Monthly Feature
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The Clothing Room |
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The Clothing Room |
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In 1840, 12-year-old Sarah Hurdie took a length of homespun material and made a pair of pants for her brother. Over the next few years, those pants likely received a lot of wear, but they were still in good enough shape by the late 1840's that they were worn across the plains with the Mormon Pioneers. Once they arrived in Salt Lake City, practically every man's pants in the territory were cut from that same pattern. Mary Johnson said, "There's something about clothes that make the people who wore them seem more real. You see how many of them were handmade and know that they were probably made by firelight or candlelight".
According to Collette Liddell, public relations chairwoman of the DUP, conclusions about the sizes of typical pioneers can be made from the clothing in the museum's collection. Today's average woman measures about 5'5" to 5'7" in height, whereas young pioneer women stood 5'2" to 5'4". Liddell said most of the young women's dresses at the museum have waistbands of approximately 18 inches. Pioneer men stood 5'5" to 5'7" as compared to today's average male of 5'10". Most of Utah's settlers tended to be more slender than their ancestors due to hard work and poorer nutrition. Liddell also said the Mormon Battalion uniforms at the DUP Museum are rather small in size, and she credits that to the young age of average recruits who served in the unit. | 
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The Museum wanted to expand its permanent gallery of pioneer clothes. There are three walk-in closets filled to the ceiling with boxes of clothes, and many of them have never been displayed before now. The biggest problem they had, however, was finding mannequins that were small enough to display the clothes. "The pioneers may seem like they were bigger than life - and on the inside, they were, but on the outside, most of them were very small, " said Mary Johnson, President of the DUP. Commercial mannequins were too big and had to be taken apart and resized, but that wouldn't do - they simply needed new mannequins, but new ones were very expensive. Prices for new mannequins started at $1000.00 each, and the museum needed 30, so in true pioneer style, Edith Menna decided to put together a group of volunteers to make mannequins on their own. After a lot of trial and error, they discovered that the best material for the mannequins was called Ethafoam which is acid-free and wouldn't damage the clothes. The women used hot plates to heat molds made from cans that were the size of fingers and necks, and they figured out a way to rig the mannequins with cords to make the limbs bend and stay in place. The foam is white, so they had to cover the faces and hands with flesh-colored pantyhose - a special kind that could be cut and sewn without running. They experimented with faces, but eventually decided not to worry about that, and only Mountain Man has a face. In the end, the cost of each mannequin came to $62 - and $30 of it is the stand that supports them. Arranged in vignettes showcasing mountain men, a wedding, midwifery, crossing the plains, and a millinery shop, the mannequins allow people to see how the pioneers dressed. There is also a display of the elaborate undergarments women wore as well as a children's display. A rare maternity dress can be found as well - and this is a rare find because, as Edith Menna explains, "Mostly, the women just stayed inside and adjusted their clothes. There weren't many maternity dresses - we only have three in our collection." There are other collections to see besides the clothes including forceps used in childbirth, a glass baby bottle, and a tiny coffin filled with dressed dolls. We hope that the gallery with its collections will help visitors understand pioneer life, so come visit us and see! |