31st PA - woman in camp photo

[DaveGink]

Re: 31st PA - woman in camp photo

Mr. Gink:

That, sir, is an iron. If memory serves, it's the type of iron where you put burning coals into it, hence the need for the little chimney on the back.

We so often see the types of sad irons where they are simply lumps of cast iron that were warmed by contact with the stove. This iron, in contrast, had within itself the means of keeping the heat up while you were ironing. Bet it was easy to burn yourself or the shirt if you weren't careful.

Thank you very much. I wondered if that might be the case.

[KarinTimour]

Re: 31st PA - woman in camp photo

Polly:

Ok, upon second scrutiny, I can absolutely see the brioche stitch on the bonnet. And I think a case can be made for brioche on the sweater, also. I don't think the sweater has a collar -- as a knitted sack coat would have to have (wouldn't it)? But it seems awfully distorted and pulled out of shape to have originally been a women's garment. Could the edging on the front have been a reinfocement tape that formerly lay under the edge of the side with the buttons, but which is now folded out and showing? Also if the left side has the buttons, and the right side has the button holes, is that the traditional buttoning for men's vs. ladies' garments? I can't remember. Did they follow these traditions? Those more familiar with men's garments that button up the front -- which side of the shirt/coat/vest has the buttons?

Curiouser and curiouser,
Karin Timour
Period Knitting -- Socks, Sleeping Hats, Balaclavas
Warm. Durable. Documented.
Atlantic Guard Soldiers' Aid Society
Email: Ktimour@aol.com

[Tabbico]

Re: 31st PA - woman in camp photo

Karin, I think the garment was originally a woman's garment. It may be a hand-me-down from a larger woman, been made a bit too large in the first place, or just stretched a bunch over the years. The edging along the front that extends around the neck appears to me to be a two color, crocheted scallop-type edging, the type of which I have seen in many knit patterns. The garment, IMO, is pretty long in the tooth - it has a goodly separation of the shoulder and sleeve, and it looks like it has been washed, possibly a little bit felted in the process, but certainly well-worn. It is hard, because of this, to say whether the body stitch is ribbed or a beaten-down brioche, but I would say either way that it was made with at least fingering weight wool. Two other observations that make me think it is a woman's garment - in the second picture, over the right (our right) shoulder, you can see that the back stitches are slanted away (hard to describe), which is a construction technique I have seen in the few sweater-type garments for which I have patterns. In a modern sweater, the back and front shoulders are knit pretty much the same, with shaping at the shoulder slanting from higher at the neck to lower at the arm. In period garments, many have this kind of shaping in the back, but the front actually has increases along the armhole at the shoulder, making a diagonal flap that then attaches to the back - it looks like this sweater was made like that. Also, the front, although pulled every which way, seems to have dart shaping (notice how the rows of stitches seem vertical close to the arm, but have a "bend" closer to the middle of the garment a bit below the bustline).

As to buttoning, my understanding is that there was not much of a convention of which side for the buttons during the CW, but today, it's buttons on the left for the woman and right for the man. I could never remember this until someone gave me a totally off-color way to remember - pretend you are looking at a man and a woman in a car at lover's lane, man in the driver's seat. The shirts button so as to give each the easiest "access."

[slhughes]

Re: 31st PA - woman in camp photo

Re: Flat brooms - I bought one when I visited the Shaker Village in Canterbury NH.

http://www.shakers.org/

Shaker Broom
In the Shakers’ pursuit of material cleanliness to mirror their vision of spiritual purity, no single item was so valued, so symbolic, or so widely known as the Shaker flat broom. Created in 1798 by Brother Theodore Bates of Watervliet, NY, the flat broom was vastly more efficient than the round broom and swiftly became popular among the Shakers as well as the “world’s people.” Our brooms are authentic reproductions of Shaker brooms, made with hardwood handles, natural broom corn, wire and flaxen thread.

I just checked their online store and they are out of stock right now.

Jack Doyle

While oral tradition among the Shakers has it that the Shakers "invented" the flattened broom (very often quoted from Edward Deming Andrews' books written in the 1940s), there isn't any documentation that the Shakers were the only ones to flatten brooms. Others who made brooms, including the Moravians, were making flat brooms at or about the same time as the Shakers.

Interpreters at our site (Shaker Village of Pleasant Hill, Kentucky) have for years been guilty of spreading the story of the Shakers "inventing" the flat broom, but we have stopped saying that now. Since the Shakers didn't obtain patents on many of their so-called inventions, it is difficult to say that the were the first to make this or that. Many ideas for advances in technology occur simultaneously to different individuals in different places, so saying who was the first is always an invitation for another researcher to prove you wrong.

Other than anecdotal traditions, I know of no documentation for the Shakers' invention of the flat broom. I would love to be proven wrong and invite anyone who has good documentation to share it with me.

Susan L. Hughes
Interpretation and Education Manager
Shaker Village of Pleasant Hill, Kentucky

[roundshot]

Re: 31st PA - woman in camp photo

Not to get away from brooms and brioches, but here's another view of some Pennsylvanian's in their gray state issue jacket from the USAMHI. More on the issue of these uniforms can be found in Vol. 4, No. 1 of Military images in Michael Winey's fine article "Pennsylvanians in Gray."

[Hank Trent]

Re: 31st PA - woman in camp photo

That, sir, is an iron. If memory serves, it's the type of iron where you put burning coals into it, hence the need for the little chimney on the back.

We so often see the types of sad irons where they are simply lumps of cast iron that were warmed by contact with the stove. This iron, in contrast, had within itself the means of keeping the heat up while you were ironing. Bet it was easy to burn yourself or the shirt if you weren't careful.

We have an iron like that, and it does work well, though it's dependent on the quality of the coals just like when baking. I was worried about ash sifting out and getting on the clothes, but the secret is not to set it on its back upright, when pausing, like a modern iron. It needs to be rested flat, on its bottom.

Hank Trent
hanktrent@voyager.net

[Vuhginyuh]

Re: 31st PA - woman in camp photo

...It needs to be rested flat, on its bottom.

They would typically have a trivet, right?

[Rob Weaver]

Re: 31st PA - woman in camp photo

My wife, also, is of the opinion that the sweater is a woman's sweater. When I mentioned 'Yeah, but she's working in it" she reminded me that some northern European subcultures wove sweaters for working women. Apparently Hebredian (sp?) fish-gutters (who were women) wore short sleeved sweaters. They kept you warm while keeping the woven material out of the offal mess you were making while working.

[ElizabethClark]

Re: 31st PA - woman in camp photo

A book of photos by David Octavius Hill, a British photographer, has multiple photographs of fishing villagers in Scotland, with some great "sweater" shots.

"An Early Victorian Album: the Photographic Masterpieces (1843-1847) of David Octavius Hill and Robert Adamson" is the title, edited by Colin Ford. It was published in 1976 by Alfred Knopf, ASIN: B000I9JCOI

Worth looking at for many reasons--see about ILL if your library collection does not own it.

[Hank Trent]

Re: 31st PA - woman in camp photo

They would typically have a trivet, right? [for setting an iron down flat]

Certainly with sad irons there would be a trivet on the hearth or stove, but I'm not sure if a metal trivet was always used, up near the ironing. The down-side of setting the iron on a trivet is that it's hard to tell if the trivet is clean, especially if it's ever been used on a hearth. Wiping the iron off each time it comes from the trivet over the fire is easy enough, but more troublesome to do each time you set it down for a second.

Haskell's Housekeeper's Encyclopedia, 1861, says "Iron-holders should have cases that can be taken off to wash, or they should be made of quilted cotton, and one washed each week."

That seems to be a way of addressing the dirty-trivet problem. I'm wondering if iron-holders with cases refers to trivets, while the quilted cotton ones would work like a hotpad?

Hank Trent
hanktrent@voyager.net

[Angel of Mercy]

Re: 31st PA - woman in camp photo

Does it seem that her hair is parted on the side? and possibly even short? You can see some small pieces of hair on her right side (our left side when viewing the image) in the second photo.

Also in the second image, is that an African-American in the civilian style hat in the center?

[Charles Heath]

Re: 31st PA - woman in camp photo

Well I'l be. I've been looking for period broom images lately and they're very hard to find in photographs. I'd found several in genre paintings and they tended to be round straw broom, but right in the middle of this image is one really modern looking broom.

You may already have this image in your broom collection:

http://www.archives.gov/research/civ...il-war-004.jpg

If not, it is still a fine looking broom.

[KarinTimour]

Re: 31st PA - woman in camp photo

Dear Krystin:

Does look like her part is off-center, and what is even more interesting, in the image where she's looking down, rather than at the camera, it looks like the hair immediately to the right of the part (our left), is not smoothed down over her ears, but whacked straight back. Could be that she's got short hair, but I'm thinking it's even more likely that she's a working mother, and didn't have time in the morning to spend combing out her hair and getting it all neatly put up. She's got three very active children, and a company waiting for their clean laundry, and I'm thinking hair fixing comes down fairly low on the list of things that have to happen first thing in the morning. I'm wondering if the photographer wandered over somewhere mid morning and said "I'd like to take your family's picture." Not a lot of time to get every one rounded up, and you can see that the dishes didn't get done. Perhaps that's the explanation for why the little girl and the baby are under dressed? Perhaps she quickly rounded them up and put their best clothing on them just before the photographer showed up, so that they'd look nicely turned out -- and the most she'd do for herself was to zip her knitted bonnet on in a quick fix for badly combed hair? That little boy with the hat on looks like someone who would be zipping around camp, into everything and generally a "jet-propelled boy" most of the time. Likely to be able to get him to stand still only if you've got a hand on him at the time. Probably not a family that had the money for CDVs under normal circumstances -- wonder if the photographer printed copies for them?

There's at least one African-American in one of the photographs, if not two different shots -- I'm imagining he's a contraband, with a job in camp? Certainly if this photo was taking in the area around Washington, there were contraband camps, and all the accounts I've seen, you were in a better position to get regularly fed if you hustled and found someone who would pay you or feed you for helping out somewhere.


My two cents,
Karin Timour
Period Knitting -- Socks, Sleeping Hats, Balaclavas
Warm. Durable. Documented.
Atlantic Guard Soldiers' Aid Society
Email: Ktimour@aol.com

[Bummer]

Re: 31st PA - woman in camp photo

You can also just see (in the expanded views) that there is what appears to be a somewhat large metal stove just behind the 'husband'. It has gothic molding on it and the pipe is off and lying at an angle to our right of the man behind his hand, with some cloth on it...you can see the pipe seam. I would say that a stove of this size is not for warmth, but for heating water--all the more reason that makes me think that the tent is the woman's laundress tent...it doesn't seem that a wedge tent of that size could conveniently hold all the stuff you see in the photo, plus the people too. They live elsewhere I assume.

Also I believe we have seen here no less than four versions of this scene; two 'takes' of the famous one, and two more where the family is in different pose. Although in each 'pair' the family is in almost identical position, some of the backround people have moved.

One could spend almost endless time studying and speculating on this one. A great photograph, one of my all time favorites.

[Watchdog]

Re: 31st PA - woman in camp photo

I believe the size of the kepi might indicate that the boy is wearing a soldier's cap for the picture. It may be a "loaner" or just something little boys did and still do--wearing caps like dad.