Let's Talk About Kansas

I imagine that Kansas isn't on many vacation bucket lists. It's not on mine. However, it was a place that attracted more than a few mail order brides in the late 1800s. Topeka and Wichita were home to ranches and farms that prospered. The cattle industry growth was a big factor. Successful cattlemen were hard to resist for mail order brides needing security.

Kansas is located about halfway between Canada and Mexico

Wichita and Derby, Kansas are both located in the southeastern quadrant of the state. In about 1880, the Derby wasn't considered to be a suburb of Wichita as it is today. The journey in pioneer times took significantly longer in a wagon or on horseback than it does today in a car on the interstate.

Thunderstorms are common in the spring and early summer. Weather was definitely a concern for those living in the Wichita or Derby areas in history. The buildings were often not sturdy enough to withstand high winds and a tornado moving through could take off a roof in a flash.

While rain was a needed commodity, having it delivered by a thunderstorm wasn't desirable. In fact, the blessed vision of rain clouds in the distance, could bring a man to his knees when he realized he was about to get more than just water for his crops and livestock.

A thunderstorm is moving in beyond the wheat field

The area is also affected by extreme temperatures. Summers are very hot and winters are very cold. Extremes were difficult to manage comfortably for those living in the area before central heating, air conditioning, and indoor bathrooms. These people had to be prepared for anything.

Wearing many layers of clothing hampered the ability to move around easily and indoors layers could be a fire hazard when it was necessary to work around a fire. Men - and especially women - couldn't wear shorts to do chores and heavy labor in the summer. It must have been brutal on those sweltering days in July and August.

Much of my Kansas Mail Order Brides series is set in Derby, Kansas. In 1890, the population was 236. It was really just a small town, though it may seem larger in some of the stories of the series. I probably romanticized a bit about the town and it's capabilities, but it seemed like the right thing to do as I wrote.

Wichita was a much larger city. In 1880, the population was almost 5,000 and by 1890 there were nearly 24,000 people living there. What an amazing population explosion as people flocked to the western US!

Kansas was one of the gateways to the wild, wild west - there's no doubt about that.

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Annie Boone writes sweet western historical romance with a happy ending guaranteed in every single story. Take a look at Annie's latest contribution to the beloved Cutter's Creek series - Perfect Timing.

Get more information on the Kansas Mail Order Bride Series.

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Grandma's Wedding Quilt Series.

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WRAPPERS OF THE CIVIL WAR ERA by Zina Abbott

Often when blogs feature fashions of a by-gone era, they focus on the high fashion—those elegant creations worn only by the upper crust of society with the means to afford them. However, back in the Civil War era and beyond, the outer clothing most worn by most classes of women was the humble wrapper.

I once owned a mid-calf zip-up-the-front affair similar in design that I called a bathrobe.

Wrappers varied from fashionable loungewear to humble working garb, depending on the circumstances of the wearer. Wrappers were a one piece dress worn in the privacy of the home.
If they had the means, when they went out women of the Civil War era and beyond wore their styled dresses with the form-fitting seams, boning in the Civil War era and tightly-laced corset in later decades. (Forget everything you thought you learned about Civil War clothing by watching Gone With the Wind. Women during the Civil War did not wear tight corsets, bright colors with flashy designs or lots of fancy expensive jewelry.) However, even without tight corsets, there were times women wanted to be comfortable—hence, the wrapper.

1863 Feb- Aquia Creek Landing-Captain W.S. Hall's wagon camp

Fashionable wrappers were built along the same form as a fashionable dress and trimmed accordingly except that the skirt was often gored or cut "princess style" to be smooth at the waist. These fashion items were loose fitting, but required as much effort and trimming as a fashion dress. Those worn by women of greater means were made of better fabric such as silk, wool or a better grade of cotton. “Best dresses” were often made of silk in darker colors, stripes or plaids. Only the more well-to-do could afford stripes or larger plaids since it took extra fabric in order to line of the designs.

The wrapper was the preferred work garment for both household chores and working outside. It was also the maternity and nursing garment of choice. The looseness of fit allowed a woman to go without a dress with boning, snug fit or a corset, if she wore one. It was also comfortable to wear during pregnancy--a frequent condition in the age before birth control. Lower income elderly women and invalids also adopted this style for its ease of fit.

Most of what we consider pioneer dresses, dresses worn by slaves, poor farm women or working women were wrappers. Unlike Civil War era ball gowns with their bare shoulders or dresses with their full skirts constructed separately from the top containing jewel collars, boning and pleated fronts, wrapper were loose. They often had a plain neckline without an attached or self-fabric collar. They could be open and the front and held together with a belt and/or buttons.

Some wrappers had yokes with gathered fabric attached for the body of the dress that fell loose to the floor, cinched at the waist with either a fabric belt or apron—either of which could be adjusted to an expanding waistline. The shoulders were wide set and sleeves were gathered into a cuff.  In this way the sleeves could be easily rolled up when toiling at chores. Fabric available to poorer women were coarser and included the following:

osnaburg - a coarse, inexpensive linen

fustian - a cotton and linen blend

linsey-woolsey - a coarse cotton, linen, and wool blend

calico - a cheap cotton fabric printed with a design featuring tiny flowers

In the South, as the war progressed and fabric from the Northern mills and England became more scarce, women of means and poor women alike resorted to relearning the skill of spinning and weaving homespun fabric for clothing.

This McCall’s pattern # 9423 with accompanying aprons (both aprons are cute, but not necessarily era-correct) is billed as a “Pioneer Dress.” The dress itself is actually a wrapper. The wide yoke, which in the Civil War era often did not have a collar, particularly not a self-fabric collar, holds together the full sleeves gathered at the wrist and the yoke to floor body of the dress. Back in the day, the body of the dress would have been fuller. 

Those deep pleats you see coming off the yoke? In some wrappers on each side they concealed a split in the seam that could be expanded so mama could throw a blanket over her shoulder and discretely breast-feed her baby. The edges did not necessarily need to be hemmed. The seamstress could have used the selvege, since fabric in Civil War times came in bolts only twenty to thirty inches wide as compared to bolts forty-two to sixty inches wide today. It took a lot of “lengths” of fabric to make a dress, even a wrapper.

McCall's pattern #3669, left is a wrapper. 

We often think of late 1800’s-era clothing as being made of Calico with small prints in a variety of colors. Calico was used for slave clothing and by the more humble women in society. A woman seen wearing a dress made of calico was automatically viewed as being poor.

On the cover of my novel, Kizzie’s Kisses, she is wearing a ball gown loaned to her by the wife of an Army captain at Fort Riley. However, Kizzie is a farm girl, a tomboy who loves her horse, Sugarcone, and enjoys helping her father and brother work with their livestock. For that kind of work, she prefers to wear an old pair of trousers that formerly belonged to her brother. She probably has a nice dress typical of the Civil War era to wear to church and for special occasions. However, when her mother manages to get her in a dress for everyday living and doing chores around the house, Kizzie is probably wearing a wrapper with an apron over it.

Kizzie’s Kisses is Book 2, the first full-size book in the Grandma’s Wedding Quilts series. You may read the full book decription as well as purchase Kizzie’s Kisses by CLICKING HERE.

Sources:

http://web.archive.org/web/20110527121537/http:/www.shasta.com/suesgoodco/newcivilians/

https://bellatory.com/fashion-industry/WomensClothingoftheSouthintheAmericanCivilWar

Victorian America and Easter Eggs

by Kristin Holt

Victorians celebrated holidays in familiar, and not-so-familiar, ways as we do today. I wrote a lengthy and encompassing blog about Victorians Celebrating Easter last year.

Since then, I've come across more about the symbolism of Easter Eggs, how they were used as gifts, instructions to paint a delicate broken egg as a flower vase for an Easter gift....

An Easter gift of a broken egg shell? Really?

The Oshkosh Northwestern of Oshkosh, Wisconsin on March 28, 1896.

Interesting, isn't it? Here's another that caught me off guard. Did you know our Victorian American ancestors had Egg Roasts (some kind of supper party) for Easter?

The Columbus Weekly Advocate of Columbus, Kansas on April 18, 1901.

Were Easter Eggs judged? I don't know.

Black Hills Weekly Pioneer of Deadwood, South Dakota, April 3, 1880.

A newspaper article from 1890 shares more Victorian and pre-Victorian Era Easter Egg traditions. Articles such as this, explaining the history of holidays, events, occasions, and observances were common in Victorian newspapers.

Kansas Farmer of Topeka, Kansas, June 11, 1890. Part 1.

Kansas Farmer of Topeka, Kansas, June 11, 1890. Part 2.

Kansas Farmer of Topeka, Kansas, June 11, 1890. Part 3.

Kansas Farmer of Topeka, Kansas, June 11, 1890. Part 4.

And there you have it! Victorian Easter Eggs--as calling cards (actually, a gift for Easter), a party meal, and the history of the Easter Egg as presented to Victorian Americans.

What do you think about today's Easter Egg traditions?

Hi! I'm Kristin Holt, USA Today Bestselling Author.

I write frequent articles (or view recent posts easily on my Home Page, scroll down) about the nineteenth century American West–every subject of possible interest to readers, amateur historians, authors…as all of these tidbits surfaced while researching for my books. I also blog monthly at Sweet Romance Reads, Sweet Americana Sweethearts, and Romancing the Genres.

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