Audio
Season 2, Episode 1: The Clothes We Wore, Part 2
Transcript
Jonathan Malriat
Welcome to part two of our episode with Sarah Rivers Cofield, a curator at the Maryland Archeological Conservation Laboratory. Frequently shortened to the Mac lab. In this part, she'll talk about some of her projects working with the Mac lab, as well as some of her own personal experiences connected to the field of historic clothing. Our hosts today are myself, Jonathan Marriott, the lead interpretive ranger, and Dustin Baker, the chief of interpretation here at George Washington Birthplace National Monument. How does what you find in the ground, at archeological sites and in excavations compare with the clothing that's been preserved, say, in the collections at Mount Vernon and even some of the surviving pieces at Colonial Williamsburg and other sites.
Sarah Rivers Cofield
So I think the thing that, people really should be aware of when they see surviving garments is that things that survive to end up in a museum are really not always representative of what people were actually wearing all the time. And that's not, you know, that's not to say that those clothes aren't extremely valuable. We absolutely need those, because certainly as archeologists, we only find the hardware. And so without surviving textiles, we would really have none of what we need to understand how that hardware fit in context. But if you think about it, the clothes that tend to survive, even today are ones that are special for some reason or other. You know, your christening gown or it was worn by a famous person to a big event, or an inaugural ball gown, or a presidential inaugural outfit or something like that. Those survive, those get saved, and things that don't fit or that are special occasion garments, or somebody died and they never got worn, those things might get saved. But not the things that get worn every day by everybody, especially in the 18th century when cloth was really expensive. And so not only would you wear your dress until you were done with it, but then you might sell it on a second hand market and then it might get worn by people, and then it might eventually get turned into rags. And so the things that most people wore all the time don't survive. And so the clothing that survives, I saw a talk recently by, the person who runs the Cora Ginsburg gallery, which is, it's a textile sales auction house. That's very well known in the business. And, you know, she said that Cora Ginsburg called these things closet clothes. You know, the things that, like, they live on in your closet. They don't get worn out. And I think that that's really true. So those items are kind of the exceptions. And it's also true for accessories, a watch or jewelry or stuff that ends up at a museum isn't what people were wearing every day. It's not what we find archeologically because what we find archeologically is the stuff that gets thrown away. And so what archeologists have that those collections don't have is the ability to go into the quarters for the enslaved people and find evidence of their clothing and connect you to those people whose clothes almost never survive. And to get at the everyday clothing that was so common and so inexpensive that it just ended up in the trash. So we don't find the gold and the silver, usually those things usually get melted down, but we do find more silver than we find gold. And we do find more copper alloy than silver. And, and so there's sort of this hierarchy. And so the two kinds of collections complement each other really well. But without both of them, you're, we're both missing a huge part of the picture.
Dustin Baker
So, You know, I'm thinking specifically of young people, but, earlier you were talking about why we should care about this, and I know we all know at least one person or kid who sees somebody wearing, like, colonial era clothing, and they laugh because to them, it's just kind of silly and, but what are some things you've been involved with to get young people and new audiences interested in this subject?
Sarah Rivers Cofield
So probably my favorite project that we did with this, several years ago, I guess around 2015, the, the series Outlander was coming out, and a bunch of us at the lab were already fans of the Outlander books. And so one of my colleagues was like, hey, we should do an exhibit on Outlander. I was like, yeah, yeah, you know, go talk to the bosses. And and she was like, no, really? We should do an exhibit on Outlander. And and we ended up doing that. And now Outlander obviously is a fiction series. But it takes place, the whole series generally takes place sort of between the 1740s, for the most part, and the late 18th century, and, and at first there in Scotland and then later there in North Carolina and other parts of the colonies. And the thing is, in Maryland's collections, we have a whole lot of material culture, whether it's wine bottles or clothes, clothing, artifacts or horse related artifacts or any of that from that time period. And so one of the things we all love about the books is that, there there are, you know, when you when you're in history and archeology and you read a historical book, it is very easy to be like, oh, that term wasn't a thing back then or oh, they got that material culture all wrong. But most of us who work at the Mac lab all agreed that the Outlander books were really good. There weren't too terribly many anachronisms, and the ones that there were, you could sort of discount as part of the whole time travel angle of the book. So we thought it would be really fun to take our collections and sort of match them up to some scenes from the show. And we got permission from stars at the time who was just sort of launching the show to use their images, and we did this little traveling exhibit, and it was really fun. We have this beautiful picture of Claire in her wedding dress, and we illustrated it with buckles and buttons and jewelry parts, from our collections. And we would set it up in libraries. And here a little girls go. Look, mommy, it's a princess, you know? And and it was just it was a nice way to connect to the public and to get people thinking that, hey, those things that the English manufacturers were, were making at that time period and pushing on Scotland and the US like the those all had a lot in common, like we have that history here too. So it was a really nice sort of immersive public for.
Dustin Baker
And when you're dealing with, collections of, of pieces of clothing or, artifacts, I assume sometimes you're looking at a variety of items that were owned by a single person. And what were some of those moments when you analyzed a collection of personal items like that?
Sarah Rivers Cofield
So there there have been several, like I mentioned the sleeve length earlier, we have a pair of sleeve lengths in our collection that have, they're engraved with IG. And it was we were able to connect that to the shopkeeper who lived at the site, whose name was John Golder. And of course, in the 18th century, the J was written as an I. So, like, those are things we can connect with an actual person. But probably the best one I can think of is that, I was once asked to do sort of as a moonlighting job for the del Dot. They had, data recovery at, farm in Delaware that dated from the 18th all the way up to the 18th century, all the way up to the 1930s. And they found an assemblage of clothing related artifacts and, and I did this analysis sort of on nights and weekends for them. And they among the things that they had was a bunch of those linked buttons, like I mentioned, which, of course were worn by men, women and children. They were 18th century. They had a bunch of coat and waistcoat buttons, which indicates men, and they had shoe buckles. But that's also men and women. And they all were kind of clustered together. And there was kind of this question of like, well, who who did this stuff belong to? And one of the things that I had encouraged the archeologists to do on this project was radiography. So, iron artifacts, especially when you excavate them, they often look like Cheetos. They're so rusty, they you can't tell what's going on there. And so when you use X-rays for artifacts that are made of iron, you can zap through that corrosion and see the artifacts inside. And we found so many amazing clothing related artifacts that lay in our collections, whether it's hooks and eyes or maybe a pair of scissors that might have been used for mending or something. And in this particular assemblage, the X-rays revealed a knee buckle. It's a very distinctive type of buckle in terms of the size, how the axis is oriented, and it has what's called an anchor shape that slides into a buttonhole. So it's removable again for that laundering thing or for just changing out your accessories night and day. And, breeches buckle, like all those other artifacts I mentioned, was most definitely a man's artifact. So we were able to take the assemblage and that it was all kind of clustered in a cellar. And what we knew of the history of the site was that it was mostly first inhabited by a woman who was a widow. And when her son came of age, there had been this it was towards the end of the 18th century into the early 19th century, when there was a huge shift in costume, where people weren't wearing cufflinks and buckles and things like that anymore. Trousers had come in and the cuts of men's clothes were different and the buttons were different. And, and so what it seemed like what was happening was that this widow probably had a trunk or something of her husband's clothes that ended up in this basement. And because it was a breeches buckle, we knew that it was a men's wardrobe that wasn't being worn anymore. And, and they were able to tell archeologically by how the, the sediments sort of periodically built up in that cellar that it was very prone to water and flooding. And so what probably happened is that she stored away some of those guys nicer clothes, thinking, oh, I may need this someday. The cellar flooded over and over. Those things went out of style anyway, until the point when they just ended up abandoning it all down there. And had it not been for that X-ray, we wouldn't really have known that part of the story. You know, we would have been wondering, well, why didn't they end up using this? But but it was really it was a really exciting find. It was a really exciting way to sort of interpret a wardrobe that had been tucked away.
Dustin Baker
Yeah. It kind of alludes to how clothing and our family and friends clothing is, is also sentimental to us.
Sarah Rivers Cofield
Yeah, absolutely.
Dustin Baker
I just really appreciate you sharing your, passion for this because it's really helping me and hopefully our listeners understand that. I mean, we all can just empathize with what it feels like to have clothing on our body, how it makes us present to other people, and by seeing the clothes people would have worn in the past, it really helps you connect with them. But you have a really unique example how, historic clothing not only opened up a window into the past, but even opened up a mystery surrounding someone from the late 19th century. So if you're willing to share that story with us, that would be really great.
Sarah Rivers Cofield
Yeah, sure. So this is where I sort of have to take my, employee from the state of Maryland hat off and put on my. I collect old clothes as a hobby hat on. But I have been collecting old clothes since I was in about middle school. I sort of started with antique purses when I was 11 or 12. But, you know, archeologists, we don't find the surviving clothing and, and so, but I was always really interested in it. So I started a collection. There isn't a whole lot of overlap with what I can afford, which is an 18th century. And what I've been talking about today. But one of the outfits I bought, in 2013, I think, was, bustle dress. So I always, as a kid was really fascinated by the whole bustle era. The silk, the silk gowns, a all the buttons up the front and these huge, you know, bustle contraptions on the back and flowy fabrics and things. I thought we thought it was really great. And, and then as I got older, I could afford more for my private collection. Of course, you know, the longer you're employed, usually you your budget goes up a little bit. And so there was this dress I'd had my eye on at an antique mall in Maine, for a couple years. So I live in Maryland, but my family is all from a small town in Maine called Searsport, and they had an antique mall there. And every time I went to visit family, I would go there because this is my hobby. So I had I had my eye on this dress for a few trips and, finally I, you know, I knew I wanted to see it. It was in a glass case. I asked them to get it out, so we got it out anyway, long story short, it was like $135. I offered 100, and as long as I paid cash, they were willing to take it. And so I bought the dress, but it was the most I had ever spent on anything. And so I was feeling a little insecure about it. But as this beautiful sort of bronze silk, perfect like epitome of an 1880s bustle dress, you know, not super fancy, not like a ball gown, but also not like the kind of thing you would wear to do your laundry. Anyway, so of course, I got it home, and I'm. I'm checking it all out, and I'm at my mom's house, and I, you know, I wanted to see the structure of it. These awesome dresses are these amazing structures. Inside. All different inventions were made of different undergarments. To make that butt area stick out the way it does. And this particular one had little channels built in where you could add wires if you needed to. And so I was checking all that out and the skirt inside out, and I noticed that there was a pocket in it, and this pocket was, you know, sewn in, stuck out when you have your clothes inside out, you can see how the pockets are structured. And I hadn't seen a pocket looking at it from the outside. So I started exploring to try to figure out where the pocket was. And it turned out I was kind of concealed under this draped front fabric, of the bustle skirt. And so this is the way these skirts are constructed tends to be complex if they have the drapey parts and different trims and layers. And this one has a couple of layers to it. So anyway, it was under this draped silk front. And I could barely get to it because this the silk front was tacked in different places with thread to keep it draping just so. And, but I wanted to get to it because I could tell from having seen it inside out that I could feel something in the pocket. Anyway, so finally I figured out how to get to this pocket, and it wasn't all that easy. And I reached in, and then I pull out this clump of papers. And if any of you have ever left a receipt in your pocket when it goes through the wash, it was kind of like that, you know, like, like all balled up and, you know, so I call my mom and of course, because she's my partner in crime and and teaching. And I was like, there's something in the pocket. There's a pocket. And so she comes in and I'm trying to unravel. It wasn't as fragile as paper that's been through the wash, so I don't think it ever had been. Let out. But it was very crumpled and balled up, so I'm trying to, ball it. And then eventually I realized it's two pieces of paper. So I hand one to my mom and she and I are both very carefully. It's very thin. It like like when you hold it up, it sort of like flows in the air flow. It's super thin, lightweight paper. We're unfolding it like, who's going to read it first? Oh my gosh. So a secret passage in the packet. We're so excited. And then so we both get to kind of unfold it to the point that we can read them and we start reading. But like, it, it just it didn't make any sense. It made no sense whatsoever. It was like it was just word salad. It's like Leaf Edge Bismark or Mint Book Bank. You know, all words are recognizable words, but you know, no message. And so she and I were kind of like, what the what? It's, you know, we we both started reading to each other and and again, we're like, I have no idea what just happened. So we were very confused. And then we started joking, oh, it's a secret code in the pocket, you know? And, at the time I kept a blog, so it was very trendy in the early 20 tens to have a blog. And so I had a blog on blogspot called Commitment to Costumes. And this was, of course, before I became a parent and I had excess free time. And so I blogged about it and I was joking, and I was like, you know, as featuring all of the awesome features of this dress and everything that I was geeking out over as a costume person. And then I get to the end and I was like, ooh, maybe the secret pocket is for holding a code, you know? And, you know, I'm I'm an archeologist. I have a history degree, too, you know, I'm a scholar. I am not the person who is like, everything is a conspiracy and a secret code. Like, no, I am usually the person bursting that bubble for everybody who thinks that everything has a secret code and, you know, is some conspiracy. In the past. So this time I was like, well, in this case, I actually did find some weird secret code in the pocket, and I shared pictures of it online because I was literally I was like, I don't know what this is. You know what to do with this? And I shared it on my Facebook page and social media, for the most part, my Facebook is all my friends and especially my family like to follow the blog because some of the clothing I feature on it is stuff that I inherited, and so they like seeing what I have to say about things that came from our family. So anyway, so they shared it, they were all very excited and I got like more hits than I had ever gotten on a blog. And I think, you know, I was super excited. I want to say it was like 200, you know, which from a blog was like a lot. But all of a sudden I started getting contacted by code breaking people, cryptography people. You know, they were really into this, you know, the the costume world has its people. Well, the code breaking people are out there too. And I was like, I, I need you. I don't know what to do with this. Go for it. And, fairly early on, one of them suggested that it was a telegraph code. And after looking into that, it became pretty clear that that was indeed what it was. So in the 19th century, when the telegraph started and you're sending a telegraph, it was you were charged by the word and the line. So the longer the message, the more expensive the telegraph. And so and also the telegraph is being sent to different stations all across the country and being read by different people and passed on. And so there's no privacy to telegraphs. So what they developed in response to this. And by they I mean like all the people using the telegraph, the, you know, the hypothetical may, they developed codes. And so where a code book would be developed, where one word would stand for a whole phrase, and these were adopted by various industries. So say you're in the mining industry and you strike silver and you need to tell, you know, you're out in Utah, but you need to tell people in New York that you strike silver. You don't want everybody between you and New York to know that you just struck silver, right? You want to propagate. So the mining industry would have their own code book. And, you know, so would like the train industry, train schedules, and, and so you have to have the same book on both ends of the telegraph to be able to decode it once it gets there. So a word like leaf edge, which I don't even know if that is a word. You would look it up and figure out what phrase it stands for. But that was one of the words in my code. So we figured out pretty early it was a telegraph book, and it turned out there was hundreds of telegraph books scanned and on Google books, so I can't even tell you how many nights I spent after this on Google Books, reading Telegraph books, just skimming them, looking for the words that were in my message. And I never found them. I never, I never found one that was a match. Because unless you have the right telegraph code book, you cannot figure out what that message says. So I gave up, and every once in a while I'd get an email, from a cryptography person, like asking permission to use the pictures or something. And, and I didn't really think that much of it because nobody had solved it. And what I didn't know is that the codebreaking world did not let this go. And so they were running with it. And so apparently it got published in some list somewhere of like the 50 top unbroken codes or something. And it got picked up by a man named Wayne Chang in Manitoba at the University of Manitoba, who likes to break codes as a hobby. So here I am, a historian archeology person who collects costume as a hobby, and Wayne Chan, who as some kind of analyst, in his day job at the University of Manitoba. But like, press codes as a hobby. He he had leave for holiday, and I was like, I'm gonna try to crack his code. And and he wasn't successful at it. And I guess a couple of years later, he picked it back up again. Anyway, he he did tons of work. It's amazing. And he figured it out. So he had to go through all kinds of interlibrary loan type things, and he went back to read about the history of the Telegraph, and ultimately determined that, the, the code book he was looking for was the Army Signal Services code book for relaying the weather. And and this is the part where I think a lot of people think, oh my gosh, this is such a letdown, so much built up. It's a mystery. The code, blah, blah, blah. And no, it is a weather report. That's what it was. It was a daily weather report. But the amount of work that Wayne Chan put into this to figure this out is just it's amazing. So from a history point of view. So he's the Army was in charge of weather reports at the time. And nowadays we're like, that's weird. I don't understand, why would you do that? But when you think about it, until the telegraph was invented, people had no way of knowing what weather was coming except there, you know, maybe a barometer in their house and sort of, you know, the instinctive things that you learned working on the land and sensing the atmosphere and looking at the trees and things like that. Obviously, you know, in many ways we've lost some of that. But really, the Telegraph allowed people to know what fronts were coming their way for the first time ever. And of course, if you're the Army and you're in charge of the national defense, that would be something that might be of interest. You know, like knowing that a hurricane is coming is a really big deal for the safety of your citizens. So the Army had all of these signal centers and most of the code, line the lines on the code sheets. I had started with, a location. So Bismarck was one of the. It was the North Dakota terror, territory weather station. Calgary was another one. And so it started with a place name, and then each word after that stood for whatever the weather conditions were. And so there was two pages. One sort of was like the northern part of North America, and the other was sort of more the southern part. So Texas, Texas stations and other stations in the south, and they came together, telegraph line, according to when he said the, the only telegraph like receipt area would have had both of those full reports would have been in Washington, D.C. and that's kind of interesting because I bought this dress in Maine, but I live in the D.C. area, and this telegraph code must have originated somewhere in the D.C. area. So how did that happen? We don't really know. But yeah, so he figured out it's a weather report, and, so each word would mean something like, you know, the word event might mean something like winds to the south southeast. You know, this many miles per hour? Or sunny or cloudy or foggy. You know, each one was some long phrase to do with the weather. And you can find his paper. He published it in cryptology, but he published it in a journal called cryptology. And the full like interpretation is there. But the best part, I think, is this is so amazing of of what he did is that there were was a word in the code to indicate that it was the 27th of the month, but it didn't say what year, and it didn't say what month. And so she took the temperatures that were being reported and guessed that it had to be a fairly temperate time of year. It was an extreme winter. It was an extreme summer. And he based on the style of the dress and being from the 1880s and the code books that he had matching the words that he found, he narrowed it down to a couple of years and looked at the temperate months, and then he got the weather maps that were generated by these telegraphs from NOAA, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. They still have all those historic maps that were created by all these telegraphs that were reported. He got close to the maps and matched them until he found the one that matched the weather report the best. And that way he was able to sort of reverse engineer this weather map. And the report to figure out it was May 27th, 1888. So that's a lot of work. And it's yeah, I mean, it's amazing that he was able to do that and how hard it was for him to do that. And so I really think, you know, everybody who talks to me about this, they're like, are you kind of disappointed? It was just a weather report. And I'm like, no, it's not even a little bit. Because first of all, as somebody who's all, my family's from Maine and I've, you know, it's sort of been the one constant in my life and all my family in Maine, like we always talk about the weather, like the weather is the most Maine thing ever to be like a topic. So I felt like that was really fitting. But also, you know, as a history and archeology person, I can't really think of anything that is more significant to people, the that people care about more every day on a daily basis than the weather. You know, we we don't always think about it. It's kind of in the background. But I just have to think that it's so profoundly life changing for people in that time period to suddenly be able to have a weather report. Yeah. Every day I get up and I click an app on my phone so that I know what to wear that day, and I don't think that much about it. It never occurred to me until this whole story happened. Wow. What was it like for people who totally didn't know what the weather was going to be? That's kind of scary, you know? And so as archeologists, we study everyday life. You know, we study the trash that people throw away. Like, that's what I'm into. And this was such a profound window into everyday life that I wasn't at all disappointed that it wasn't some secret spy code. Instead, it it's ephemera. You know, these code sheets were a one off. They're used one time, they're marked off once they're sent, and then they get thrown away. And so that's why they don't survive. And and nobody knew what this was to figure it out. So it's a really rare survival, even though it's such a prosaic everyday thing. And so Wayne cracked the code and his university was very proud of him. And so they did a press release about it in combination with Noah, because they were part of the story, having provided the maps. And all of a sudden it was this big media frenzy about a year ago, just, I just my whole life was occupied by this topic for like two months. It was sort of my life as clickbait. You know, I would be driving home from work and my husband or I, we figure out who's going to cook, and I'm like, well, the New York Times is calling tonight, so can you cook? You know, and it was just really bizarre. But it, you know, it it did its viral thing. It went up. It went down. And it has calmed down now, but occasionally I still do get asked to talk about it. And I still have the dress and I still have the code sheets. And I still think it's a very cool story that really connects us to the past. But I don't know. And what nobody has figured out is, how did those code sheets end up in that pocket?
Dustin Baker
I can't help but just see, like, the overlap where it's a remnant of one of the earliest forms of long distance communication, you know, and then all this time later, it winds up on the internet and starts reaching all these people and connecting them with their interest in it.
Sarah Rivers Cofield
Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it was it was exciting. Not only that, I like. So I bought this dress in Maine. The Telegraph had to originate in DC where I live, Wayne Shan in Manitoba. One of the stations, the weather stations was like near their campus or something out there. You know, there are all these weird coincidences and ties. And I also I was I'm always still struck by the fact that Wayne and I found ourselves having our 15 minutes of fame for hobbies that had nothing to do with our day jobs, really. And so we were sort of like, I don't know how to deal with this, you know, because people were calling us at work and, it's that was really weird. But yeah, one of the things that Noah was most interested in is that for them, it made them think about the fact that women were involved in this really early weather, relay system. You know, the telegraph system. Women were involved in it, and they hadn't really thought about that before that. And so they were using it, as, as a way to look into women in the early weather and, Women's History Month. It was an article that they put up for that. But I don't I fundamentally don't know that the woman who wore this dress was actually involved in relaying messages. You know, I don't know how she ended up with that paper. And I think that it should. So first of all, the pocket itself isn't necessarily secret. It's just very secure. So having pockets in that time period wasn't that unusual. You can hide a lot. And a really big skirt. What what is weird about it is that you couldn't access the pocket without lifting up this front draped fabric and exposing the lining of the skirt, so wouldn't really be indecent. She wouldn't be uncovered accessing it in public. But you probably wouldn't do it either. It would be, like, unsightly. I guess it would be like a woman pulling her money out of her bra in a grocery store to pay. You know, it's it's a little like that. Like, she may not be exposing herself, but it's still a little like. I don't know about that. Sure. I don't know how else to really relay it. And so it's not a secret pocket, but it's a very secure pocket. And the the papers were all balled up and just forgotten there. So they can't have been that important. And there is a little nametag sewn into the back of the dress that says Bennet on it. And this is a whole other line of mystery associated with this dress. So Bennet is a very common name, and having a tag sewn into your dress sometimes, usually just means I need to get this back. Like that's why my name is on it. Either it's going out for laundering, which in this silk dress, you wouldn't have done that. Or it might mean, It might like oftentimes with historic clothes, it means, oh, this was in my attic, and I loaned it to the local theater group or something. You know, so we don't know why the tag is there. But we did try to figure this out. You tried to figure out if there were any. Bennet's working in the D.C. telegraph office in the 1880s, and there was one. But it was a man, and he was a married man, but his wife was eight months pregnant. On May 27th, 1888. And so, you know, it doesn't seem that likely that that guy was the origin of these pages. But we also don't know what happened to all of those pieces of paper all that time, you know, when the Telegraph was king and you're going through all these pieces of paper every day that are just a one off use. You know, this wasn't a time period when we everything was disposable like it is today. I think toilet paper had, like, just been invented, you know, so I get I don't think that people came up with second uses for this extra paper. And so maybe if you're a woman who has recently given birth and you have a newborn, you want to keep some random soft papers in your pocket as a just in case when you're out and about with your baby, you know, they didn't have wet wipes. I don't know what they were doing. And so maybe she did tell her husband, hey, can you just, like, bring me home the waste papers each day? Like I can use those, like, I don't know, I don't know why anybody would have retained that. You know, maybe they were just using it as a tissue instead of a hankie, like, I just. I don't know, and unfortunately, when it comes to that and the things that I still have in my possession, that's the part that we'll never know. We've decoded the weather report, but we'll never know why it survived where it did. It's just sort of fodder for the imagination.
Dustin Baker
Yeah. We deal a lot with those unanswered questions here at the park. And I just think this is such a perfect story to illustrate how clothing can open up a whole world of of empathy for what it was like to live in that time. And what was going on in someone's life. And, it's just a really incredible story, and it makes you really wonder, what is it about the things that we wear today? When people who who do what you do, what will they think of us in the future?
Sarah Rivers Cofield
Yeah. And what will survive, you know, like, check your pockets or don't and make somebody really happy 200 years from now.
Dustin Baker
Yeah. So if you're going to leave something in your pockets, just make sure it's something interesting.
Sarah Rivers Cofield
Yeah? Yeah. Or disappoint the future masses by having it just be weather reporter.
Jonathan Malriat
And that concludes the second part of our interview with Sarah Rivers Cofield. Again, a big thank you to Sarah for joining us on these two episodes. If you enjoyed this episode, make sure you catch the first part of our interview, in which she goes into details about historic clothing trends and traditions, and keep an ear out for future episodes of Upon This Land History, Mystery and Monuments, where we'll explore other stories that are connected to the park that we protect and preserve. Here, where George Washington was born.
Description
Continuing our conversation with Sara Rivers Cofield, we explore what archeologists look for from clothing, the personal stories it can reveal, and how her team has made historic fashions trendy again. We also hear a compelling story about how her passion for historic clothing opened a window into the past, including a mystery surrounding someone who lived during the 19th century.
Date Created
02/28/2025
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