Now that I have had opportunity to get back into the Museum and actually interact with the clothes again, something about the collection that I had not noticed before stood out to me. Up to this point, the military clothing collection is mostly men’s uniforms and I was starting to get discouraged by the lack of women’s presence, but the rest of the collection seems to be primarily dresses, coats, and uniforms of women in Thunder Bay’s history. I cannot say exactly why this is, maybe because women’s clothing is more reflective of the time period and changes so dramatically through history. Or maybe because sometimes, in historic societies where the contributions of men seem to endure more prominently in recorded history, women’s clothing may have represented their work and experience better than anything else they owned. Perhaps of all their possessions, women’s clothing best represented their individual existence. Whatever the reason, the majority of the collection henceforth is women’s clothing and I cannot wait to go through it all to learn about how all of these women contributed to the development of this area.
I make this preface with the deep understanding that women are often (unintentionally or not) scrubbed from historical record. Because of seemingly innocuous things like the taking of the husband’s names at marriage, women in historical record are often referred to as something like “Mrs. John McIntosh”. I have spent a good amount of time researching the history of Port Arthur and Fort William and while I can name a few noteworthy women from the “early” years, for example, Victoria McVicar, Elizabeth Smellie, and Mag Matthews, so many of our early women are hidden behind their husbands, or just not mentioned in records at all. A significant majority of the biographical files in our library’s reference section are, of course, about men – no doubt a function of the historical records available to us.
I know that just as now, women walked and lived and contributed here. I know they helped establish the twin cities, pushed for development, and had opinions about many matters of interest, but their general exclusion from town council meetings, voting, business ownership, and most other managerial or power wielding positions means that the lives of women in our history are often hard to find, let alone learn much about. The difficulty is exacerbated for women from historically marginalized communities.
Because of this general lack of entry into the historical records and the knowledge that of course women were here and did do wonderful things, I am very excited to dive into the individuality of as many women as I can find in this textile collection. Researching who they are and what they did may be a little more difficult, but I am genuinely hoping that we can uncover some fascinating tidbits of individual history. In fact, I have already started collecting some names from individual garments, hoping that they would lead me down the path of discovery. I will list them here in hopes that someone out there recognizes their names and can offer some additional insight into their lives. The names I have compiled so far are, Jennie Wylie (c. 1890s), Lucy Miocich (c. 1940s), Lucy Ada Whatley (c. 1900), Jean Agnes Hughes (c.1900), Sue Rautavuari (c. 1925), Hazel Crane (c. 1920s), Mrs. Thomas D. MacGillivary (C. 1900), Mrs. Tom Mcauliff (c. late 1920s), Mrs. Emery (c. 1890), Agnes Wilson (c.1925), and Myrtle Helen McIntosh (c. 1890).
If you happen to have records or knowledge about any of these women or any other women from our collective past, please do not hesitate to reach out to us at the Thunder Bay Museum, we would love to hear from you. Keep an eye on this space over the next few weeks as we explore many of the historical women represented in our textiles collection.
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