry charge at the Battle of Gettysburg, also will be on display.

The 95th soldiers served from 1862 until 1865, and mainly were recruited from New York City and cities downstate.

The 1,749 enlistees fought in many of the battles during the war, including Antietam, Fredericksburg, Gettysburg and Appomattox. More than 330 soldiers in the unit died during the war, including 50 killed in action and 76 who succumbed to their wounds later, Ingmire noted on his Web site. The others died from disease.