See fashions from the past and more at MHA show
Kristy Ellsworth is preparing to strip to her underwear for history.
As director of education for the Manchester Historic Association, Ellsworth is excited about “Whose Revolution Is it Anyway?,” a day of historic presentations at the Millyard Museum on Oct. 3, focused on life in Revolutionary-era Derryfield, New Hampshire. Ellsworth’s presentation, “Undressing History: 1776 Edition,” will focus on the clothing likely worn by one of New Hampshire’s most famous founding mothers, Molly Stark.
“I will be getting dressed head to toe from my stockings and shift to my gown and hat,” Ellsworth said. “And we’ll have a slideshow talking about the different types of clothing, the process of making clothing, the value of clothing, how the war with England affected the clothing choices of colonists here in Derryfield. And then I will get dressed from head to toe in person, so people will get to see, A, how long that takes, [and] B, the structure of the clothes. Afterward, we’ll put the clothes out and they can look at them and see how they’re constructed. They’re all hand-sewn. This is the second time we’ve done this type of program. We did 1850s a few months ago, and it was wildly popular. So hopefully it will be again. “
Ellsworth said that while she will start her presentation in period under-clothing, by modern standards it is pretty modest.
“I will be in my underwear, yes,” she said, “But I wear less at the beach.” She said that a woman like Molly Stark makes a good subject for the study of 1770s fashion. “She was middle class at a time when there actually was a true middle class. She was still in a position where she did hard labor often.”
Unfortunately for modern scholars, few of Stark’s actual items of clothing still exist, Ellsworth said. “She certainly could have afforded some nice things. She still would have had that sort of Yankee frugality where the things she owned were very precious to her. And we do at the Historic Association have a small collection of her things, but unfortunately she was part of a very big family and a lot of those things probably got flung to the far corners of the Earth unidentified. We have a few of her pockets, we have one of her gowns, we have a pair of her shoes, a few of her personal jewelry items like earrings and a hair bracelet. But a lot of the research comes from other primary sources of women of similar age, social status, and geographical location.”
This sort of hands-on approach to history represents a change of focus from the days when historians spent much of their time memorizing treaties and analyzing speeches by men in white wigs. At Saturday’s event for instance, Ellsworth said, “we have two lectures, [but also] hands-on activities, docent-led program, and live demonstrations like butter-churning. We have a children’s story time, and then as a separate paid admission we have an American Girl Doll Tea Party, 1776, in which the guests, with their parents — every guest has a paid ticket — will get to bring their dolls to the museum and we’ll have a tea party from the 1700s, including Shrewsbury cakes and apple tartlets, tea, cream, and activities just for the children and families that are participating in that event.”
Ellsworth said she is a fan of the historically themed American Girl Dolls. “We’ve been doing [events with] them for 10 years,” she said. “I really like exposing young children to hands-on history in a relatable way. We use them [the dolls] a lot in our school programming, in our public programming. We use them for adults, children, boys, girls, because they are small enough that you can make the items for them pretty cost-effectively, but they are large enough that they can actually see how things are constructed, they can touch the items, whereas so many of the things in our collection we can’t let people handle.”
“Whose Revolution Is It Anyway”
When: Saturday, Oct. 3, from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m.
Where: Manchester’s Millyard Museum, 200 Bedford St., Suite 103, Manchester, 622-7531, manchesterhistoric.org.
More: Lectures and presentations, with the exception of the American Girl Tea Party, are free with admission to the Museum. Visit manchesterhistoric.org/event/whose-revolution-is-it-anyway.
Featured photo: Previous “Undressing History” presentation. From the museum’s Facebook page.