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One of my scholarly interests is in researching the lives of women artisans in history, particularly milliners. (You can click on the "history" tag in the sidebar to find other related posts of this sort.)
Millinery has long been a viable career for a woman, and one of the few that result in a product with a high price point, allowing her a greater chance at upward economic mobility. Single and widowed women historically had few choices for means of supporting themselves, and those occupations were largely of servant and vice classes. In the right market, a woman could make a small fortune by way of millinery.
I've been doing a lot of reading on the 19th century frontier and the American West lately, from both the perspectives of the westward-moving emigrants and the displaced and destroyed indigenous tribespeople. History in general is an interest of mine, and often i'll get caught up in a subject and read all i can on it for months or years at a time, narrowing my interest until i wind up being an armchair expert in some random area.
For example, before i got into this Western US thing, i had been voraciously studying the Age of Sail and maritime history. From there i fell into researching the lives of women and minorities at sea, and how in many instances maritime culture could offer acceptance and opportunities otherwise unavailable on land. Layered into this was an interest in sail-related arts--ornamental knotwork, scrimshaw, tattooing, needlework, and sewing (those last two of which carried no gendered connotation at sea, interestingly enough), etc. But i digress.
In my current reading, i've come across a woman whose life story i'd like to share: Lucinda Cox Brown.
Along with her husband Elias, their children, and several members of her extended family, Lucinda emigrated westward on a wagon train from Illinois in 1847, bound for Oregon. She was probably around twenty-one years of age at the time. Lucinda left behind her twin sister Malinda, whose husband was the brother of Elias. Halfway to Oregon, Elias was taken ill (possibly from typhoid) and died, leaving Lucinda a widow. She and her children stayed on the wagon train, however, and eventually did make it to Salem, Oregon.
Upon her arrival, Lucinda and her family had literally nothing but they clothing that they wore. She supported herself and her children through the winter by sewing clothing and making warm cloth hats for sale and trade. When spring of 1848 came, however, her millinery talents truly flourished--she began making braided wheatstraw bonnets beautifully trimmed with ribbons, which she sold to the women and girls in the growing communities of the Oregon territory.
Lucinda Brown's bonnets, which were apparently both functional and fashionable, sold with great success in the Oregon territory; with money from her millinery enterprise, not only did she solely provide for her three children but Lucinda made and saved enough money to obtain her own land claim in 1849.
Lucinda remarried twice--to Hiram Allen in 1851 and again to a Mr. Spencer in 1859. Between her three husbands, Lucinda eventually became mother to eight children. The primary record surviving of Lucinda's life is a four-page "reminiscence" of her overland emigration in the 1887 publication, Transactions of the Oregon Pioneer Association. As such, it is unknown whether she continued to work as a milliner as more and more settlers arrived in the Oregon territory, or if she abandoned it when she was no longer the solitary wage-earner and head of her household. Lucinda lived to the age of eighty-two; it is also unknown as to whether she ever saw Malinda, the twin sister she left behind in Illinois, again.
The Allison-Antrim Museum of Greencastle, PA, maintains a site with some good examples of bonnet shapes of the 1840s. The ones depicted on the site are not made from straw, but the basic shapes give you a good idea of the type Lucinda might have made.
For frontier women, bonnets were not merely worn for fashion and frippery--a well-made wide-brimmed straw bonnet protected them from sunburn and glare when traveling or working outdoors. Open-weave patterns of straw plaiting in crown construction can make a cool, breezy summer bonnet more comfortable to wear than a cloth bonnet.
Conversely, densely braided straw can be almost waterproof, and, if wired, a straw brim could stand up better to extreme weather than other hat materials of the time; diary accounts of overland trail passages mention the irreparable damage heavy rain caused to bonnets of cloth-covered buckram or pasteboard construction. Bonnets of these materials would "melt" in a downpour--buckram and pasteboard lose all structural integrity when saturated. Slat bonnets, constructed with thin wood slats inserted into channels sewn side-by-side the length of the brim, were the only comparably durable option. Two years ago someone donated one of these to our archive made with what looked like tongue-depressors for slats. (Due to the volume of artifacts in our collection, it has yet to be photographed and catalogued.)
Incidentally, if you are interested in primary documents of the American West, i recommend checking out the blog Ghost Cowboy, which features period photography and transcriptions of newspaper articles and other primary sources from the time. Those of weak stomach should be forewarned though--a lot of their transcriptions deal with crimes, battles, and vice culture of the times, and can be fairly gruesome in their descriptions.
Millinery has long been a viable career for a woman, and one of the few that result in a product with a high price point, allowing her a greater chance at upward economic mobility. Single and widowed women historically had few choices for means of supporting themselves, and those occupations were largely of servant and vice classes. In the right market, a woman could make a small fortune by way of millinery.
I've been doing a lot of reading on the 19th century frontier and the American West lately, from both the perspectives of the westward-moving emigrants and the displaced and destroyed indigenous tribespeople. History in general is an interest of mine, and often i'll get caught up in a subject and read all i can on it for months or years at a time, narrowing my interest until i wind up being an armchair expert in some random area.
For example, before i got into this Western US thing, i had been voraciously studying the Age of Sail and maritime history. From there i fell into researching the lives of women and minorities at sea, and how in many instances maritime culture could offer acceptance and opportunities otherwise unavailable on land. Layered into this was an interest in sail-related arts--ornamental knotwork, scrimshaw, tattooing, needlework, and sewing (those last two of which carried no gendered connotation at sea, interestingly enough), etc. But i digress.
In my current reading, i've come across a woman whose life story i'd like to share: Lucinda Cox Brown.
Along with her husband Elias, their children, and several members of her extended family, Lucinda emigrated westward on a wagon train from Illinois in 1847, bound for Oregon. She was probably around twenty-one years of age at the time. Lucinda left behind her twin sister Malinda, whose husband was the brother of Elias. Halfway to Oregon, Elias was taken ill (possibly from typhoid) and died, leaving Lucinda a widow. She and her children stayed on the wagon train, however, and eventually did make it to Salem, Oregon.
Upon her arrival, Lucinda and her family had literally nothing but they clothing that they wore. She supported herself and her children through the winter by sewing clothing and making warm cloth hats for sale and trade. When spring of 1848 came, however, her millinery talents truly flourished--she began making braided wheatstraw bonnets beautifully trimmed with ribbons, which she sold to the women and girls in the growing communities of the Oregon territory.
Lucinda Brown's bonnets, which were apparently both functional and fashionable, sold with great success in the Oregon territory; with money from her millinery enterprise, not only did she solely provide for her three children but Lucinda made and saved enough money to obtain her own land claim in 1849.
Lucinda remarried twice--to Hiram Allen in 1851 and again to a Mr. Spencer in 1859. Between her three husbands, Lucinda eventually became mother to eight children. The primary record surviving of Lucinda's life is a four-page "reminiscence" of her overland emigration in the 1887 publication, Transactions of the Oregon Pioneer Association. As such, it is unknown whether she continued to work as a milliner as more and more settlers arrived in the Oregon territory, or if she abandoned it when she was no longer the solitary wage-earner and head of her household. Lucinda lived to the age of eighty-two; it is also unknown as to whether she ever saw Malinda, the twin sister she left behind in Illinois, again.
The Allison-Antrim Museum of Greencastle, PA, maintains a site with some good examples of bonnet shapes of the 1840s. The ones depicted on the site are not made from straw, but the basic shapes give you a good idea of the type Lucinda might have made.
For frontier women, bonnets were not merely worn for fashion and frippery--a well-made wide-brimmed straw bonnet protected them from sunburn and glare when traveling or working outdoors. Open-weave patterns of straw plaiting in crown construction can make a cool, breezy summer bonnet more comfortable to wear than a cloth bonnet.
Conversely, densely braided straw can be almost waterproof, and, if wired, a straw brim could stand up better to extreme weather than other hat materials of the time; diary accounts of overland trail passages mention the irreparable damage heavy rain caused to bonnets of cloth-covered buckram or pasteboard construction. Bonnets of these materials would "melt" in a downpour--buckram and pasteboard lose all structural integrity when saturated. Slat bonnets, constructed with thin wood slats inserted into channels sewn side-by-side the length of the brim, were the only comparably durable option. Two years ago someone donated one of these to our archive made with what looked like tongue-depressors for slats. (Due to the volume of artifacts in our collection, it has yet to be photographed and catalogued.)
Incidentally, if you are interested in primary documents of the American West, i recommend checking out the blog Ghost Cowboy, which features period photography and transcriptions of newspaper articles and other primary sources from the time. Those of weak stomach should be forewarned though--a lot of their transcriptions deal with crimes, battles, and vice culture of the times, and can be fairly gruesome in their descriptions.
