Day dress of roller-printed cotton, 1810-1815. Susan Greene Collection, GCVM 90.25
Lately, I have developed an obsession with this roller-print day dress from the Greene Collection At Genessee Country Village Museum. I first encountered it on the 19th US Infantry’s website, a haven for those of us consumed with the early Federal everyday.
The 19th US site provides more photos and a drawing of the dress, so that if one were to become impossibly obsessed with the dress, one could recreate it. And if one were up late nights, one might consider how to create a copper-engraved roller for printing cotton.
Johann Klein dress, 1810
A more productive line of thought might be to consider this fashion plate, found during an early-morning Pinterest session. I think it gives us a sense of how rapidly fashion crossed the Atlantic (just as quick as engravings could be printed and bound into magazines, and boats could make the trip), and how avidly women copied the latest fashion.
That avidity would have been tempered by access to fabrics, but the resemblance between the dress at Genessee and the fashion illustration is striking, indeed.
Portrait of a seated young lady, watercolor on paper by Anna Maria von Phul, 1818. Missouri History Museum, 1953 158 0013
Ladies’ Monthly Museum, v. 5, plate 71. July 1, 1816. Casey Fashion Plate Collection, Los Angeles Public Library
Anna Maria von Phul’s delicate watercolors of Saint Louis in 1818 (example at left) remind us that cities in the hinterland of America have never been as far behind the times as coastal dwellers might imagine. As a former resident of the Great Fly Over, I know how defensive people can be about their relative sophistication, and that could be why our Young Lady here appears slightly defensive in her posture.
The young lady is certainly fashionable in that white gown, and literate, too, though we cannot see what she is reading; perhaps Maria Edgeworth.
It took some doing to find a similarly posed and dated fashion plate with a book, for fashion has always been more fantasy than reality.
The challenges look interesting, and I particularly like the seasonal fruit/vegetable one. This seems like a wonderful chance to cook historical recipes using seasonal, local ingredients, and I do like to remind people that historical eating is grounded in seasonal, local, eating. Plus pounds of raisins and sugar and gallons of alcohol.
Your local historical archive (or whichever one contains the works relevant to your interests) can be a great place to get started assembling documentation on local eating. Receipts for foodstuffs can be mixed into other accounts (cotton for your daughter, a parasol, a pair of shoes for your wife, 5/8 yard pink silk satin self) but you can still quantify tea, sugar, spices, Madeira, and flours. I find fresh produce somewhat harder to track–you won’t count what is growing behind your house– but fear not, New Englanders! Some of that hard work has been done for you.
A bill of fare for August
J.L. Bell of the fantastic Boston 1775 blog wrote the book-length historic resource study General George Washington’s Headquarters and Home—Cambridge, Massachusetts, which I read before we went up to the “Washington Takes Command” event last July. (That sentence just seemed crazy, even to me…yes, I read 650 pages plus the event program to prepare for a 6-hour event…)
The report can be downloaded as a PDF, and if you’re looking for food, where you want to go is Chapter 6, Daily Life at Washington’s Headquarters (page 173 and following). On pages 195-197 the Steward’s Purchases are listed, sorted by Fruits, Vegetables and Grain, Spices and Flavorings, etc.
While Washington was maintaining (or causing to have maintained for him) a Genteel Household, the list of purchases is helpful in documenting the variety and types of foods available in Cambridge. I suspect that similar kinds of documentation exist in the historic resource reports or room use studies for places like Gunston Hall.
I cannot manage to keep up with the Historical Sew Fortnightly right now– things went pear-shaped in December— but we have to eat, historically or otherwise!
One of the things I liked best about this year’s School of Instruction was the Petite Guerre demonstration that followed a discussion of those tactics by Dr Stoltz of the 5th NY.
Mr McC & the Young Mr share a tree; note British officer and Hessian
Demonstrating skirmishes instead of linear warfare makes sense, given the numbers of men who take the field at events, and the smaller engagements will reflect exchanges common between the sides during the war.
What I like in particular is that using ‘petite guerre’ tactics requires the commanders and soldiers to tailor their actions to a site (site specific immersive experience: you cannot go wrong) and as the action unfolds, soldiers at all ranks are forced not only to move but also to think. Any action where the interpreters have to think is likely to create a better experience for visitors—and no great surprise, that usually makes a better experience for interpreters. It also flatters the site managers and visitors, who will appreciate that you’ve taken the time to explore and understand their place, and its place in history.
While you don’t necessarily want to fight the Battle of the Comfort Station, skirmishing around a site with buildings provides an objective, while multiple buildings and some woods or undergrowth provide cover for the Light Infantry troops and opportunities for deceit.
Of course, depending on troop size, it may be that each man needs his own tree. On Sunday, the Young Mr kept close to Mr McC, demonstrating troop [leg] length.
It’s hard to be invisible when you’re tall.
But I do mean this seriously: scaling events to available resources allows for a better interpretation.
That’s common sense, and sound museum practice, and that’s pretty much the business living history practioners (aka reenactors), are in: interpreting the past to visitors. Best practices for professionals and hobbyists are grounded in the same principles:
Primary source research
Material culture research
Site, resource, and audience- appropriate delivery
Direction provided by Mr C with spontoon.
Building an encampment and tactical demonstration on the first two principles grounds the event in in historical authenticity. Adding the third principle, and increasing the use of smaller group tactics, tailored to the participants and site, would be a subtle but strategic shift to build a more engaging experience that better educates visitors and might even attract new recruits.
Kirsten Hammerstrom 
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