A Zoom Presentation by costume and textile historian Lynne Zacek Bassett

An 1890s article in the Hampshire Gazette inquired how Northampton’s “excess of women” made their living. Indeed, in the decades following the Civil War, thousands of women across the country had to support themselves and possibly also family members after the loss of nearly 750,000 men in the war. The needle trades had offered money-earning opportunities to women for hundreds of years. This lecture by nationally recognized costume and textile historian (and former Historic Northampton curator) Lynne Zacek Bassett will examine the 19th-century millinery and dressmaking trades in Northampton, focusing particularly on the Dickinson family, who dominated the millinery trade in Hampshire County for most of the century, and dressmakers represented by extant dresses in Historic Northampton’s collection.