The Clifton Park-Halfmoon Library and the Halfmoon Historical Society are partnering on just such a glimpse. The historical society has taken a recent donation of 20 pieces of woman’s fashion dating from 1869 to 1973 and put them on exhibit in the library, 475 Moe Road, Clifton Park.
The dresses, hats and negligées stand in a row on the library’s second floor hallway as a testament to a world many have only read about. For anyone who loves history it is a unique sensation to stand in front of a dress made four years after the end of the Civil War or ogle a dress from the flapper era and consider the parties it attended.
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At the library’s Friday Free For All last month, Halfmoon Town Clerk and Historical Society member Lynda Bryan gave a brief presentation on the dresses and the family that owned them. She was joined by Halfmoon Town Historian and agile seamstress Ellen Kennedy. It was Kennedy who did much of the prep work so the garments could be properly displayed.
“These women had small waists,” Kennedy said. “Today, a small is a 24-inch waist. These women were 22 inches in the waist. The dresses are really too small for today’s mannequins.”
Nevertheless, many of the dresses are exhibited on mannequins giving viewers an idea of how they looked on their owners. Kennedy said she and other volunteers pinned them to the mannequins to hold them in place.
The garments and accessories were donated to the historical Society by Virginia “Ginny” Fullem-Golden. The items were handed down through her family. As Fullem-Golden began downsizing she was at a loss as to what to do with them. There was no desire by anyone in her family to keep them.
A friendship with historical society president Jim Bold and his wife Shirley led to Fullem-Golden showing one of the dresses to Bold. She lent him three dresses to show Kennedy. The result was the donation of the 20 dresses, several pairs of shoes, a parasol, and a negligée or two.
“They were pretty much bunched up when I first saw them,” Bold said. “I gave them to Ellen (Kennedy) and they wowed her. I still didn’t fully understand what the deal was. When I came back to the (Historical Society) building Ellen had smoothed the wrinkles out and put them on mannequins. Then I got it. It was something to see.”
In her presentation, Bryan went through Fullem-Golden’s family history starting with the marriage of David Ackerman and Lysabeth Belier in 1641. The dresses on exhibit are from the seventh, eighth, ninth and tenth generations. Fullem-Golden is the tenth generation and she has a wedding dress in the exhibit.
“These dresses were well loved,” Bryan said. “You can tell because they are well worn.”
Clubwear Sexy Lingerie Wholesale Leggings In fact, Fullem-Golden used to wear her grandmother’s 1908 emerald green “Appearance” dress as a Halloween costume when she went trick or treating.
As she talked about the people who wore the dresses, Bryan gave insights into what the protocols were in earlier times. An 1897 “Announcement” dress was worn by Fullem-Golden’s grandmother when the marriage was announced. The “Appearance” dress, which is also in the exhibit, was worn when the couple made their first public appearance, in church, after their honeymoon.
“It was a much more formal time,” Bryan said.
However, there was still a place for joviality. A newspaper clipping about the marriage described a night of intoxication after the ceremony by a number of male revelers as they caroused in a locked boxcar on a railroad siding.
Most of the dresses are made of silk. The stitch work in them amazed Kennedy.
“You cannot see one hem on any of these dresses,” she said. “They had a special technique to hide the stitching. They achieved the look on the outside by what they did on the inside.”
Kennedy said in preparing the dresses she realized that for some of them, a woman would be unable to get into the dress without help.
The exhibit starts with the 1869 dress from Fullem-Golden’s great-grandmother Annetta Van Emburgh. The color of the dress, which is a dark gray, is called ashes of roses. At the other end of the exhibit is the dress Fullem-Golden wore for her marriage to Jim Golden in 1973. The Mary Quant-style dress has a white background with loud, colorful geometric graphics of flowers at knee level, a reminder of the swinging 60s.
Fullem-Golden is happy the dresses have finally found a loving home.
“I’m glad to get them out of the boxes and let people see them,” she said. “It’s amazing they’re here. My mother just wasn’t into keeping things. She got rid of just about everything. She wore the 1860s dress when she gave tours of the old church back in New Jersey. There were more (dresses) but they got destroyed along the way.”
The exhibit will continue in the library through October and then will be moved to Halfmoon Town Hall.
