Category: Uncategorized

Dr. Marian Ann Montgomery is Curator of Clothing & Textiles at the Museum of Texas Tech University, where she oversees a division comprising over 32,000 objects. Dr. Montgomery has written multiple books about quilting, needlework, and material culture, including 2019’s Cotton and Thrift: Feed Sacks and the Fabric of American Households. Texas Tech University Press.

Before she became Curator at Texas Tech, Dr. Montgomery was Site Administrator at Graeme Park, one of Pennsbury Manor’s sister sites in the Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission (PHMC).

Dr. Montgomery’s connections to Pennsbury Manor run even deeper. As an employee of the PHMC, she became colleagues with former Pennsbury Manor Site Administrators Nancy Kolb ands Alice Hemenway. She credits them with helping her learn the museum business. Moreover, it was a trip to Pennsbury Manor in 4th grade which made her realize that working in a museum was something possible.

We talked with Dr. Montgomery to learn about her path to becoming a museum curator, what clothing can tell us about a person, and how Pennsbury Manor had an impact on her career.

The interview below is edited for length and clarity.

Q: What do you recall from that experience going to Pennsbury all that time ago?

I recall call a big house, beautiful property, and guards in some sort of a jacket.

I enjoyed the big rooms, the furniture, the stories and you could pretend you lived here. And I know that’s not why historic sites exist. Not to pretend that you live there, it’s to help you understand what that person’s life is like and what life was like at that time.

But for the fourth grader, she saw a man in a jacket, and he gave a tour, and he was older, and I just loved the whole ambience. I had grown up in a big old Victorian, Gothic House, so I knew big spaces. I knew older houses, but nothing finished so nicely, nothing that old, and the fact that it was a place where that guy had a job and come do this was was really fun.

At Christmas, I got a jacket that I thought made me look like a tour guide. My father had this train platform that he sent up every Christmas. When there was no one else in the room, I would put on that little jacket, and I would give tours of that village. I was playing tour guide as a fourth grader because of what I had seen at Pennsbury Manor.

Q: When did you begin to consider pursuing textile and clothing curation as a profession?

I didn’t understand the museum business as a career. In those days, women were to be nurses or teachers. I knew blood and guts was not my thing. I was going for teacher.

Philadelphia College of textiles and sciences allowed me, as an advanced chemistry student, to come for a summer. I got to do hands on with silkscreen and see how the weaving machines worked. And I went home and I decided I was going to be a home economics teacher.

I was teaching in Central Bucks School District and I had a ninth grade interior design class. In those days, when you were a teacher intent on getting your permanent certificate in Pennsylvania, you had better get your Masters.

I went to Cornell and decided that Cornell had this great opportunity that you just put together your classes. I couldn’t work in historic fashion, so I had to work in interior decoration, and that’s how I got into the museum business. I knew that I needed a master’s, and I knew I had to write a thesis. Every chapter of every course I took was a thesis in historic cookware.

I designed [my thesis] in a way that I got into about 10 or 12 historic sites around the northeast because with just a master’s jobs were not going to be easy to find, but there are lots of jobs if you know somebody that knows. And so every time I went, I was on my best behavior, and I dressed as professionally as I could. I showed up on time, and I did what I was supposed to do, and at the end of my time with them when they had gotten to like me, I would say, “Hey, I’m going to look you for a job in August. You know many openings?” Three opportunities came up. And I had two offers before I had the thesis finished, and one was with the Pennsylvania Historical Museum Commission.

Q:What gets you most excited about the curation of textile collections?

It’s the stories. And if you’re a historian, there’s some pretty unpleasant stories to tell. It’s the stories behind things that I find the most interesting. I always am throwing in things and helping people to see different things.

Q: What kind of things do we learn from clothing, whether reproductions worn by reenactors or originals displayed in a museum, about the people who wore them?

James Laver, was a major fashion historian, and he said, “If you show me what someone’s wearing, I can tell you what was happening at that time.”

So if you look at reenactors clothes from your time period you’re in, you have different levels. You have worker bees that have more of the coarse, not tightly woven clothing. And then you have William Penn or his family. They’re going to be dressed in silks. Right away you can see the difference in economic level from [the clothes].

Even today, I can tell you by looking at people what they value and what’s important to them by what they have on. It tells a huge story.

Seed Saving is one of the oldest agricultural practices in the world and has been relied upon for centuries by land-tenders across the globe. In a Kitchen Garden like the one here at Pennsbury, we employ seed saving to provide a strong growing base for our crops year over year. The act of saving seeds from selected plants helps to strengthen heirloom varieties and provide a more reliable food source for the next growing season.

Seed saving is a rather simple task that begins toward the end of Fall for many vegetables, herbs and beans. Many vegetables like carrots, radishes and beets bolt toward the end of their life cycle. Once their flowers are dry, we harvest the dry seeds for next years’ veggie crop. Similarly, if beans are allowed to completely dry on the vine, they are likely viable to harvest and plant for next season. For many seeds, keeping them in a cool and dry environment is the key to saving their stored energy.

A sizable collection of dry, dormant seeds could be enough to get a small household through their next growing season. Here at Pennsbury, though, the Penn household often supplemented their Kitchen Garden with ingredients less suited to growing in the Pennsylvania climate. Nonetheless, today we practice seed saving in order to strengthen and spread our collection of historic and native heirloom seeds grown in the Kitchen Garden at Pennsbury Manor.

As the winter months approach, the Kitchen Garden here at Pennsbury begins to grow dormant like many others. When more fresh produce was needed for the long winter ahead, 17^th century gardeners employed two similar techniques to extend the growing season and keep the chilling frost at bay.

Cold frames and hotbeds, both alike in shape, function to generate higher temperatures than the surrounding environment by insulating young plants with thick brick walls and heavy glass windows.

Cold frames are set into the ground often near a companion greenhouse or a fence. They aid growing produce in the hardening-off process, in which plants are gradually exposed to harsher conditions than they experience in a greenhouse.

Hotbeds, like cold frames, keep the worst of the winter weather out but are regularly filled with organic matter that decays and releases heat into the soil. This can lengthen a garden’s growing season thus bolstering the winter stockpile of fresh produce.

These structures have a long history of use across the world and are still employed today. Whether growing cabbage for stew or frost-hardy radishes, cold frames and hotbeds are invaluable assets to the Kitchen Garden here at Pennsbury Manor.

Every family celebrates the holiday season with unique traditions. These traditions give us a sense of comfort and belonging by allowing us to gather with family or reconnect with friends.

Some cherished holiday traditions celebrated today can trace their roots back to the colonial era. Take, for instance, lighting bayberry candles on Christmas Eve and New Year’s Eve, which is said to bring good luck in the coming year. This delightful tradition began in America during the 1600s when colonists discovered that the wax from the bayberry shrub was perfect for making candles. Plus, they produced a wonderfully woodsy aroma. However, preparing the wax was too labor-intensive to use every day, so instead they became a ceremonial candle symbolizing good luck.

Similarly, the longstanding yule log ceremony, with its origins in England and Scotland, invites participants to toss a sprig of green, representing the burdens of the past year, on the fire. As the flame consumes the sprig, the person symbolically banishes their woes for the coming year.

For over 40 years, Holly Nights is a tradition for all ages who love holiday magic. Why not make Holly Nights at Pennsbury Manor, where the spirit of William Penn’s values comes alive, your family’s sacred tradition? Here, families can immerse themselves in the rich tapestry of colonial life, making these age-old traditions even more memorable through interactive experiences. So, gather your loved ones and step into a world where history and holiday cheer intertwine—who knows what delightful discoveries await you?

Families gather around the bonfire and prepare to toss a green sprig on the yule log.

We’re thrilled to welcome Blair to the team as our new Museum Assistant!

Blair comes to us from the Demuth Museum, an art museum in Lancaster dedicated to preserving the works of Charles Demuth. Blair was drawn to the museum world due to their interest in the arts and history. They find it fascinating to see how people from long ago are not fundamentally different from us today.

Blair possesses impressive art skills of their own, having studied illustration at Moore College of Art and Design, Temple University’s Tyler School of Art, and Pennsylvania College of Art & Design in Lancaster.

Outside of work, Blair is a fan of videos games, horror books, and all things spooky. One of their favorite Halloween traditions is to watch a Horror movie marathon, including favorites like “Scream” and “Lost Boys.”

Naturally, Blair is looking forward to participating in Tricks & Treats on October 27th. They are also excited to learn more about the colonial period and what life was like for different social classes and racial groups at the time.

If Blair could go back in time and meet one historical figure, they would choose James Baldwin because how much his philosophy of culture resonates with audiences today.

In 2020, the Delaware Tribe of Indians in Bartlesville, Oklahoma received an unprecedented windfall of $56 million from the COVID relief stimulus. Suddenly, the Tribal Council had a golden opportunity to use these funds to provide much-needed community services.

One of the main priorities of the Tribe was to address the food insecurity of its members. 1 in 4 Delaware families were experiencing hunger. Tribal members would secretly send modest gifts to families in need to help pay for groceries, so no one would have ever thought they were struggling. The Tribal Council realized that they needed to invest in combatting this acute issue.

In 2022, the Tribe opened the Food Pantry (Tèxtakàn), so community members could get the nutrition they needed. The Food Pantry aims to serve 2-3 meals per week to each Tribal member every week. Last month, the Food Pantry served 944 households, about 250 households a week. In total, 1,702 Delaware citizens received food last month.

According to Food Pantry Director Sonny Fixico, the creation of the Food Pantry reflects the Tribe’s priority of curbing hunger in the community long-term.

“I think it’s given people the help they need without just handing them ‘X’ dollars. I think this is more helpful longer term,” he says.

“By no means does it fix everything,” Fixico cautions. “But it definitely helps.”

The reaction from the people who use the Food Pantry has been overwhelmingly positive. Fixico says that the employees’ attitudes toward the people they serve as well as the layout of the pantry help to remove the stigma of getting assistance.

“We treat them as well as we can. We don’t make anybody feel down about coming in, so I think with that kind of attitude there’s not the embarrassment that people may feel about it. We run it more like a store.”

Each member gets a certain number of servings of protein, fruit, vegetables, and grain in proportion to the size of the household. However, the members can shop for whatever items they want from their allotment of servings. The Food Pantry provides fresh fruits and vegetables when possible. Those items in addition to meat are the most sought after.

As more people use the Food Pantry, the Tribe is looking for ways to increase supply.

Last year, the Food Pantry started partnering with the Food Bank of Eastern Oklahoma. This allows them to receive a greater variety of food for cheaper prices.

In the future, Fixico would like to see the food pantry become income based. Currently, any Delaware tribal member is eligible to come in, regardless of income. He would want to set the income limit above food stamps so they can provide nourishment to those who are not being served by food stamps.

Another aspiration for some Tribal members is to expand food sovereignty, or the concept that the Native community should be self-reliant on food.

“Nowadays nobody knows how to get anything. We just go to Walmart for everything,” Fixico explains. “To me food sovereignty would be planting our own food and keeping up with our own stuff, not just paying Walmart to do it all.”

The Tribe has already started an orchard to grow their own fruits. Another tribal member is growing a seed garden. There are plans to eventually start a livestock ranch to sustainably source meat.

Despite its challenges, Fixico says that the work of running the food pantry is rewarding.

“It’s kind of like pumping life into the tribe. You’re making sure everybody’s eating and getting their water. It’s great.”

What has your path been like to coming to study enslaved people in America?

I started when I was in graduate school. I was going to school at a time when the Civil Rights Movement was exploding. There was an appreciation, generally and certainly among teachers, that African Americans had a history because they were making history right in front of us.

Once I got involved and interested in it, there was no running away from it, because it was so central to understanding America.

How have the ways historians studied slavery changed in the last 50 years?

Probably the biggest change has to do with sources. Not that sources didn’t exist, but historians’ and others’ willingness to look at these kinds of sources, to try to understand them.

Part of that was a change in attitudes that is coming out of the Civil Rights Movement of respect for their subject. That blacks had a history, and it was a history worth knowing.

Instead of taking what enslaved people were like from the accounts of white people, we need to also look at it from the accounts of black people, the enslaved or formerly enslaved. That was a big shift.

The other thing was a growing willingness of the part of historians to start to rely on so-called non-traditional sources. These would be things that you discover through archeology, anthropology, musicology, linguistics, and studies of folklore.

All of a sudden, by realizing that there’s a huge expanse of potential source material, this gave you ways of finding people on their own terms that otherwise you couldn’t do.

One of the biggest changes was a shift that any study of enslavement must include the enslaved people, their accounts, their perspectives, their actions, etc. Instead of becoming objects, now they became agents. They became actors in the story themselves.

For example?

Their respect for the physical death of their own people showed the values that they had. The positioning of the bodies suggested that the kind of objects were ones that were common in West African cultures, for example. The conclusion you could make from that is that this is evidence of the persistence of West African cultural ideas.

They were making their own world. They were holding on to values that were their values.

Do you think that these values could be observed by the enslaved at Pennsbury?

There weren’t many enslaved people there, and the ones that were there were probably already acculturated before they came into Penn’s family’s hands.

We do know a few things. For example at least one couple married, which is significant. But we also know that that married couple was going to be separated, how, and why, which is itself interesting and a reminder that an enslaved person ultimately was going to be subject to the power of the enslaver.

We can extrapolate from that to some extent, but unless you have archeological digs that are going to show things, the key story here would be absent: stories that we know that they might have wanted to tell. They haven’t told us to those stories; we don’t have their folklore from back then.

In a 1695 letter to then-fiancée Hannah Callowhill, Governor Penn discusses his faith. Plainness, or simple living, is an important principle within The Society of Friends, and Penn explains, “I am determined to keep my old plainness, that [I] have kept only 9 or 10 [coaches] in my time..” Penn’s wealth seemingly contradicts his supposed modesty. However, Penn’s conception of vanity is nuanced. Quakers value divine revelation, often called the “inner light,” over biblical scripture. Such emphasis on individuality often led to theological discourse.  For example, the 1704 Book of Discipline forbids friends from wearing wigs, unless “necessary.” The next paragraph states that wigs were to be kept short, and reminiscent of the wearer’s natural hair color. However, there is no explanation of the outside factors that would render a wig necessary. The Book of Discipline also discourages Friends from wearing fashionable or trendy clothing, as it wastes God’s given resources.

Furthermore, a Quaker’s plainness extended beyond his physical appearance and into a person’s character. The Book of Discipline also discouraged members from using the pronoun “you.” During the early modern period, wealthy landowners referred to working class people as “you.” This term was meant pejoratively as a second person plural similar to “you people.” Quakers like Penn considered this practice vain and worldly because it creates artificial distinctions contrary to the inner light.  

Penn’s personal definition of vanity extends more towards social interaction than material possessions. According to that same 1695 letter, Penn rarely travels by personal carriage, instead lending out to family members. Perhaps Penn calls attention to his 10 carriages not to highlight his wealth but his generosity. There is a line between hypocrisy and nuance. Many people of faith today struggle to adapt their convictions to an ever-changing world. Spiritual ambiguity remains, and vanity, much like beauty, is ultimately left in the eye of the beholder.  

Works Cited  

Bejan, Teresa. “What Quakers Can Teach Us about the Politics of Pronouns.” The New York Times. Com, November 16, 2019. https://www.nytimes.com/2019/11/16/opinion/sunday/pronouns-quakers.html.  

Diethorn, Karie. “What’s Real? Quaker Material Culture and Historic Site Interpretation.” Essay. In Quaker Aesthetics: Reflections on a Quaker Ethic in American Design and Consumption  288–99. Philadelphia, Pennsylvania: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2003.  

Hayburn, Tim. “WORDS TO LIVE BY: SOCIETY OF FRIENDS, BOOKS OF DISCIPLINE, 1704–1747.” 369–85. http://www.jstor.org/stable/27778685. 

Penn, William. “New Beginnings 1694-1696.” Chapter. In The Papers of William Penn 1685-1700 3, edited by Richard S. Dunn and Mary Maples Dunn, 3:393–436. Philadelphia, Pennsylvania: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1986.  

.