Easter Bonnets and Easter Eggs

The Culbertson Searchlight reported on March 25, 1910, that Easter customs have a long and colorful history. The idea that folks should wear something new is tied to the coming of spring and renewal of the fields. The custom of wearing something new evolved into the superstition that wearing a new item on Easter would insure good fortune in love affairs. Christian women often focused on hats as the new item. In times past, the Easter hat was the outward material expression of the joyous resurrection. “Of course,” said the Searchlight, “the connection between inner joyousness and the monstrosity that looks like an old wooden chopping bowl sprouting forth a truck garden may not be apparent to all.”  The great danger is that spring rains are notorious at this time of year. Many a woman has wept when the heavens poured forth on Easter morning and ruined the feathers and ribbons of the carefully chosen Easter bonnet.

This ad from the March 25, 1910, Daily Missoulian shows the styles of the time. Via Chronicling America.

After the Easter bonnet, colored eggs are the most familiar token of Easter. The custom of coloring eggs is much older than Christianity, and all ancient people including Romans, Egyptians, Jews, and Greeks used the egg as a symbol of universal life and renewal. Early Christians adopted it because the egg is the perfect symbol of resurrection. At first, eggs were only colored red to signify the blood of redemption. The Daily Missoulian on March 25, 1910, summed up the “modern” connection between Easter bonnets and eggs noting that the hen whose product is gaily colored contributes to the joy of Easter morning. She has not laid her egg in vain even if she has no chick to show for her trouble. However, some of the Easter hat decorations look as if they might have been hatched from Easter eggs.

P.S. Remember these delightful hats?

Friday Photo: Beta Sigma Phi

Montana Historical Society Photograph Archives, PAc 74-37 61

These women met in Helena for Montana's first state convention of Beta Sigma Phi in May of 1941.

Friday Photo: Newlyweds

Montana Historical Society Photograph Archives, 957-755

Clarence Goodell married Millie Priest on August 15, 1880. Millie's headdress marks her as a bride, but like most brides at the time, she probably designed her wedding dress to be worn again.

P.S. The Montana Historical Society has a fabulous collection of wedding dresses.

Mad as a Hatter

The process of making fabric called felt goes back to ancient civilization and may even predate spinning and weaving. The undercoat of certain animals—including rabbit, muskrat, and beaver—contains microscopic scales that cling together. The pelts were shaved to obtain this underhair which was repeatedly submerged in boiling water, then drained and kneaded like bread dough. This caused the scales to open and cling together. The drying process caused the scales to shrink, thus locking them together to form a solid fabric. Felt makers discovered in the 1600s that mercuric nitrate, when brushed on the fur, causes the scales in the fur to open farther and thus increase in strength, improving the quality of the felt. Hat makers spread the felt over a hat form and pressed and steamed it into shape. Then they brushed the fabric to a sheen. Beaver fur, because of its waterproof qualities, its softness and resilience, was most sought after. The Hudson’s Bay Company capitalized on beaver pelts, which brought about the exploration and exploitation of the habitats of these animals.

Fur trappers arrive at Lolo Hot Springs, Montana, with loads of fur, c. 1890.
Montana Historical Society Photograph Archives, Maloney Collection

Beaver hats were a status symbol, and the industry nearly caused the animal’s extinction here in Montana and elsewhere. Fashions fortunately changed when silk came into favor. The beaver’s near extinction was not the only legacy of the beaver hat industry. Exposure to the mercury fumes in poorly ventilated workshops caused poisoning characterized by trembling, loss of coordination, slurred speech, loosening of teeth, memory loss, depression, irritability, anxiety, and mental illness causing hatters to go crazy. Thus the term “mad as a hatter” is not a joke.

Friday Photo: Bundled Up

Winter is here! Are you ready?

Montana Historical Society Photograph Archives, PAc 75-17 f9

Two-year-old Duncan George McDonald looks ready for the elements, but he must have been sweltering when he posed for this studio portrait taken on April 15, 1890.

P.S. Remember when girls were forbidden to go sledding?

Arline Allen’s Embarrassing Innuendo

Yesterday I got a treat. My publisher gave me a handful of copies of my new book, More Montana Moments, fresh from the printer! You won't find it in most stores for another month or so, but the Montana Historical Society Museum Store does have copies available. Here's one of my favorite excerpts:

The Allen family long operated one of Helena’s most popular livery stables, the Allen Livery at Ewing and Breckenridge. The former stable has a long and colorful history and is Helena’s best-preserved reminder of this vital business. Its many “ghost signs” are also remarkably preserved. By 1867, William H. Allen established the business on his rich mining claim where he picked gold nuggets out of the dirt. Allen’s nephew, Joseph Allen, soon arrived to help out and eventually took over the business. Joseph built the current stone and brick stable around 1885. Contrary to popular belief, the upstairs never in its long history housed prostitution. Rather lodging rooms accommodated the livery’s hostlers and stablemen. Joseph Allen and his wife Lurlie had a daughter, Arline, who grew up around her father’s horses. She and her friends never learned to ride sidesaddle, but rode astride and wore divided riding skirts like other Montana women. Arline and her friends followed the trails all over the hills and had many adventures. But in 1912 when Arline was sixteen, both her mother and father died. Arline went to live with her grandmother in Virginia. She had a hard time because girls there never rode astride, but only sidesaddle. She found horseback riding and ice skating in long full skirts terribly confining and longed to put on her Montana divided riding skirt. Shocked, her grandmother would not allow it. On her first ice skating date in Virginia, Arline said to the young man, “If I could just take this skirt off, I could really show you something!” Arline spent the rest of her life trying to live that one down.

P.S. Remember the scandal caused by this divided riding skirt?

Evelyn Cameron Scandalizes Miles City

Photographer Evelyn Cameron is a recent inductee into the Gallery of Outstanding Montanans in the state’s Capitol. Evelyn was born in England and raised to be a proper English lady. But once she created a real scandal. Evelyn’s husband was a noted ornithologist and naturalist, but he didn’t care much for their ranch. That was all right with Evelyn who enjoyed the physical work. Chores and most everything from making bread to milking cows and working the horses fell to her. She took to wearing a divided riding skirt that allowed her to ride astride rather than sidesaddle. The long skirt was much like modern culottes. Victorian women, however, did not wear pants. And when Evelyn first rode into Miles City in the dark blue divided skirt she had ordered from California, oh, the scandal it caused. Although the skirt was so full it looked like an ordinary dress when she was on foot, on horseback the division was obvious. Law enforcement warned her not to ride on the streets in town or she might be arrested. But town was forty-eight miles from her ranch, and riding sidesaddle could only be done on a very slow and gentle horse. Evelyn would not ride what she called old “dead heads.” She became convinced that riding in a man’s saddle stride-legged was the only safe way for a woman to ride. Before long, other women took to the divided skirt and it became an accepted way of dressing not only for women on the streets of Miles City, but also on homesteads, farms, and ranches across Montana.


Montana Historical Society Photograph Archives, PAc 90-87.80-2

One of the Buckley sisters of eastern Montana dismounting, wearing an Evelyn Cameron–designed split skirt, 1914. Click the photo for a bigger version.

P.S. Remember Dillon's fashion scandal?

Ladies Rebel

Ladies’ fashions changed during the 1920s, and not everyone approved. Antiquated corsets with garters attached and bloomers gave way to shorter skirts, rolled silk stockings, and step-ins – an open legged panty that replaced the long-legged bloomers. Rolled silk stockings did away with the need for garters. There was quite an art to rolling them, keeping the seam in the back straight, twisting and turning them to end just above the knee, leaving the thighs bare. It took practice to keep the stockings from falling down, but it was a skill at which every teenage girl was adept.



This cover of Life magazine from February 18, 1926, shows a flapper wearing rolled stockings.
Library of Congress

At the Normal School in Dillon, women students rebelled and cast off their corsets and bloomers in favor of short hems, rolled stockings and step-ins. School administrators were scandalized, and issued this statement: “the girls must wear garters, long stockings, and bloomers, or get on the train and go home.” The dean of women had to enforce the dress code. She posted herself at the foot of the stairs in Main Hall, where she could see underneath as girls walked up the stairs. Any girl detected with rolled stockings and step ins was sent back to the dormitory to change into appropriate attire. The Dillon community watched with interest as this drama unfolded. The rumor was that the Golden Rule and Eliel’s—the two stores that sold women’s undergarments—had to bring out their obsolete inventory of corsets and bloomers for the students to comply with the rules. By the end of the 1920s, dress lengths again became longer, the administration relaxed its rules, and the situation righted itself.  But during the Roaring Twenties, those newfangled fashion trends challenged everyone.

Update: Do you suppose Arline Allen would have worn rolled stockings and step-ins?