Carroll County Farm Museum elicits help from Williamsburg textile experts to identify artifacts

Six women with a shared passion for history came together this week at the Carroll County Farm Museum to assess antique textiles. As clothing, hand towels, horse apparel, and various other items were delicately removed from boxes, each textile sparked delight and discussion among the group.

Elaine Shirley, of New Windsor, 65, who has served as the museum’s curator for about a year, said understanding items in the farm museum’s textile collection will be the first step in highlighting their significance to Carroll County’s history and agricultural heritage.

“A huge part of what all of this does is it ignites more questions,” Shirley said. “You get more questions than answers, which is sometimes a frustrating part.”

To help appraise items and answer questions, Shirley assembled a team of experts, including two now-retired friends with particular expertise in textiles and clothing, with whom she once worked at Colonial Williamsburg.

Patricia Wesp, 69, and Brenda Rosseau, 71, made the trek from Williamsburg, Virginia, to Westminster to donate their time and expertise to the project. The Carroll County Farm Museum paid for their lunch, which Shirley said is a small price for such expertise.

“A lot of the stuff is not dated,” Shirley said, “and that was part of why I wanted these ladies to be able to come, because they have so much experience.”

Many items in the collection are from 1850 to 1900, and Wesp and Rosseau were often able to identify an item’s location and decade of origin within moments of seeing it. Wesp said sewing machines weren’t popular before the 1850s, so evidence of machine sewing means an item was either re-sewn with a machine or created in the late 1800s.

“You have the same questions,” Wesp said. “‘Why is it fastened this way?’ Why is it trimmed like this?’ ‘Why was this perceived as a good idea?’ It’s some of the same sorts of mysteries that you’re trying to sort out. A couple of them have made perfect sense.”

One such garment that the group believes they deciphered was labeled as a boy’s gown. This label made sense from the front, Wesp said, but when examined from the back, a large bow indicated that it was most likely worn by a young girl, about 9 months older than the imagined boy wearer.

Shirley said she would love to have more farming clothes and hats in the collection, but clothes worn to work were subject to wear-and-tear, and less likely to withstand the test of time. Many of the preserved garments include church clothes, more expensive garments, and clothes meant for special occasions, such as balls or parties.

“It tells the story of the community,” Rosseau said.

“A part of it is understanding the community,” Shirley said, “and realizing that because we’re close to Baltimore, we’re a farming community, but we weren’t poor farmers. So, we we were wearing fashionable clothes.”

Centuries ago, clothing was patched and repaired when torn or otherwise broken, while modern clothing is more likely to be discarded and replaced, Historical Society of Carroll County Director of Outreach and Events Laura Bankard said.

“That’s why we have a lot of clothing from this time,” Bankard said. “We’re worried that we’re not going to have a lot of clothing from current times because people do just pitch it.”

The group’s areas of expertise complemented each other. When one knit item produced from the box stumped most of the group, Shirley was quick to the answer— “it’s for a horse!”

A farmer would have dressed his horse in the lacy headgear to stop insects from entering the animal’s ears, Shirley said. She excitedly hurried to a nearby room to retrieve an oddly shaped wooden object, on which the horse-hat rested perfectly.

Another mysterious item, a shoddy sampler, posed a more difficult mystery for the history enthusiasts and professionals to solve. A sampler is a piece of fabric about the size of a hand towel with the alphabet sewn into it, which girls would create to practice both sewing and English skills. Found alongside several well-made samplers, Bankard said she suspects the poorly crafted item was made by a younger girl, eager to follow in the footsteps of an older sister.

“That’s something that hasn’t changed today,” Bankard said. “Little sister wants to be just like the big sister, so a lot of those things are still the same.”

With some items, an educated guess from a group of experts is as good as it gets, Bankard said.

“History — I’m not trying to be funny and rhyme — but it’s a mystery,” Bankard said. “That’s why we all enjoy it, I think. It’s learning it, and then sometimes what you’ve learned is not actually what really happened. It’s constantly changing, and I think all of us enjoy the stories, we enjoy the process of getting to the story, too, and discovering, like we’re doing with these things.”

The museum’s next new exhibit, a collection of horse plates, is expected to open this summer, Shirley said.

Historical sites and museums in Carroll County are constantly in need of volunteers, the curator added, especially those with research skills or knowledge of history.