Several buttons lie on a piece of blue fabric, accompanied by a thimble, pincushion, an awl, small pair of scissors, a thread holder, and pair of spectacles. These are some of the tools and materials that Mary Smith, Sarah Melton, and Elizabeth Carr would have used to put the finishing touches on the mantuas they made. The small awl was used to punch out the holes for buttons.
In Episode 1 of The Alley Cast, Isabel Steven tells the story of three women who lived on Elfreth's Alley in the eighteenth century who worked as dressmakers. Steven explores us how these women made their living sewing clothes and invites us to imagine what their working and personal relationships might have been like.
FULL TRANSCRIPT FOLLOWS SOURCES
A walnut table holds sewing implements, folded bundles of fabric, and a dress in the process of being completed. The iron, which sits on a stand so it doesn't burn the wood of the table, was heavy and would have had to be constantly heated in the fireplace before being carefully lifted out to smooth out creases, folds and wrinkles in the cloth.
A floral-patterned mantua stands on a dress form in the front parlor of No. 24, which served as the shop room for Mary Smith, Sarah Melton, and Elizabeth Carr's mantua making business. Mantua made by historic costumer Meredith LaBoon. The buckles on the shoes are on loan from Maxine Dalsemer.
Credits
Primary Sources
Constable Returns, 1775, Philadelphia City Archives, Philadelphia, PA.
Elizabeth Drinker Diary in Elaine Crane, ed., The Diary of Elizabeth Drinker, (Boston: Northeastern University Press 1991), 1475.
Census of the United States, Pennsylvania, 1790, 1800, 1810.
Mary Smith and Sarah Melton Deed, Deed Book I, 1, 429, Philadelphia City Archives, Philadelphia, PA.
Mary Smith Will, 1766, 286, (Book N, 525), Philadelphia Register of Wills, Philadelphia City Archives, City Hall Annex, Philadelphia, PA.
"Pennsylvania Marriages, 1709-1940." Database. FamilySearch.
Philadelphia Contributionship, “Philadelphia Contributionship Survey #736: A House and Kitchen Belonging to Mary Smith,” 1762, Elfreth’s Alley Association Records Collection, Philadelphia, PA.
Sarah Melton Will, 1974, 104, (Book X, 152), Philadelphia Register of Wills, Philadelphia City Archives, City Hall Annex, Philadelphia, PA.
The Philadelphia Directory, 1785, 1791, 1793-1795, 1797-1810, 1813-1814, Philadelphia City Archives, Philadelphia, PA.
Secondary Sources
Bronski, Michael. A Queer History of the United States. Boston: Beacon Press, 2015.
Butler, Judith. Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity (New York: Routledge, 1990).
Chambers-Schiller, Lee Virginia. Liberty A Better Husband: Single Women in America: The Generations of 1780-1840. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1984.
Cleves, Rachel Hope, Charity and Sylvia: A Same-Sex Marriage in Early America. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013.
Crane, Elaine F. “The World of Elizabeth Drinker.” The Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography 107, no. 1 (1983): 3–28. https://www.jstor.org/stable/20091737.
Duberman, Martin, Martha Vicinus, and George Chauncey, eds. Hidden From History: Reclaiming the Gay and Lesbian Past. New York: New American Library, 1989.
Duggan, Lisa. “Making it Perfectly Queer,” Socialist Review no. 1 (1992): 11-31.
Faderman, Lillian. Surpassing the Love of Men: Romantic Friendship and Love Between Women From the Renaissance to the Present. New York: William Morrows Press, 1981.
Foster, Thomas, ed. Long Before Stonewall: Histories of Same-Sex Sexuality in Early America. New York: New York University Press, 2007.
Godbeer, Richard. Sexual Revolution in Early America. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2002.
Hartman, Joan, and Adele Seeff, eds. Structures and Subjectivities : Attending to Early Modern Women. Newark: University of Delaware Press, 2007.
Kann, Mark. Taming Passion for the Public Good: Policing Sex in the Early Republic. New York: New York University, 2013.
Katz, Jonathan Ned. The Invention of Heterosexuality. New York: Dutton, 1995.
Klepp, Susan. Philadelphia in Transition: A Demographic History of the City and Its Occupational Groups, 1720-1830. A Garland Series. New York: Garland Publishing, Inc., 1989.
Lyons, Clare. Sex Among the Rabble: An Intimate History of Gender and Power in the Age of Revolution, Philadelphia, 1730-1830. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2006.
Rubin, Gayle. “Thinking Sex: Notes for a Radical Theory of the Politics of Sexuality,” in Carole Vance, ed., Pleasure and Danger: Exploring Female Sexuality (Boston, 1984), 267–319.
Sedgwick, Eve Kosofsky. Epistemology of the Closet (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1990).
Shammas, Carole. “The Female Social Structure of Philadelphia in 1775.” The Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography 107, no. 1 (1983): 69–83. https://www.jstor.org/stable/20091740.
Smith, Billy. The “Lower Sort”: Philadelphia’s Laboring People, 1750-1800. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1990.
Smith, Merril. Breaking the Bonds: Marital Discord in Pennsylvania: 1730-1830. New York: New York University Press, 1991.
Smith-Rosenberg, Carroll. “The Female World of Love and Ritual: Relations between Women in Nineteenth-Century America.” Signs 1, no. 1 (1975): 1–29. https://www.jstor.org/stable/3172964.
Stabile, Susan. Memory’s Daughters: The Material Culture of Remembrance in Eighteenth-Century America. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2004.
Vicinus, Martha. Intimate Friends: Women Who Loved Women, 1778-1928. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2004.
Wrathall, John D. “Provenance as Text: Reading the Silences around Sexuality in Manuscript Collections.” The Journal of American History 79, no. 1 (1992): 165–78. https://doi.org/10.2307/2078472.
Wulf, Karin. Not All Wives: Women of Colonial Philadelphia. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2000.
TRANSCRIPT
Isabel Steven:
The year is 1762. You are walking down a narrow, cobblestoned street lined with small two-story houses. As you step off the street and into the front parlor of No. 24, Elfreth’s Alley, home to two mantua makers, you see a small, but well-appointed room. It is furnished with large oval walnut tables, a tea table, tea stand and rush bottom chairs. This parlor serves as the shoproom for the dressmakers. Here, the two women, Mary Smith and Sarah Melton, greet their clients, measure and fit them, and conduct business. Curtains hang in the windows and a large mirror and small framed painting adorn the walls. A china tea set with silver spoons and tongs is carefully tucked away waiting to be used for company like yourself. One doorway leads to the kitchen filled with simple but serviceable materials: a dough trough sits upon one of the two work tables; brass and tin pots, pans, and kettles, gridirons, and fireplace tools are clustered around the hearth; pewter and earthenware dishes are stowed on shelves; tubs and buckets for laundry, an ironing board, and irons are clustered in a corner and along the wall; necessary implements for Sarah and Mary’s sewing work. Another door opens to the back, where they may have had a small herb or vegetable garden. As you head up the narrow winding staircase from the corner of the parlor, you step into the larger of the two upper floor rooms. This was the bedroom Mary and Sarah shared: you see two beds with feather mattresses, a washstand and walnut chamber table, and dressers for clothing. In the smaller of the two rooms, you see a workshop filled with cloths of linen, calico, wool, silk, camblet, satin and taffeta in colors of greens and browns, blues and purples, all in various stages of being crafted into gowns -- otherwise known as mantuas in the eighteenth century. Furs, ribbons, fringe, and lace can be spotted here and there, in baskets or pinned onto necklines and sleeves, ready to be more permanently attached. Two women sit close to the windows to use the natural light streaming in in order to see their work, sewing quickly but with an eased skill that comes from many years of practice. The house is small, but comfortable, and these dressmakers work tirelessly to keep it so.
Ted Maust:
Welcome to The Alley Cast, a new podcast from the Elfreth’s Alley Museum in Philadelphia. We tell the stories of people who lived or worked on this street which has been home to everyday Philadelphians for three centuries. And while we start in this neighborhood, we will explore connections that will take us across the city and around the globe.
Think about the last article of clothing you purchased? How expensive was it to buy? What is it made of? Who made it and where?
Today on the AlleyCast, Isabel Steven will be telling the story of three women who lived on Elfreth's Alley in the eighteenth century who worked as dressmakers. She'll tell us how these women made their living sewing clothes and invite us to imagine what their working and personal relationships might have been like.
Episode 1: The Dressmakers
Isabel Steven:
When you imagine Philadelphia in the 1700s, what do you think about? The Founding Fathers and their fight for freedom from the British Empire, and the Declaration of Independence signed in Constitution Hall? Perhaps you think about Abigail Adams writing to her husband John, urging him to: “Remember the Ladies, and be more generous and favourable to them than your ancestors. Do not put such unlimited power into the hands of the Husbands. Remember all Men would be tyrants if they could.” Maybe you think of something else entirely, but ask yourself, whatever you think of, where do men fit into your image of eighteenth-century Philadelphia, and where do women fit? How do you expect women to live, to work, and to love?
For over fifty years No. 24 Elfreth’s Alley - now numbered as 126 - was home to two female couples who worked as mantua makers. Though single working women like these ones, were not entirely unknown, Mary Smith, Sarah Melton, and Elizabeth Carr were somewhat remarkable for how long they were able to live independently as single women, for their choices to remain single, and to protect their lifestyle for their companion. In July of 1762 Mary Smith and Sarah Melton purchased the two-story house, kitchen, and lot of property for 280£ from Jeremiah Elfreth. The two dressmakers quickly set up home and shop, using their front parlor for receiving and fitting clientele, using the smaller second floor chamber as their workshop. The two lived together for four years until Mary’s death in 1766. She left the home to Sarah who continued the business for another 28 years, joined by a new companion toward the end of her life. By 1790 Elizabeth Carr, self-divorced from her husband, came to live with Sarah and join the mantua making business. Perhaps inspired by her former partner, when Sarah made her will, she also left the house and business to the woman who survived her. Although unable to legally inherit No. 24, Elizabeth lived out the remainder of her life there, until her death in 1814.
Elfreth’s Alley was situated in the less affluent Mulberry Ward where many other lower middle class merchants and artisans lived, including a number of other mantua makers. On the Alley alone, seven other dressmakers or seamstresses lived in the same fifty years that Sarah, Mary and Elizabeth did. In fact, part of the reason the Ward was less wealthy compared to ones like Chestnut Ward to the south was because of the higher numbers of female-headed households.. Female-headed households were not uncommon, despite a patriarchal society that upheld male authority at every level of social organization, and naturalized it through marriage and the household structure. 20-30% of households were headed by women at any one point in time in the eighteenth-century. Nearly two-thirds of those households were widows, raising families after their husbands had died, or living with adult children. Within that remaining third were single women, either living by themselves, with family, or with other single women. Although possible, for single women like Mary, Sarah, and Elizabeth, cohabitating was not only difficult within an economic context, but nonnormative within a social one.
Unless she came from wealth, living on one’s own as a woman was marked by economic insecurity. Occupational choices were limited, and wages were low - women made half that of men for the same job. Women worked as tavern and shopkeepers, hucking wares on the street, making garments like gowns, gloves, hats, and stays, as laundresses and performing domestic labor. Most women took any position wherever they could, moving from job to job, chasing an ever elusive economic stability. However, of these jobs, mantua making was one of the most secure. In fact, the relative security of mantua making accounts for why most of the longest-lasting female households in Philadelphia were engaged in this occupation. It paid more than most other occupations, and could be relied on to produce a relatively steady stream of customers, particularly from upper class women, who could afford to purchase more than one or two gowns. Women of any class often sewed their own clothing, mostly underclothes like chemises and petticoats, the mantua was an opportunity for a woman to show off her class, wealth, and sophistication. As the outer gown, the mantua was an elaborately constructed garment made of costly fabric dyed in rich colors, and heavily adorned. As such it required a highly skilled craftswoman to be created.
Mantua makers differed from seamstresses who completed less intricate work -- the name comes from their work of sewing straight seams with simple stitches. Dressmakers like Sarah, Mary and Elizabeth knew how to drape, fit, cut, and piece fabric to create elegant garments. They used skilled stitch techniques like “Irish stitch,” Queen stitch,” and “ten stitch” to piece the dress together and embroidery, tambour, and quilting to decorate it. They also knew how to work with difficult fabrics like satin, silk and taffeta, and adorn dresses with fur, lace, ribbons and fringe. Of course, Sarah, Mary, and Elizabeth did not work exclusively with upper class clients, but rather with a variety of women. Sarah’s probate inventory taken after her death included a camblet gown and cloak which were each valued at fifteen shillings, whereas two other gowns of unknown material were valued at two pounds, five shillings each, and a high quality “lute-string” (otherwise known as silk) cloak was valued at one pound, fifteen shillings. The differing qualities and prices of fabrics indicated that the women had clients from different social and economic standings.
However, despite the relatively high wages, mantua making was not a profitable venture. Mary, Sarah, and Elizabeth would have had to maintain a large clientele, serving women both within their shoproom and making house calls to wealthier individuals; and they would have had to work as fast as physically possible without sacrificing the quality of their work to maintain economic stability. Elizabeth Drinker, a socially prominent Quaker and wife to one of the richest merchants in Philadelphia, reflected in her diary on Polly Sharpless, the mantua maker she had employed, who completed in short time a gown, mode cloak, and petticoat: “poor girls, they earn their money.” The fact that Sarah and Mary had purchased their house, however, was a great help because they did not have to pay rent, which was one of the largest household expenses. It is unclear where they obtained the funds to make such a purchase outright, since they wouldn’t have been able to afford it through what their dressmaking paid. It seems most likely that they inherited money from kin, or if they widowed, from a deceased husband.
Beyond their living and working relationship, it is unclear what the nature of Mary and Sarah’s affectionate relationship was or what their statuses as women were. Mary named Sarah as her sister-in-law in her will; however, Mary called herself a spinster, as did Sarah in her own will in 1794. Public records varyingly list their occupations as widows, spinsters, and mantua makers, which makes it difficult to ascertain what their marriage statuses actually were. Listing female household heads within City Directories and Constable Returns as widows without reference to their occupation was common at the time, despite the fact that the majority of these women would have had to work to sustain themselves. There were times when an occupation was included, or conversely, the marital status was unrecorded, but the predominance of widowhood being listed as the occupational role indicated how a woman's status was conceptualized according to her relationship to a male figure. Given that the majority of female-headed households were led by widows, the men making public records may have been operating under this assumption when they listed Mary and Sarah as widows on these records, even if neither of them actually were ever married.
And if we give greater credence to Sarah and Mary’s wills, documents written or dictated by themselves, then they were both single. If this was the case, having different last names while still being sisters-in-law makes little sense. So why would two single women choose to call themselves sisters-in-law if they weren’t? Perhaps these women, living in a nonnormative household were concerned about public scrutiny and tooks steps to mitigate any potential scandal or charges of cohabitation by describing themselves as relations, rather than as two unrelated single women living together outside of the authority of a male figure. Such charges of cohabitation were not unknown. In 1792 Ann Hannah was brought before the Prisoners for Trial Docket on a charge of cohabitation with Margaret Marshall and released the same day. No other information explained why this particular woman was brought forward on this charge, one which was typically leveled at heterosexual couples living together without marrying. That Margaret is the one who brought forward the charge is equally curious, though no clear answer exists for why. What is clear was that cohabitation by women could be considered punishable by law, and Mary and Sarah may have been aware of this fact. At any rate, even if they were sisters-in-law, being related by marriage does not preclude the possibility of a deep emotional, romantic or even erotic relationship. Even if we may never know the specific nature of their emotional relationship, in a certain sense, the relationship between Sarah and Mary, and later Sarah and Elizabeth can be considered queer, operating as they did outside of the normative structure of patriarchal household and the normative arrangements of heterosexual unions.
Sarah, Mary and Elizabeth lived counter to these prevailing norms of household arrangements in how they ran their home and business, as well. Rather than a traditionally hierarchical arrangement, the unions between these women were egalitarian ones in which both women shared tasks, responsibilities, and possessions. In heterosexual unions, labor tended to be segregated along gender lines, though not completely; men conducted the bulk of occupational labor, business affairs, and the more public-facing duties, whereas women kept house, took care of children, and managed any servants or enslaved staff. The women were not able to afford a maid or other servant staff, which means that they were both cooking, cleaning, doing laundry and caring for their home alongside their dressmaking. The women would have had to work tirelessly to find the time and strength to manage it all, but manage it they did. Sarah and Mary also managed their possessions and property differently than a heterosexual household, in which the husband owned everything under the law of coverture that upheld the legal fiction that husband and wife were one person. At No. 24, however, all possessions were owned in common, although within the legal and civic realm, Mary appeared to be a “de facto” household head. She was named as the owner of the house, although both women contributed funds. Positioning Mary as household head ultimately may have been more of a bookkeeping necessity rather than a method of structuring the household day-to-day.
Whatever the specific nature of their relationship and their household operation, it was deep enough that when Mary died in 1766, she named Sarah sole executrix and inheritor of the home, business, and property. By bequeathing all property to her, Mary enabled Sarah to continue living at No. 24 until the end of her life in 1794. The transfer of property was one of the most effective strategies for maintaining her economic independence. What’s more, such a practice was disruptive to the normative, heterosexual and patriarchal household that was so foundational for social organization. Household structures were propagated through inheritance practices, which were “intimately bound up in the institution of marriage;” real estate passed to sons, whereas personal property or money was gifted to daughters. Instead, Mary transferred her property, not to a male heir or a family member, but instead to a female companion who then became the legal head of household. For Mary to leave the house to her female companion became a way to preserve their queer relationship and household even after her death; and Sarah perpetuated this practice of queer preservation in her own will twenty-eight years later.
Through this bequeathal, Sarah was able to maintain her independence. Owning her home meant that although she had to pay taxes, she did not have to worry about paying rent, unlike many of her fellow single women and mantua makers in the neighborhood. This was particularly helpful since Sarah could only do half the work that she and Mary would have accomplished together. To supplement her smaller income, she often took on a boarder who lived on the backlot of the property. However, by 1790 another woman had come to live and work at No. 24 permanently. Elizabeth Swobes Carr (b. 1744) was married to Alexander Carr in 1778, but by the time of the first Federal Census in 1790, had separated from him. He was living alone in Chester County, whereas Elizabeth had moved in with Sarah.
Whatever the initial reason for separation, Elizabeth came and stayed at No. 24. And perhaps Sarah and Elizabeth had a similar relationship to the one Sarah shared with Mary, potentially romantic or erotic, but certainly affectionate. And like Sarah and Mary, the two women had the opportunity to pursue such a relationship, living as they did in their own home, and away from the authority of a male figure. The similarity of these two relationships is revealed in Sarah’s choice within her will. As Mary had done, so too did Sarah decide to leave her home, business, and property to her “friend Elizabeth Carr” upon her death. Sarah took particular care to exclude Elizabeth’s husband in the will, ensuring that he would get no part, either assets or debts, of what Elizabeth inherited: “So nevertheless that her present husband Alexander Carr shall not have any right or Interest whatever therein neither shall the Same be liable for his Debts…” Ultimately however, Elizabeth could not fully separate herself from her marriage to Alexander. Although Sarah had been able to legally inherit the house because she was single, Elizabeth was married and therefore could not. Even if she was separated from her husband, she still retained her feme covert status, part of the law of coverture. In other words, only her husband could own or inherit property legally. Instead, Sarah designated that Elizabeth could “have the uses Income and possession of all my Dwelling house and Lot of Ground … for and During all the Term of her natural Life.” Upon Elizabeth’s death, the house would revert to Sarah's friends Justinian, Robert and Martha Fox, who were named as executors.
Elizabeth continued to live out the remainder of her years at No. 24, also taking on boarders at times, like bricklayer Benjamin Lodor, who boarded there off and on during the last decade of the century. Elizabeth died in 1814 at the age of 70, ending half a century of female-coupled independence. The house went to the Foxes who then sold it. For Sarah, Mary, and Elizabeth, the key components to this economic independence were secure work, cohabitation with a female companion, the initial ability to purchase a home, and the bequeathal of that property. By leaving Sarah everything, Mary acknowledged the importance of their relationship, and her desire to provide for her companion Sarah after her death. Such a choice became a model for Sarah to follow, one which provided for a close female companion, and preserved female-coupled, queer households.
Ted Maust:
History is a group effort!
Today’s episode was researched, written, and narrated by Isabel Steven, but utilized many other people’s work: you can check out the episode page at elfrethsalley.org/podcast for a complete list of sources.
Our theme music is the song “Open Flames” by Blue Dot Sessions from the album Aeronaut, used under Creative Commons license.
Thank you for listening! If you enjoyed this episode, please rate and review us on Apple Podcasts! Be sure to join us next week for Episode 2: Spinsters, Runaway Wives, and Widows.
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Thank you and take care!