by Stacen Goldman, FHC Curator
I love studying history because it is so incredibly human. The subjects of history were real people, with feelings, worries, and ambitions. They all had families, they were all once children, they all made mistakes and learned, they all ate, drank, and slept. Historians take their own innate understanding of the human experience and try to project how that played out in times that are drastically different from our own. As I’ve settled into my new position here at the FHC, I have found myself constantly reminded of the inherent humanity of historical figures, especially when working with our extensive costume collection.
When I work with this collection, I am conscious of the fact that each garment is an historical source that (much like a written source) can be read to glean information about the time in which it was worn and, more importantly, about the wearer herself. Clothing is an especially helpful source when studying women in particular because the historical record surrounding them is often much sparser. Clothing reflects (among other things) a woman’s daily activities, economic status, and personality. Especially in times when women were excluded from government, scholarship, art, and culture, clothing was one of the few active choices she could make, and each choice tells us something we never could have known otherwise. These garments might be the richest sources we have available to interpret the personality, values, and status of Framingham’s historic women.
While examining the wedding dress of Anna Haven Foster of the extended Pike-Haven-Foster family (you may remember their remarkable First Period homestead featured on this year’s house tour), the first thing I was struck by was its sweetness. Though it is not a quantifiable characteristic – and there are plenty of things about the dress that can be quantifiably measured and which tell us a great deal about Anna – her personality was immediately clear to me. I just knew right away that the woman who wore this dress was warm, gentle, and kind. I pictured her on her wedding day, young and hopeful (perhaps even a little naïve), growing from girlhood into womanhood, getting ready to take on her new life. Looking at this dress, Anna sprung fully formed in my mind’s eye, and I loved her immediately.
I was surprised by how viscerally I felt all of this. As a trained historian, I am not usually content to draw conclusions so quickly from just one source. Still, I sat with my initial feelings for a week or so, a little bit afraid to do more extensive digging. What if other sources completely discredited it? I had become attached to the sweet young bride of my imagination and it would be incredibly disappointing to discover that I was wrong. Still, as any historian would tell you, imagination alone cannot sustain me. So I went on the hunt in our Special Collections to see what else I could find of Anna.
As I often do while working with original documents, I felt a chill when I found a small stack of letters labeled “Anna Haven Foster” in our Pike-Haven papers. These were mostly letters written to her by friends and family members, with only one written by Anna herself. Though they are few, these letters tell us that Anna was deeply loved by those around her. She was warm, comforting, affectionate, and tender. She was fun, social, and she brought her friends and family joy. She was humble, grateful to others, and (as I felt from that first glance at her wedding dress) she was sweet. I don’t want to give too much away – we will feature more about Anna in our upcoming exhibit, Opening the Closet: Framingham Fashion through the Centuries – but this process has lead me to realize one of the most wonderful things about studying history: you can spend a great deal of time trying to wrap your head around it, but sometimes the answers come from your gut. After all, it’s only human.
To see Anna Haven Foster’s wedding dress and learn more about the contents of her letters, be sure to visit our upcoming exhibit, Opening the Closet: Framingham Fashion through the Centuries.