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Category: Blog

Blog posts released by the Westport Museum for History & Culture.

A Brief Glimpse into the History and Fashions of Gay Weddings

by Michelle Shen

For centuries, people in the gay community were unable to legally marry their chosen same-sex partners. Connecticut set a precedent by becoming one of the first of the American states to legalize gay marriage in 2008, but the fight for marriage equality in the United States continued. In 2015, the U.S. Supreme Court recognized same-sex marriage as a matter of law. The result was a boom in formal marriage ceremonies among the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender and Queer (LGBTQ+) community. 

Choosing Their Own Path 

Ellen DeGeneres and her wife, Portia de Rossi, at their 2008 wedding. Ellen is wearing a white suit while Portia wears a dress. Photo by Lara Porzak Photography. 

Even before legal recognition, queer weddings were not new. Photographs and accounts of historic LGBTQ+ weddings were often carefully hidden away to ensure the safety of the couples and those in attendance. The few surviving photos provide intriguing glimpses into how LGBTQ+ couples chose to dress on their special day. While heterosexual tradition dictated that women wear gowns and men wear tuxedos, but no such formal precedent existed for LGBTQ+ couples. 

Queer couples…began to transform gender roles surrounding marriage to fit their unique needs… With each wedding, couples continue to personalize the traditionally heteronormative fashions of marriage.

Many LGBTQ+ couples did not conform to traditional gender roles. Surviving photos show some LGBTQ+ couples opting for conventional, gender-normative wedding garb, while others selected outfits that flouted tradition.

This wedding between a cisgender woman (Alyona Fursova, left) and transgender woman (Irina Shumilova, right) took place in Russia in 2014. While same-sex marriage was (and is) illegal in Russia, Irina was legally male at the time of the wedding. Both women opted to wear traditional white gowns. Photo by Roman Melnik. 

Queer couples — especially those composed of two women — began to transform gender roles surrounding marriage to fit their unique needs, with some women wearing tuxedos while others donned traditional wedding gowns. With each wedding, couples continue to personalize the traditionally heteronormative fashions of marriage.

What the Photos Tell Us 

Images that depict historical LGBTQ+ weddings can be seen on the internet. Unfortunately, we are unable to show most of them because they can’t be verifiably sourced. As a result, we are only able to describe these photos here. In one photo (circa 1930) showing the marriage of two women, one of the participants wears a wedding gown while the other wears a man’s military uniform complete with a sword. In three photos (circa 1928) of two women in wedding attire, one woman wears a white dress while the other sports a man’s suit and top hat.

Overall, there is a sad deficit in our knowledge about what LGBTQ+ couples wore when celebrating their weddings in decades and centuries prior. However, the photos and accounts that have survived give us some insight into the traditions and fashions of same-sex marriage. The trend continues today as modern couples celebrate their hard-won freedom to openly participate in an institution which historically denied them access. 

Want to learn more about the history of wedding fashions? Visit our exhibit I Thee Wed: Bridal Fashion from the Collection to see some of the Museum’s stunning wedding gowns and learn their stories.

Learning the Language

  • Heteronormativity is the assumption that heterosexuality – attraction to the opposite sex – is “normal” and “natural.” It assumes people are heterosexual by default and can be used to construe homosexuality – attraction to the same sex – as “unnatural.”  
  • LGBT is an initialism of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender. Sometimes a Q+ is added to include Queer and other sexual identities (LGBTQ+).  
  • Queer is an umbrella term used for those who do not identify as heterosexual and/or cisgender. 
  • Cisgender refers to a person who identifies with the gender they were assigned at birth.  
  • Transgender refers to a person who identifies with a gender different than the one assigned at birth. 

I Thee Wed: Bridal fashion from the Collection

by Michelle Shen

As rice showers down, the happy couple runs to a car donning cans and ribbons along with the words “Just Married” sprawled across the back window. Smiling ear to ear, the groom disappears into the cab followed closely by the bride pulling her long white skirts around her. 

This classic scene is what many of us picture when we think of a wedding. The white wedding dress is probably the most significant part of the scene but has this always been the case? White wedding gowns in a variety of materials and styles are held in countless museum collections across the globe including Westport Museum. But these ideals of bridal wear, along with the social definition of marriage, have been constantly changing throughout time. 

The Iconic White Gown 

White can symbolize virtue, purity and innocence in Western countries such as the United States in the 21st century, but in the past the color white specifically symbolized one thing: wealth. 

Until synthetic dyes and electric washing machines became widely available in the 20th century, keeping clothing clean was a laborious task. Fine white textiles, especially with fragile lace, silk, and satin used only for one occasion would have been unfeasible for most. To marry, women of middle and lower classes would wear their “best dress,” usually in a shade of brown. Colors such as grey or light purple could be multifunctional as both wedding and funeral gowns.

Queen Victoria's wedding gown on display

White as the ideal wedding gown color spread in the 1840s with the publication of Godey’s Ladies Book. Although white was a wedding dress color among royals and the wealthy prior, Queen Victoria’s white wedding gown worn in 1840, became the ideal because of widely distributed media coverage of the nuptials of the young British Queen. Today Victoria is still credited with the “creation” of the white wedding dress.

Queen Victoria of the United Kingdom wed Price Albert of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha on February 10th of 1840. Her white gown was made with materials manufactured in Britain to bolster the country’s silk and lace trades. (The Royal Collection Trust)

Changing Definitions 

Just as the use and symbolism of white in weddings has evolved so has the social understanding of a marriage contract. Marriage as a legal agreement has existed for millennia, usually as an agreement between the father of the bride and the groom—with the father literally handing off his daughter to her husband. These marriage contracts, and their subsequent wedding ceremonies, were legally a transfer of assets—the woman—from one man to another. 

In Westport in the 18th century a White woman could not own property, make contracts, or vote—women of color and immigrant women held even fewer legal protections. Legal contracts such as marriage did little to safeguard women through the 19th and 20th centuries; Women entering a marriage contract were free to do so under their own legal power in the mid-20th century. Throughout history “concubine marriage” allowed couples to engage in intimate relations and co-habitation when differences of religion or race did not allow for legal matrimony. Concubine marriages were formed by contract, meant to financially protect women, and sometimes her children, in the event of separation. 

Two guests at Westport Museum's Build a Bride exhibit

Opening Reception

Visitors explored several examples of wedding gowns—both white and the less traditional—in the Museum’s exhibition opening on March 10, 2023. Not only did our community get to admire these gowns in detail but also discovered how these iconic dresses relate to wealth, class, gender, and women’s rights.

Visitors enjoy the interactivity of the exhibit as well as the gowns themselves.

Our textile collection contains over 1200 individual pieces; these gowns are fine examples but represent such a small part of our holdings. These gowns not only exemplify the changing silhouettes of bridal fashion but also the changing nature of women, and those presenting as female, in our society.” 


– Nicole Carpenter, Programs and Collections Director

Many enjoyed creating their own wedding dress through the exhibit’s interactive magnet wall, highlighting wedding fashions from around the globe and how individualism is encouraged in multicultural ceremonies today. Explore our exhibit yourself through November 11, 2023.

Bittersweet: Chocolate in the American Colonies

by Michelle Shen

With its turquoise waters and sunny skies, today the Caribbean is thought of primarily as a vacation destination. The Caribbean is integral to the idea of American wealth and almost always has been—not just as a leisure spot for those of means but in more nefarious ways as well. 

A crucial leg of the Atlantic Slave Trade, also called the Triangular Trade, it was sugar colonies in the Caribbean that first brought captive Africans to the Western hemisphere. They harvested and processed sugar cane into white gold in brutal conditions.

Man scraping chocolate, c. 1680-1780, Unknown Artist Spanish, Photo by JR P

The first Caribbean sugar plantations began in Barbados in the 1640s. This highly profitable and inhuman farming system became the prototype for the plantations elsewhere in the West Indies and in the American South. By the end of the 17th century, trade between European-Caribbean and European-North American colonies was brisk, with goods moving back and forth and across the seas to Europe and Africa, the latter in trade for human beings to keep the system going. 

In addition to sugar, Caribbean plantations produced spices like nutmeg, cinnamon and pepper transplanted from the Eastern hemisphere. Native foods like pineapple, allspice and cocoa became precious commodities arriving to ports like Charleston, Philadelphia, New York, and Boston destined for the homes of the wealthy. 

Cacao tree with ripened pods
Cacao tree

Cocoa became a must-have beverage at breakfast. Martha Washington was a fan while her husband, George, preferred a light tisane made from cocoa shells. In the most affluent homes, like Stratford Hall, the home of the Lees of Virginia, enslaved cooks ground chocolate using the same methods of the indigenous people of central America where Cacao originated. This stone called a matate was wide, and slightly cupped, resting on short legs and was heated. The cocoa beans were ground with a heavy stone that resembled a squat rolling pin.

I would take the liberty of requesting you’ll be so good as to procure and send me 2 or 3 bushels of the Chocolate Shells such as we frequently drink Chocolate of at Mt. Vernon, as my Wife thinks it agreed with her better than any other Breakfast.


– George Washington, 1794
La Prima Colazione (The Early Breakfast), 1754, Jean-Étienne Liotard, National Museum in Warsaw

By the early 1700s cocoa beans were being shipped to North American cities to be processed with spices into blocks for drinking chocolate and other uses. It may be surprising, for example, but chocolate cream pie, or chocolate tart was a common dessert in the 18th century. 

The chocolate of this era was far different from what we know today—it was a grittier product and usually flavored with spices like nutmeg, cinnamon, and allspice in a recipe like traditional Central American and Mexican preparations. The smooth, creamy chocolate we know today was not available until later in the 19th century when machinery was invented to grind the pure cocoa paste more finely and add back cocoa butter and sugar during the refining process. 

Chocolate Pot, 1879, Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2017.156a

Despite not being the melt-in-your-mouth product, we know today, chocolate was trendy enough in the colonial period to warrant its own sense of accoutrements including chocolate preparing pots, serving pots and drinking services. These remained popular into the later 19th century. Some examples of finer cocoa pots included swizzle sticks to reagitate the chocolate that naturally sunk to the bottom of the vessel before serving. 

Chocolate Tart recipes are quite common in cookbooks of the period such as Englishwoman Hannah Glasse’s 1747 book The Art of Cookery Made Plain and Easy. Modern readers might be surprised that Glasse’s recipe (and most others of the time) calls for rice flour which is used as a thickening agent. Rice and rice flour were commonly used since rice came to England and later America, via the robust British trade with the East and West Indies. Later, rice was grown in the southern American colonies as well. This recipe we share below uses cornstarch as a more effective thickener, however you can harken back to yore and substitute rice flour instead. 

Traditionally this tart would have been served with a sugar crust on top like a crème brulee but we prefer to serve it with Chantilly cream (sweetened whip cream). 

Chocolate Tart Recipe

Makes 1, nine-inch pie 

Ingredients

  • 1 tablespoon cornstarch or rice flour 
  • ¼ cup sugar (or to taste) 
  • 4 large egg yolks 
  • 2 cups heavy cream 
  • 1 tablespoon whole milk 
  • 6 ounces semisweet chocolate chunks or chips 
  • Pinch of salt
  • 1 9-inch pie shell, frozen or use our recipe here 

Directions

  1. In a medium bowl, mix cornstarch or rice flour, sugar and egg yolks and set aside. 
  2. Mix the cream and chocolate in a medium saucepan over medium heat and bring it to a boil, stirring constantly until the chocolate melts. Do not allow the mixture to boil. 
  3. Add the milk and pinch of salt. Stir well. 
  4. Using a ladle, pour 1/2 cup of the chocolate mixture in a very thin stream into the egg mixture, whisking vigorously the whole time. You may also do this in the bowl of a stand mixer.
  5. Add the egg and cream mixture back to the pot with the remaining chocolate cream mixture and whisk well. Heat over medium heat, whisking well until thickened, about 2 to 3 minutes. Remove from heat and allow to cool completely.
  6. Preheat the oven to 350F. If using homemade pie crust, line a 9-inch pie plate with rolled out crust. Pour the cooled chocolate mixture into the pie crust and bake until firm—about 40 to 45 minutes.
  7. Remove from oven and cool completely. Wrap in plastic and cool at least 8 hours but preferably overnight. Serve with Chantilly Cream. 

Explore our exhibit yourself through November 11, 2023.

New Year’s Day Traditions 

by Michelle Shen

In early colonized America, New Year’s Day was celebrated on March 25th, following the Julian calendar used in Europe since antiquity. It was not until 1752 when the beginning of year was switched to the Gregorian calendar (losing eleven days in the process) that the first of the year became January 1st. In other cultures, the New Year varies in its beginning, from the Spring equinox in the Zoroastrian tradition, to early winter in the Chinese lunar calendar to the Fall in Judaism.  

As in other cultures, certain traditions were followed on New Year’s Day in colonial America—many of which placed the day above Christmas as a festive day. At the time Christmas was often observed, particularly in Puritan regions like Connecticut, as a solemn religious holiday so it was New Year’s Day that was a day for visiting and enjoying treats a practice first observed by those of Dutch descent in the New York Colony. 

Nieuwjaarskoeken, a thin, crispy cinnamon flavored cookie imprinted with a design imprinted on both sides was eaten topped with whipped cream. Spiced wine was often shared among young women in a traditional called “wassailing.”

Close up of a plate of Hoppin John

Sauerkraut was a common food for German Americans, while Southerners ate Hoppin’ John a dish of black-eyed peas flavored with salted pork or bacon and served with rice and mixed greens—featuring ingredients that came to North America with enslaved Africans and adopted universally.

Plate of Hoppin’ John

Today Americans in the South still eat Hoppin’ John on New Year’s Day for luck—a practice also followed by people in the Caribbean in various culinary iterations. 

For the enslaved, New Year’s Day, was also called “Hiring Day” or “Heartbreak Day” because it was when debts of the previous year were settled among the White community. Enslavers would sell or hire out their human chattel to pay these debts, removing enslaved people from their community and family groups. 

Illustration of Watch Night

In 1862, New Year’s Day took on a different meaning with the enforcement of the Emancipation Proclamation declaring the end of enslavement in America on January 1st, 1863. On December 31st, 1862, the enslaved stayed up late through the night, waiting for sunrise and news of freedom. Today the day is celebrated as “Watch Night” in many Black communities. 

Illustration of a slave staying up for Watch Night

Hoppin’ John Recipe

For the Beans

  • ½ pound of bacon or ½ pound of pancetta diced into small pieces. Note: Bacon may be omitted. If omitting, use 1 tablespoon vegetable oil in its place
  • ½ onion, minced 
  • 1 celery stalk, white part trimmed, and minced 
  • ½ green bell pepper, stemmed, seeded, and minced 
  • 2 garlic cloves, minced 
  • 1 cup dried black-eyed peas, soaked overnight in 3 cups of water or 1 can of black-eyed peas, rinsed 
  • ¼ teaspoon cayenne pepper 
  • 2 springs fresh thyme or 1 teaspoon dried thyme 
  • 1 bay leaf 
  • ½ teaspoon black pepper 
  • 1 teaspoon of coarse salt or more to taste 
  • 3 cups vegetable or chicken stock 

For the Greens 

  • ¼ pound of bacon or ½ pound of pancetta diced into small pieces or ¼ pound turkey bacon 
  • ½ onion, minced 
  • 1 garlic clove minced 
  • 6 cups of washed and trimmed greens of your choice: collard, turnip, kale, mustard or escarole 
  • ½ teaspoon salt or more to taste 
  • 2 cups chicken or vegetable broth or water 

Cooked rice to serve.

Make the Hoppin’ John

  1. Heat a large saucepan over medium heat and add the bacon. Cook until crispy and the fat is rendered. If omitting bacon, or if using, turkey bacon use 1 tablespoon of vegetable oil. 
  2. Once fat is rendered from the bacon, add the onion, celery and bell pepper. Cook until softened, about 5 to 6 minutes. 
  3. Add the garlic and cook 1 minute more. 
  4. Stir in the black-eyed peas and cayenne. 
  5. Add the thyme, bay leave, salt and pepper, and stock. Simmer, uncovered, 1 to 1 ½ hours for dried peas and 30 minutes for canned. 

Make the Greens

  1. Heat a large saucepan over medium heat and add the bacon. Cook until crispy and the fat is rendered. If omitting bacon, or if using, turkey bacon use 1 tablespoon of vegetable oil. 
  2. Add onion and cook until softened, about 5 to 6 minutes. Add the garlic and cook for 1 minute more. 
  3. Stir in the greens and stir well. Cook until the greens are just wilted, about 3 to 4 minutes. Stir in the salt 
  4. Add the vegetable or chicken stock and stir well. Simmer on low for 30 to 40 minutes, uncovered. 
  5. Ladle beans over cooked rice in a bowl. Add greens on the side of the rice. 

Learn More

Wassail Recipe from Colonial Williamsburg 

The Historical Legacy of Watch Night 

Lewis Clark’s Account of Hiring Day, 1842 from The Antislavery Standard 

From Henry Street to Westport

by Michelle Shen

The “House on The Pond” is recognizable to many Westporters but from about 1919 to 1940, the lady who lived there – Lillian Wald – was even more famous still.  A nurse and humanitarian most noted for her work among young people and with immigrants in New York City’s Lower East Side, Wald was a noted pioneer of American public health. 

Born 10 March 1867 in Cincinnati, Ohio to German-Jewish parents Miss Lillian D. Wald, got her first taste of nursing when she was eighteen years old assisting the nurse her elder sister Julia had hired after the birth of her first child. Lillian’s interactions with the independently helpful woman sparked in Lillian a passion that would last a lifetime. Lillian resolved to become educated as a nurse and was accepted to the New York Hospital School of Nursing in 1889. After her graduation in 1891 she spent a brief time working in the New York Juvenile Asylum on West 176th Street in Manhattan. After seeing deplorable conditions and suffering exceedingly ill treatment of patients by medical staff, she determined a medical degree would gain her the respect and abilities to effect change for the youth of the city. In 1892 she enrolled at the Women’s Medical College (WMC) in New York City. 

While enrolled at the WMC, Lillian volunteered to teach a home-nursing course to immigrant women from the Lower East Side. One morning, the daughter of one of her students came to fetch Miss Wald to assist her mother. The child rushed her through a series of side streets and alleyways until reaching a tenement on Ludlow Street. Then Lillian was led across a court, past open toilets to a rear building. There, the family of seven and two boarders were living in two rooms and the sick mother was lying on a dirty bed, suffering from a two-day old hemorrhage. The sight of this woman’s plight and the shock of seeing how many humans lived in similar conditions were the catalysts to change Lillian Wald’s future life. After this experience, Lillian found that she could be useful without a medical degree and decided to leave WMC. 

Lillian Wald with former UK Prime Minister Ramsay MacDonald, his daughter Ishbel and Lillian’s dog,

With the help of Mary Brewster, a friend from nursing school, she acquired an apartment in a Jefferson Street tenement. The two began going about the neighborhood to help with the sick regardless of their religion or their ability to pay.

Lillian Wald with former UK Prime Minister Ramsay MacDonald, his daughter Ishbel and Lillian’s dog, Ramsay at her home on Round Pond Rd, Westport, CT, 1929; WMHC Collections

Soon, however, Miss Wald and Miss Brewster found that they had more work ahead of them than just the two ladies could handle, and so they increased their number to four and in 1895 moved to a house at 265 Henry Street which was donated by Jacob Schiff and would eventually become the Henry Street Settlement and Visiting Nurse Service. 

Twenty years after Miss Wald initially arrived on the East Side, the Henry Street Settlement housed two kindergartens, carpenter shops, dancing schools, gymnasiums, debating classes and literary societies, as well as having three summer homes in the country for patrons to visit, a convalescent home, a library and study, and a place set aside for a sewing school. They offered lectures on subjects which ranged from government to sex hygiene, and there were clubs for boys and girls. 

Over the years, Miss Wald became involved with numerous humanitarian efforts. She worked with the Board of Health to post nurses in schools and by 1914 had succeeded in having 374 school nurses city wide. Also, she and others formed the National Child Labor Committee in 1903. In 1905 Lillian met with President Theodore Roosevelt and suggested the idea of creating the Federal Children’s Bureau which would help educate and protect children in the workforce. The Bureau was eventually formed, but not until 1912 by President Taft.

Lillian also helped to establish the Nurses Emergency Council during the influenza Epidemic when it struck in the fall of 1918, at a conference of nurses called by the Red Cross Atlantic Division. Perhaps one of her most well-known contributions to society was her suggestion to Dr. Lee Frankel of the Metropolitan Life Insurance Company to send trained nurses to the family of every policy holder where insurance representatives had reported illness. This visiting nurse service was approved by the Met Life board and speedily implemented not only in New York City, but to all policy holders throughout the United States and Canada. 

Toward the end of WWI, Lillian rented a home for her ill mother to convalesce in during the summers on a small pond near the Saugatuck River in Westport. After her mother’s death in 1923, and after her own health began to decline in 1925, Lillian continued to summer at “her house on the pond” which she then purchased. Lillian retired from active work at the Settlement in 1933 and relinquished the presidency in 1937. However, her retirement was not spent quietly as she entertained many of her famous friends at her Compo home. Chief among them were Jane Addams, Albert Einstein, Former Mayor of New York City Fiorello LaGuardia (a fellow Compo resident), Governor and Mrs. Herbert Lehman, Prime Minister Ramsay MacDonald with his daughter Ishbel, and Eleanor Roosevelt. 

Lillian Wald and Jane Addams in a photograph together

For her 70th birthday in 1937 and the 20th anniversary of her residence in Westport, a book of words, signatures and illustrations was compiled by the members of the community. 1200 of Westport’s men, women, and children signed the book or provided illustrations. Each contributed $0.25 to make up a check for the Henry Street Settlements.

Lillian Wald with Jane Addams in Washington, D.C., 1916; Library of Congress Photo Collection

This unique book was cherished by Miss Wald and its pages were preserved at her request. Local artists who contributed to this book were James Daugherty, Charles Prendergast, Robert Lambdin, George Wright, Alice Harvey, Kerr Eby, Karl Anderson, Beulah Allen Northrup and Joe King. This book is now on display at the Henry Street Settlement and a facsimile copy was made and bound which can be viewed at the Westport Library. 

Miss Wald remained active while in Westport, willing to help with local relief programs, and she maintained a phone on her bedside table so that she could be in constant contact with welfare and relief organizations. And in her last months, although she was quite ill, she instructed workmen to install flood lights around the pond so that the children who were apt to skate there in the evenings would be able to see. 

Lillian Wald passed away September 2, 1940. Westport mourned her passing and many of her friends and neighbors pushed and eventually succeeded in her election to the Hall of Fame of Great Americans at New York University in 1970.

You can learn more about Lillian’s life and work by reading her books, The House on Henry Street and Windows on Henry Street or by visiting the Henry Street Settlement in New York City or by viewing their online exhibit at TheHouseOnHenryStreet.org.