What HBO's Gilded Age leaves out: Using fashion history to uncover my family history
Vložit
- čas přidán 6. 09. 2024
- The Gilded Age shows us the historical fashions and lifestyles of wealthy Victorians, silk ballgowns and all. What about the stories that go untold-- like my family's Jewish immigrant history? Thank you to Wondrium for sponsoring today’s video! Signup for your FREE trial to Wondrium here: ow.ly/KjHy50O5oal
Fashion history and historical costuming should be more than just pretty historical dresses : it's the ordinary Victorian work dresses, and the lives of the people that wore them. The Clothes on their Backs is a video series exploring the intersection of historical fashion, Jewish history, and genealogy in the context of New York City's Lower East Side. Dress historian Vi takes us on a journey through a century and a half of immigrant history to uncover the stories of her own Jewish ancestors, exploring the historical sources that hold clues about her family history. Through fashion history and costuming, Vi explores a story not frequently portrayed in popular period dramas.
Join fashion historian Vi as she delves into her family's untold stories through historical costume dress reconstruction across generations. We'll explore the intersection of family history, genealogy research, and dress history analysis, all set against the backdrop of New York City's rich history, particularly the Garment District. Vi shares her personal journey of discovering her family's past and how fashion and historical dressmaking played a crucial role in their lives. Join us, and look into your own family history and the stories behind the clothes on their backs. Come along on this journey of discovery and learn about the intricate relationship between fashion and family history.
One thing that struck me about my ancestors is that my great grandmother left home in Ireland around 16, and she never saw her sister, around five years younger, again. My father visited Ireland around seventy years later and the sister greeted him saying "Welcome home"
My great grandparents left Ireland (separately) between 16 & 19. Both lived into their 90s but never went home again. Both came from large families where some emigrated to the US and some remained in Ireland. My great grandmother also had 2 sisters who went to Australia. When my grandfather visited Ireland in the 1970s, every household they visited had his 1st Communion photo (c1929). They joked that the families just kept passing it to the next house, but it was clearly something that had been sent across the Atlantic and saved for 50 years.
@@lauracarrolldebolt9233 so sweet! I've seen the same in all families with emigrant members. When you ask an elder who is that one kid in first communion attire they say: oh, that's the son of my 2nd cousin who went to America 60 years ago! They keep the memory forever. Some still pray for all people in the old photos. It's like a field of love energy.
I like to think that it reaches the ones who went away with good luck 🥰
Hearing your monologue about who gets to tell what parts of American history brought back memories of 12th grade American history class. I'm Black Indian and a history nerd. The class was run by a very white student teacher, supervised by an equally white teacher, with a white centric textbook quick to badmouth Indigenous people. When it came time to submit thesis proposals, my suggested topic was about how awesome my tribe was at beating back white colonizers.
Student teacher pulled me aside after class with "how to I say this without sounding racist" written all over him. He told me my thesis was too opinionated, and I shouldn't be thinking in black and white. He was bigoted in other ways too, this was just tbe most obvious.
Did you write it anyway? I really hope so.
@@redaleta I did, though by that time I was transferred into a different class with a more reasonable teacher
@saraquill I have experienced this too. Teachers who decide your history doesn't fit the narrative they are teaching. In my case, Puerto Rico not being a country was why I was not allowed to write about it, according to my middle school Spanish teacher. She assigned me Spain to write about instead. Then when told to interview someone who lived through the Great Depression, my interviewing my grandma was vetoed because Puerto Rico not being a state was a problem for my ninth-grade English teacher. Apparently, my teacher only wanted us to learn about "American" experiences of the Depression.
I had a couple much milder incidents a little like this back in elementary school. I'm mostly white, but my great-great-grandmother was Native American, though unfortunately we're not sure what tribe she was from - she successfully passed herself off as white and encouraged her descendents to do the same, for safety reasons (Texas and Louisiana in the 1800s weren't exactly known for their great racial acceptance) so we lost a lot of details in the process. We know she was from one the Eastern tribes that got sent to reservations in Oklahoma around the same time that The Trail of Tears happened, and that she and her family apparently got off the boat they were put while it was passing through Louisiana, and that's pretty much it unfortunately.
Anyway, when I was in second grade we had an assignment where we were supposed to write a story from the perspective of a slave, and since the textbook specifically mentioned that some Native Americans were used as slave labor too, I wanted to make mine about an enslaved Native and even explained to the teacher that I wanted to because I'm part Native, but was still told I couldn't. In what I thought was a reasonable compromise, I gave the point of view character a best friend who was Native instead, and still got in trouble for 'not following directions'. The other was when we were all assigned "Indian names" in 4th grade and I foolishly got my hopes up that it was going to be actual Native American names, but no it was just stuff like "Running Deer" or "Shy Fawn" for some reason most of them were deer themed. Then they wouldn't even let me have one that involved lizards (I figured if I was going to be stuck with one, it might as well involve my favorite animal.) The worst part about that one was they clearly thought this was some kind of positive thing...
I am so sorry you had teachers like that, and I'm glad you did that thesis anyway. I've heard so many experiences like this from people. Yet a certain group is claiming that schools are indoctrinating students to be "too liberal" but I don't think this is the place for that rant lol
I was lucky enough to sit down with my grandma and record an oral history as part of a high school project and then again on my own in college. She talked about how her family was poor and used old flour sacks to make clothing. Eventually the flour producer, knowing this, decorated the outside of the bag with fabric type patterns.
That sounds like a great project!
Flour sacks with prints and borders were used in the 1950's for girls dresses and pillowcases.
I'm fascinated by this project! I am a Black American. Some of my ancestors were enslaved, so we have a few names, and no photos for my family members. Nevertheless, it's been interesting to look very generally at clothing they might have worn, by researching where they lived and worked, as well as finding people who do have photos and documents from the same time period, geographic area, and socioeconomic class--especially during the Reconstruction Era.
This is so exciting!
I remember a quote that got into a school assignment on Ellis Island that went something like "i learned three things about America: one, that the streets were not paved with gold; two, that the streets were not paved at all; and three, i was expected to pave them"
I'm always disappointed when the uglier aspects of history are ignored to focus on the privileged class in their own little bubble instead. The fashions, architecture, music, paintings, grand ballrooms, it's all beautiful, but it's not something i'd have as a working class disabled person with no income. Not to mention the whole being eskimo thing.
Sometimes i wonder what life was like for my great-grandmother, married young after living through influenza and raising children on a vulnerable island during WWII. Most of what i know about her is from a short description of her in a collection of folktales she contributed to. She was tiny and at some point in her life she picked up a crochet hobby
What a quote! I'm going to remember that one.
Absolutely brilliant snippet!! 👍 I feel like illuminating & personalising all these less-discussed areas of history (inc. customers history!) is really vital work, so bravo to all of you who do it!!
Our mental image of the past, both as individuals & as societies, ABSOLUTELY has impacts on how we think about the present, & about "the way things have always been" (& therefore whether or not they could/should be challenged and changed!)
A more accurate, more complete look back is always going to be a better one IMO, even if it challenges many of our preconceptions...? 😅
*costume history. Sheesh, autocorrect! 🙄
I really appreciate you talking about the pain/trauma of family estrangement, especially as a Jewish person. It made me feel less alone. I know so little about both sides of my family, and I didn't even realise til I got older and noticed how much other people knew even of just their parents lives before they were born. But by the time I realised something was noticeably wrong, I'd already mostly extricated myself from my family of origin for my own survival. I have one connection left, but our relationship is very fragile and I know full estrangement is in my future. I feel like I should try to get what knowledge I can before that happens but it also feels too painful to ask questions right now.
If digging for the information yourself is too painful, just preserving what you already know so that someone who comes after you (and isn’t carrying your pain) can have something to get them pointed in the right direction is enough.
@@ragnkja thank you so much. Feel a bit teary reading this.
One of my great-grandfathers, Stanley Laska, came from an area that is now in Ukraine, but he was ethnically Polish. He was a violin maker. He lived in NY for a little while, and may have learned his trade there. He settled in Detroit. I found a newspaper article about his violin shop saying he had gentle hands. In his photos he always looks so sad. I know he was the oldest of seven children. He never saw his family again, and died of alcoholism at a young age. My grandmother was sixteen when he died. She was closer to him than he mother, with whom she fought regularly. My grandmother was a nasty piece of work. My parents eventually had to ban her from seeing us grandkids. Now that she's dead I sort of wish I could ask her about her father, but I'm not sure I could have trusted her word.
Thank you for this.
My father's great grandfather was an illiterate Irish farmer in Canada, who moved in 1890 to MA as a widower with his 7 kids. He apprenticed to a silversmith, became a jeweler and a US citizen, bought a house. Never rich, but learned to read and write. I - an M.A. anthropologist- am proud of him.
The stories of the past are human stories.
🙏💖
I really wish I had a more concise story of my maternal grandmothers family history but unfortunately they’re not around anymore, and the lack of wealth barely left scraps behind that are now all gone. The only person I really have to talk to about it is my uncle, but even he didn’t get much. He and my mom didn’t even know their mom spoke Yiddish until she was on her death bed. Your videos make me want to take the steps to appreciate my family’s heritage even more and truly understand the culture and the emigration that landed them in Canada.
It's interesting too that family culture around telling stories/not passing stories down can have an impact in this space too, even independently of all the factors around wealth, ethnicity, conflict, migration etc?
Of the two sides of my family, one has traced their genealogy back at least several hundred years, while on the other side I barely know the life stories of my grandparents...
I think V's journey is a great inspiration for all of us to find out more! This is why we are here today, after all, the personal journeys of all these people of the past...?
As Roma, getting into historical fashion made me wonder what my people used to wear, and how that fashion changed as we moved. Unfortuntely, there's so little documentation about our history as a whole (we're an extremely oral people) that find information about our historical dress is hard.
So excited to see this project! Genealogy is my other big hobby after costuming.
Both of my maternal grandparents immigrated after WWII, but I only recently found out that my grandmother's family had been in the US since the early 1600s. We had no idea!
My great-grandmother graduated from law school and lived through the 1906 earthquake in San Francisco before she married (likely losing her US citizenship) and moved to Australia (grandma moved back to the US). The family resemblance is strong and one of my future projects is to recreate an early 1900s portrait of her. I set it aside during Covid, but I should start working on it.
Super excited to see this! I would have loved to do some sort of portrait recreation if I had one to work from.
I have no surviving grandparents to ask. While they were alive, they refused to speak of their past due to trauma from WWII and the holocaust. Speaking about my maternal grandparents, no photos of my great grandparents survived, none of my great aunts (there were three on one side and two on the other, an army of girls just like my daughter's generation of our family). All I have is their names. My grandparents both had to flee their home, and both never got to take anything with them. This, too, is part of our story. It's sad and uncomfortable but it's the truth. Light a candle for the Gerbers and the Reichenbergs.
Have you tried finding them over the International Center on Nazi Persecution (Arolsen Archives)? Or maybe somebody wrote their story down for the Stumbling Stone Foundation.
If you can tell me which city they came from, I might be able to look something up for the latter.
For the former, you can look it up yourself, because there is an English version of the Arolsen Archives. I entered the names you mentioned and it spat out over a hundred entries for each of them. If you know birth dates, you might be able to narrow it down.
Sadly, the Archives only tell about the darkest parts of their stories. The Stumbling Stone stories are usually more holistic, but they only exist for relatively few people compared to the amount of victims.
@@johannageisel5390 so the thing is that we do have some information about them, we know some of their story, but we don't have any belongings, any photos, any heirlooms etc.. And even the information we do have is very limited, consisting of what my grandparents could each tell us about their families, and what we could dig out of archives like the ones you mentioned. Sadly that is not enough to put together a coherent story. Even my grandparents' own stories have 16 different versions told by them at different points in their lives, with many details omitted or changed due to trauma. So the problem isn't finding out which city, village or province they came from - I have that - it's learning anything at all about their actual lives. It's like my family doesn't have a history before the 1920s when my grandparents were born. It sucks.
@@DestructionGlitter Oh, ok. I understand.
I'm so sorry.
@@johannageisel5390 💜
Our people are often forgotten by everyone else. We don't exist unless it's about horror, or pity, or both. Rather annoying.
I can’t tell which group your referencing specifically, but as a black, queer, women (mostly) YES !! Yea yes!! And so glad ur hear to today!!!
@@lovesplus3879 well Snappydragon is Jewish, so probably them. But, being forgotten could apply to anyone who isn't white, christian(religiously or socially), or straight. It even applies to just lower class people given people's gravitation to the fanciest dresses of an era
@@lovesplus3879 it's likely Jewish people. Check the description section.
When I speak about myself I'm usually talking about Jews, but a lot of the same themes hold true for people of all sorts of marginalized backgrounds. The details may be different, but the underlying issues are often the same or very related.
@@SnappyDragon Thank you for this comment. I actually was surprised to find out that my German & Irish Catholic ancestors would have dealt with discrimination in an area with many largely Protestant business owners. They were perceived as a threat, as the Jewish were too. Outsiders and different beliefs. I know the history of the state of Maryland included discrimination against Catholics as well. Their religion was even outlawed at one point (1692-1776), despite them having founded Maryland as a Catholic colony. But I know also that Catholics have discriminated against others in turn. That said, I am loving this series of videos and finding this video in particular very powerful and moving. I find it very positive and promoting of understanding and insight! Your own sharing of your story and Carolina's is very strong, and wonderful. And yes, you are right, these details do get forgotten and it is sad when they are. I come from a long line of poor people moving to find a better life, sometimes over generations! One branch moved from Genoa to Menorca then to Gibraltar and then Canada to the US, and then the younger US generation stayed but their mother went back to Gibraltar to her widowed sister. I wish I knew more about them, but my great grandfather had a hard life and did not talk about his past, so many of the stories and knowledge died with him. So, your story and this video speak strongly to me on many levels and I thank you for making them, will definitely be following along.
Incredibly, my great grandmother typed up a family history and memoir in the 70s and my dad has it. Getting to read that was really magical. I never got to meet her, but reading that gave me a window into her mind, personality, and life.
Its actually really cool my family managed to find our ancestors until like the 16th century and a good portion of them signed their names in the records and coming from a little village in french country side its so cool to know that they could write.... at least sign lol
How lucky to have such good records!
I liked you chose The Gilded Age specifically for this project because watching Julian Fellowes's works has always been a very guilty pleasure due to my critical view of history that opposes his directly (the man has been quoted saying that depicting the British class system as oppressive to the working class servants was ''babyish'' ffs) but I do enjoy all that soapiness and the pretty dresses. If there's an author who needs this type of reckoning, it's him!
I couldn't have asked for a better contrast if I wanted to! I'm sure his ilk would argue that such shows aren't only about the rich people because their servants get somewhat fleshed-out characters, but if servants are the only non-elite people we see, it's still a very classist lens.
The majority of my ancestors, too, were Jews from Eastern Europe.* Your channel has been, for me, an absolute godsend, because discussion of what Ashkenazi Jews - or indeed, any Jews - wore in times past. I've had so few resources, and it means so much that there are people - you! - making this content. I'm so excited to see what will come in future instalments of this series!! My ancestors came to North America a little bit later, some in the 1910s and some in the 1920s, which disappointed me hugely as a child when I realized they wouldn't have been wearing, like, ~shtetlcore fashion, but instead, "regular" clothing in line with Western fashion. Today I do find more interest in that, though my interests do trend more toward Jewish-specific clothing, in Eastern Europe and MENA/SWANA especially, so I am thirsty for any information on that kind of thing.
*Important to note that they were not "of Eastern European descent" - they were Jews who lived in Eastern Europe. Ashkenazi Jews are made up of a founding community that comprised mostly Jews from the Levant, and some southern Europeans. This is a digression, but it's important because it's an extremely common misconception that Jews are the same, genetically, as others in the places they come from, just with a different religion. This usually isn't the case, with very few exceptions. Sorry to be pedantic about it, but it matters to me.
Thank you so much for this video, I found it really moving. My family story (and my relationship to that family and to Judaism) is very similar to yours, and I'm really excited to see where you take this. Great Great Grandma Tilly came over closer to 1915 as a teenager after surviving a pogrom with her little sister and I think so much about how intense that must have been. I wonder whether she and Carolina ever crossed paths 💖
Are you connected to the Appels who founded the Appel Farm Arts and Music Center? I went to their summer camp and quite enjoyed it.
@@BethDiane Not that I know of but if it turns out to be true that'd be neat! I loved going to camp as a kid, even went to a music camp once
@@BethDiane Appel is a pretty common name :) It comes from the Yiddish epl, meaning apple.
My great-great-grandparents lived in the Brooklyn neighborhood in the same time period that Carolina did and I've often wondered the same things you have. What did they wear? Eat? Do for work? All the things about their lives after immigrating in 1880. I've gotten some answers from official records, but like you, I can't find out from that side of my family about the parts that aren't in official records.
This is amazing! Most people interested in historical clothing only focus on rich people clothes and it's interesting and it's pretty but it leaves out a lot of history of people like us. I don't have access to most of my family's history, because they were poor and documents are lost to time, but I'm glad other people can do it, I love to see it.
This has always fascinated me too! My paternal grandmother was a Jewish girl living in Vienna, her father was Hungarian. Granny fled to Britain ahead of the Nazis. She then married a Scottish ship builder with the surname Campbell. On both sides of this our culture has been changed and wiped out. The Clan system in Scotland was completely destroyed. I have no idea where we would have fitted in historically 🤷🏼♀️
hey thanks for this, as another Jew who also cannot connect though my family due to trauma and danger, it means so much to know I'm not alone in that.
One of the things I remember my great aunt telling me was that during WWII she volunteered to join the WRNS (women's royal navy) because she could see conscription was clearly on its way so atleast she would get to choose. She chose the WRNS because she preferred the the uniform and it luxury of luxuries included silk stockings! 😂
Ah, priorities 🤣
What a great project! I have been researching my own heritage for about 20 years, and just started focusing on the traditional folk dress that my ancestors would have worn back before Italian unification (when everything regional, rural, "folk culture", was denigrated and even outlawed). I am working towards reproducing at least one traditional folk costume from one of the areas that my ancestors lived, so that I can wear it for Italian festivals.
There are so many similar stories in my family! My great-grandparents were born in southern Italy, Sicily, and Jewish Vienna, Austria, and came to the U.S. back when people from those places were not considered white. Southern Italy and Sicily have a long history of rule and occupation by foreigners from North Africa, Spain (at a time period when many people with Arab and African blood were part of the occupying forces), as well as present-day northern Italy (a foreign land until unification in 1860), that the average southern Italian or Sicilian has a good amount of African blood in them; this is at the root of the poverty and social and political powerlessness of the people in their own country, and the reason why so many of them were immigrants to the U.S. despite falling under the strictures of anti-immigrant, anti-Catholic, and anti-Black laws.
My great-grandfathers were farm laborers, miners, orchardists, and house painters; my great-grandmothers were farm laborers, housewives, lace makers and dressmakers who continued to "take in sewing" from their homes after marriage. We don't have many photos of them, or any of their clothes, but they would have been making the fancy gowns for the Gilded Age ladies rather than owning any of them, themselves.
I too don't get to know my paternal side of ancestors due to unsafe reasons. I see traces of them in the cemeteries around where I live. A few were even headstone carvers so I can catch glimpses of signatures on bases of headstones from the 1800s. Looking forward to watching the videos in this series.
I really love the idea of telling all those little almost forgotten stories and I would love to take part. Unfortunately both my grandparents have already passed away.
Especially my grandma almost never told anything from her past. She brushed it off with something like "Who wants to know these old things? They don't matter anymore!". On the other handside every time there was a desaster (think train crash or an attack) and the media mentioned the survivors are treated by psychotherapists she went like "How useless! We made it through WWII and there was no one treating us!". So I suspect there was some trauma settled deep within her.
You've pretty much hit on all the reasons I became a genealogist. History is fascinating, and I like to look at it on a macro scale of a single person (or family) at a time. Shout if you need a hand with anything in this project as it sounds like a really cool idea!
Thank you!
Hi V, this is a fascinating and exciting undertaking. Like you, my family is Ashkenazi Jews who came to New York during the same window of time, many living in the Lower East Side. I've been researching family history and genealogy since high school (20+ years ago) when sitting Shiva for some of my great aunts and uncles. The family tree currently has 600+ people on it. Not only was it a way to keep track of who was related to who and how, but some of the stories were really fascinating. I could go into any amount of details on any number of relatives. Recently, due to my professional life, I've been trying to better understand the relationship between my family members and their service in the US armed forces, particularly in the Second World War.
I can't wait to see the rest of this project, and I look forward to the section of your website going live to share some of my family's stories.
I love the idea of diving into your family's history through your interest in fashion history! Looking forward to watching the whole process.
My family on my dad's side has been traced back to the Mayflower, but I don't really know anything about the people in between 1620 and now. I've often wondered about the ones that weren't as "important" as that one ancestor who ended up in history books. I also know just enough about the Scottish and German ancestors on my mom's side to make me curious (a couple of names, some records of when they immigrated). I've been wanting to poke into the Scottish ancestry especially for a while now, but haven't taken the time yet
I absolutely love this video (and all of your other work). I come from a mash of all sorts of working class immigrants (Irish, French, Polish, Scottish, Belgian, German... I think that's it), from an Irishman fleeing the potato famine whose son fought for the Union in the American Civil War to Polish workers who lived 3 generations in one house (my grandma slept on the living room couch until she was around 13 and finally got her own room). Although several family members have written down the year and location of births, marriages, and deaths going back to the 1800s, other than those escaping the potato famine, I don't know why all of these people came to the U.S. There are some interesting stories, like how my grandfather's grandmother married a man who turned out to be a spy from Belgium posing as a gardener for a wealthy family; he abandoned her, leaving her nothing but my great-grandmother and all of the clothes on their backs -twice.
Few days ago I talked with my husband about how the history doesn't record lives of regular people. He said that it will probably also happen to us, we have too boring lives to be remembered. We didn't invented anything, are not royalty, celebrities or anyone important in this meaning. I don't have many photos of myself or him. Like with my father, he died in 2017 and I think his normal life would be forgotten too if we wouldn't talk about his crazy ideas till this day. I don't remember the life of my great-grandma, she died when I was 2 and no one bothered to talk with me about her, I only know of her illness. The same with my other great-grandma, I've seen her once in my life and I was 14 when she died. She didn't wish to have connection with my family, even with her daughter. I feel like I lost many family stories, but also I am glad that I know other ones. But I also don't know most of my extended family.
I am SO excited for this story to be told Miss V! While my great great grandmothers were already in the United States long before even mid 1850's, they did not live the Gilded Life at all. Life was hard for them, but I don't think they raised their family as if it were! These are tales of love you are discovering and retelling. Love you for this!! ❤
Thank you for doing this, I like hearing how you are leaving about yourself when you have some issues with getting details.
I actually knew my great grandparents, two from my mom's side and two on dad's side. I was too young to ask much about them before they died. I now only have one grandmother left and she really does not want to talk about the past much. I have asked her the name of her home town and she says, "why do you want to know that stuff?"
While none of them gave details about their life before they did share some glimpses into their lives in the past. My dad's mom told me how in the past a woman was a spinster if she was not married by 21. She loved being in America during the 50s because butchers would normally throw out livers or chicken feet so she would get free food from that, she lamented that they got smart and started charging for them.
This is so timely, because I was just having a conversation with someone about the "Angel of the Hearth" concept of the family. They were arguing that the ideal was real and should be emulated as the model for the patriarchal family. I posted pictures of children in factories and pointed them to "How the Other Half Lived." I really with there was more immigrant history on our TVs and history classes. I also recommend the book, "A Different Mirror," which is the history of the US through immigration.
My mom’s family is also Ashkenazi Jewish and lived in the Lower East Side and the Bronx in the 1910s when they first immigrated. My great grandparents were a cobbler on one side and garment workers on the other, which is pretty common for Jewish immigrants of the time. My grandma passed away last year at 101 and I wish I had more info about what her parents and in-laws lives were like.
That is such a beautiful project, I cannot wait to see where it takes you. As an Ashkenazi Jew myself (a French one, with Polish ancestors) I relate completely to just about everything you just described. I'm actually in the process of interviewing my maternal grandmother about her life, as a daughter of murdered parents in Auschwitz and hidden child during the war, but also as so much more than that: travel agent, world explorer, avid reader, conflicted mother and amazing grandmother and great-granmother... because, as you said (or implied) our history is not reduced to our suffering. Also, I love your hanukia in the background, it's lovely.
this sounds like why my mother is into genealogy! my mother was really lucky that she was able to talk with her grandmother and find out a lot of family history that otherwise would've died with her, like how her aunt-in-law shot her arm off by accident. on the other hand, I haven't forgiven MY grandmother for binning my great grandmother's (same person as my mother talked with) diaries from the thirties and forties. thankfully I think I saved most of them, but I think one did get lost in the rubbish :( my grandmother was quite mad that I had this box full of random crap I found interesting from the hoarder room my grandpa had. joke's on her, now I have 1930s transport maps of london AND probably a diary entry where my great-grandparents had premarital sex or at least the after-effects of that
Thank you. I'm of Ashkenazi descent, and 63...first born in NYC. I knew my great grandmother who immigrated in 1895 and lived into the 1980s, from Hungary. My Russian grandfather came in 1905. We were super close
You have inspired me that my next big project needs to be based off what a relative I’m extremely interested in would have worn. My first big costume was as well. And I think I want to go back to my roots of that
And funny enough I’m thinking of doing it for a Jewish relative who arrived in 1895.
But from Austria not Eastern Europe.
One thing I love about my family history is our castle. My family comes from Scotland and we used to own a castle! One day we had to sell it way before I was born but I love looking at pictures of it and learning what I can about it!
One I want to visit it and walk the same halls my ancestors did!
Looking very much forward for this journey! I'm a little sad that I can't research on my fathers side of the family for the same reasons that you mentioned. But nontheless feel that my journey on historic fashion brings me closer to it.
I'm so excited about this project! I relate a lot to the feeling of wanting to know about your family's history and not feeling like talking to them still an option. The side of my family that is better documented, my father's side, is also the one that caused me a lot of pain through religion, and it's almost impossible to contact them without being hurt again.
As someone who always loved history, it was specifically hard to reconcile this feeling with the disappointing reality that in a country like mine (Brazil), records are even worse than in the US or Europe. The side of my family that's better documented is also the side that was whiter, a mix of farmers of Portuguese origin (that probably came here in the 1500s) and possibly later Italian and German immigrants. The other one was the side of my African and indigenous ancestors, often former enslaved people, and even more forgotten.
Because of all of that I even took an ancestry test (even though people say they aren't super reliable, it's better than nothing to satisfy my curiosity in this context) that confirmed a lot that I already knew and presented some surprises. Apparently in addition to the other ones I also had ancestors from the Balkans and of Jewish origin as well. Since I don't know if this ancestry came with the Iberic side or the later European immigrants, one of my favorite videos of yours is the one about the two medieval Jewish women! It really connected with my thoughts about them, how they could have lived and who they were as people.
An ancestry test is certainly better than nothing, even if their reliability does need work! I had one given to me by a doctor's office years ago, and it was almost comedically unsurprising-- "you are 99.8% Ashkenazi Jewish".
Thank you for this wonderful project!! I am from South Tyrol, the German part of Italy, and we belonged until 1919 to Austria-Hungary. As a history nerd, I asked my grandfather a lot of questions about our family, when I was younger, and also my parents now and so I know some stories from our family‘s past which I deeply cherish. Can‘t wait to read all the stories!
I am fortunate enough to have my Great Grandmother’s Edwardian velvet walking suit. More interesting is that during WWII she remade the suit for her son’s wedding before he went overseas. The suit is a valuable treasure
That's super interesting! Must have been quite a change from its original style, after she remade it.
I love this so much! I am looking forward to this series; such an excellent idea. I am a genealogy nerd who has hit walls trying to learn about my Puerto Rican ancestors' daily lives. Because many were poor, and some were illiterate, official documents such as census or ship manifests were often the only records of their lives. The documented information can differ since it was based on what they told an official (sometimes lies... for reasons?) and what officials understood them to have said. I also don't have any photos of my paternal line farther back than my Dad's generation. So I have often wondered what my ancestors wore.
This is such a fun project! I definitely want to find out more about my maternal grandmother - my family’s been privileged to do pretty extensive genealogy on everyone but her. What I do know is that she married a man who’s step-aunt’s sister(?) was Gertrude Ederle: the first woman to swim across the English Channel. “Trudy” has such a fascinating story!!
What an interesting connection!
Thank you so much for talking about the difficulty of family history when you can't talk to some or all of your family. That's something I struggle with not just because my broader family currently is difficult to talk to, but also because my family in the past are English upper class and are intimately connected to the crimes of empire. The most honest crafty celebration of my Englishness I've found is in hand spinning and knitting, because of how old they are.
A great big hug to you, V. I love the idea of this series; your mind is amazing. One side my father's side, we can trace back to 1775. My mother's side is a little sparse. Her maternal grandmother was on the wrong side of the enslavement issue. Great-grandma was raised within the "happy slave" narrative as most of the family's house staff stayed on after the war and were paid in food, housing, and livery. She passed in 1985 with the nasty belief that the darker someone's skin was, the more animalistic they were. Knowing that it is part of my family's legacy hurts my heart. My mother's paternal side has the other side of the equation. My mother's great-grandfather was "adopted" from a BIA boarding school for Choctaw and about 20 other boys to work on a farm in Oklahoma. Our cultural heritage was so removed from our family that when my mother pressed her father about it, my grandfather glibly stated that our historical food was sushi and Kosher.
It saddens me that my son, who is blond-haired and green-eyed, will most likely grow up never knowing anything about his Choctaw or Lakota heritage.
I love this so much. It might be a few months until I can talk to my auntie again, the only one left of the older generation (I'm in my 50s already), so I'll be too late for this project, but I share your feeling of needing, wanting to know, learn and understand. In my case, it's super hard to look beyond my grandparents generation, because I'm from Germany. And that means Nazis. Not leading figures, or even people who actively tortured or killed anyone, but the silent majority who had been duped, cajoled, and intimidated into compliance with evil. And who therefore carry the responsibility of millions of Jews, artists, LGTB+ people, and free thinkers dying and others emigrating. Ugh.
I was born two generations after all this, and it's still weird (obviously, there's much more to it than "weird", but this comment is long already and there's just too much to unpack). But I wish I had looked beyond this and *talked* to my grandparents when they were still alive. I'm a "late child" which means my grandparents were born in 1900/1901. What they could have told me, other than that horror of the 1930s and 40s! My favourite period in history is the 20 or so years before WW I, and they were there!! I'll never forgive myself for, well, not asking, but as a teenager, I didn't realise what a treasure trove their life experiences would have been, and by the time I was 19, they had all died.
I'm very much looking forward to the stories, memories (and clothes!) that will come from this project ❤
You certainly won't be too late! This series is my story, but the website isn't going anywhere, and I'm hoping to build on it more in the future.
The only thing I actually know about my father's side of the family going back more than a few generations is that my ancestor Patrick came over to America from Ireland during the potato famine, around the 1860s, and then my grandfather has a few old family pictures, one from the 1870s, one from 1880s, one from 1890s, and one or two from the turn of the century. No names on them or stories behind them, which I'm sad about, but I like that we've got a couple of pictures.
Getting into my family's history was a lot easier for me to deal with once I got past the ones I knew...if that makes sense. Knowing names, dates, relationship, story, etc., is much easier when there's not that emotional baggage attached. Dealing with the lives/history of the ones who had been in my life was a lot tougher than I thought it would be. You're not alone in this messy family research journey.
I've always loved history and learning about my family, but it wasn't until I started on my journey to join the DAR that I really started learning about family I had never known about. I recently learned that the patriot line on my Mom's side of the family comes down from a gentleman who had the misfortune of being on the wrong side of the Battle of Dunbar in 1650 during the English Civil War. A Scotsman, Robert Junkins, was part of the group of soldiers captured by Oliver Cromwell and sent to the new world as indentured servants. From there, he served his time, bought land, built a family and left a legacy.
This is outstanding! Most of my ancestors immigrated from Greece, Ireland by way of Portugal (thank you Irish Potato famine) and Germany, most after about 1880 and at least one about 1902. I am looking forward to see what you discover!
Ironically. England colonized Ireland,
+ forced Irish to.grow wheat.for England,
while others starved due to potato
destruction.
My family considers itself Swedish-American, mostly because that’s the part of our family that we have a strong connection to. We’ve always had a strong tradition of oral history in our family, and a huge part of that was getting my grandfather to tell us the stories about how his parents and grandparents left the old country. My grandfather’s mother’s grandparents left Sweden in the aftermath of the famine of 1867. He told us a story about how the parents decided to leave Sweden because they couldn’t afford to feed their children. I could hear the sadness in his voice of the ancestors who had passed the story to him.
I didn’t quite understand the historical context of this story at the time, as the modern Sweden that I know is not a country with food insecurity or significant hunger problems. Sweden in the 1860’s and 1870’s was a place of significant classism income inequality. When the famine began in 1867, there was a distinct lack of compassion from the upper classes towards the poor peasants. The wealthy aristocracy could afford to import as much food as they needed or wanted, and were more than a little out of touch with their less fortunate neighbors. Literally entire villages of poor peasants would leave for America within weeks of receiving a letter from a family member who had gone to America years earlier.
I love this project! Recently I've found a lot of comfort in the stories of my grandparents and my great grandmother and to be able to keep them close in little trinkets or jewelry. My grandparents' stories would also never have a TV series or movie made of their lives, but they were insanely strong and bad ass none the less.
I've got family drama disconnecting me from my french and german heritage- they came in the 1880s too. the closest i've ever felt to them was when my mother haded me "a tree grows in Brooklyn", which she said was the story of my great/great great grandmothers. even the side we "know" about is unknown to me. we only recently learned that I may have been named after my great great grandma's sister who stayed back in ireland when she moved to the US!
Both my parents are 2nd-generation immigrants, and children of divorce. My grandparents histories weren't talked about much, growing up, I only knew the bare minimum. Where they came from, who they came with, their marriages just didn't work out.
I wasn't taught the languages (aside from 'Oma' and 'Opa'), and knew next-to-nothing about their cultures. Which made me feel like something was missing, especially as I got older. Every other 2nd and 3rd generation immigrant I knew, knew at least SOME of their ancestor's language and recipes. Finally, I'm learning.
I'm glad you have knowledge of your family and a family history that is recorded. I was given up for adoption att 3 days old and adopted at 3 month 8 days old. All I know of my mother is her -hair, eye skin color, height, and that the state of Oregon gave her a house to live in so long as she gave all her children up for adoption as infants because they had labled her as a "migrant". I was her twelveth and last child.
Shame on the state for not giving you more information. Hugs.
@@saraquill It was 1961 when I was adopted... I got more information from the State of Oregon then most orphans got in the 1970s. Quit with the shame.
I'm really loving this series! My family history is very messy and blurry and hard to track down. I know my father's mother was Welsh/Scottish and Norwegian Sami and that my mother's mother was from the Carpathian mountains in Slovakia. My father's father is a bit of a mystery, though we think he was Middle Eastern. And my mother's father is also a bit of a mystery. There's a lot of adoptions and missing records involved, and from what we've been able to make out he was an indigenous child given to/taken by white parents. It's been an interesting journey and there's a lot of gaps I'll never fill. But I've enjoyed learning! And I love watching you dig into your history and recreate this dress!
My dad has the naturalization papers of his Grandfather. He and his wife left Hungary in the early 1900s. I remember being told the story as a kid. It wasn't until later did I find out more info about the journey. G-Grandma's family was in Austria so G-Grandpa sent her and her son to visit and a few weeks later he left Budapest with just the clothes on his back "to go get her". They literally kept heading west and ended up in America. THis was sometime before the outbreak of WW1. I have since found out they had another kid or two at that point, and one of them died on the boat over. I think another died after they got to the US but before they made it to Ohio. My grandmother was born here in the US. I have been trying to find more info about them but I'm running into several problems, one getting info from Hungary is hard and two I have 3 different spellings of his last name.
The two problems you have researching your ancestry is the same I’ve run into myself. Although I speak and read Hungarian fluently there’s very little information and records available online. My family’s surname has at least tree different spellings often depending on what part of the country they lived in. The international border changes over the last couple hundred years just make the whole thing more complicated.
Loved this video! So much costuming reinforces the focus on the wealthy just because it’s “prettier”
or intricate but I can’t just not see the classism at play most of the time
As someone who does not have a healthy relationship with my Mexican-American side of the family I felt estranged from even doing my own research about our specific Mexican heritage because those people in my family just happen to be incredibly toxic (it doesn’t help for me that we’re 95% Mexican Spanish and German for at least 4 generations back-it feels 😫 being the descendant of colonizers 😢)
I’ve been getting back into feeling like I can claim my own heritage but it feels weird to want to leapfrog over most of my existing living family. The struggle is real 😅
Thanks for shining a light forward for those of us disentangling the harsh personal family experience from our heritage 💛
Leapfrogging over my immediate family is exactly what I'm doing! My uncle is the only person of that generation I have a good relationship with, and all the grandparents are gone, so it's just me and old paperwork.
I may not know exactly what your situation feels like but it still really touched to my own feelings about being queer coming from a generationally Mormon family. Being interested in family history is difficult when feeling safe around relatives is hard. I'm grateful some of my family is accepting, but I can never be sure and for some of my ancestors I already know for certain they would hate who I am. Thank you for sharing this journey, I loved what you said about connecting to your ancestors and background in a way that honors who you are. I can't wait to see the rest of this journey.
I am glad you touched on strained families. I feel like this piece doesnt get talked about a lot. I have mixed feeling about my heritage, now that I know more about them and who they were. It is hard to know if it was circustances that just made them hard or if they would have been like that otherwise.
Ohhh, that dress you're already showing in snippets is SO gorgeous! I would be happy to wear it, so I assume Carolina would be proud of it too.
I'm looking forward to seeing your process. I'm working on an 1880s inspired steampunk costume, so I can certainly learn something from you for this project.
Anne Hollander's book, "Seeing Through Clothes," still the best book on the social implications of clothing.
I also don't know a great deal about my family history, but considering where they're from (Bolton in Lancashire in the UK), it's almost guaranteed that some of them worked in the cotton mills. If I can gather the spoons to do some research, I think it would be fascinating to learn more about the people who were making the fabrics that they were wearing, and who lived in a town that was famous for it's strike action.
When I've been to museums, they talk about rich businessmen who were cheerfully profiting from the slave trade vs rich philanthropists who called for abolition. While that's clearly a massive improvement over sweeping it under the rug like they used to, there's still very little of what the ordinary people working in the cotton mills thought about it.
As always, you've given me a lot to consider, and I look forward to the rest of this series!
5:38 we do. My paternal great-grandparents(all Ashkenazim) fled from Ukraine, Poland and Moldova to Argentina in the late turn-of-the-century(1905 onwards), barred from entrance to the US based on their ethnicity alone, immediately after the Kishinev pogrom waves. My maternal great-grandmother(who was fully Sephardi, like my mother who's named after her) had a scar from when a Fascist soldier tried to shoot her head and she blocked it with her elbow in a genocide people still minimize and deny. Thank you for giving a voice to our lived realities, I think you honor your great-grandmother well in this series.
6:40 oh yes, the epic Hillel vs Shamai debates. We learned them in Oral Torah classes, I really hope your video inspires more US Jews to learn of our rich history as a people.
10:30 you mentioned history being written by the winners. I think we're one of the few people who have succeeded in recording our own version of history even when we lost. I've seen it in Matzada, by Yosef Ben-Matityahu/Josephus Flavius. For me, I've had a heritage project in the 7th grade, which is why I even know the first paragraph.
While I am not Jewish (as far as I know) I always resonate with your stories and experiences. On my mother's side I am a third generation American so I have heard many stories of the old country. My maternal side is Hungarian and Czechoslovakian. My paternal side is Polish and German. My family went to Pennsylvania and Chicago, then to Northwest Indiana to work in the steal mills. I was doind some research and almost would have qualified to get citizenship by descent in some of those coutnries but there were weird laws and rules and because my family came over in specific years it somehow disqualified me. There are countless stories to tell but something interesting that got confirmed recently. There was always a story passed down that we had some asian descent in the Hungarian side of us. We had no proof but the story and the fact we have some slightly asiatic facial features. My aunt did a DNA test and she came out as 3% asian so the story was confirmed! That was really an amazizng feeling having science proof my family story correct and it makes me trust more of the stories.
Something else that has been interesting, is connecting with my eastern European/American culture. Every year, the last weekend of July there is Pierogi Fest in Whiting Indiana. Between the food, the Babushkas, the traditional dancers and other stuff it is like a big family reunion. Because it brings back memories of what your families experience here was. The babushkas really do remind me of my grandmothers.
i'm not a jew but i am in the process of converting & so as part of that process obviously i'm constantly learning about jewish history, in some ways as a sort of practice of [future / hopeful] ancestry so i always always appreciate your videos on these kinds of topics whether they be closer or further from your personal family history!! so thanks for that & this whole series looks incredible am so looking forward to the rest ! :)
Welcome to the tribe 💚
I love how you say you are making the dress for her. What a beautiful sentiment.
Ok, why did this video make me cry? Really, how you're looking at history in general and your history is my philosophy as well. It's the everyday people. It's the overlooked and the not remembered who weave this huge tapestry of who and where we are today.
So, this Appalachian is over here excitedly waiting for all the videos in this series.
I applaud your hard work and determination to know more about Carolina and your family history. I also share your pain in having a family that has been too damaging for me to interact with anymore. I only have snippets of family history to work with as well. I'm looking forward to the rest of your videos on your project and journey! 💚
Hi Vi! I am lucky enough to have some of my great grandmothers clothing. She was VERY petite so her dresses didn’t always get reused. The oldest dress is from 1911, the year she got married. I’ve been told it was her wedding dress, but have some doubts. I have a Pinterest board of photos if you are interested. (Edit, I need to check the year. I always forget)
Her wedding dress might have simply been her best dress, rather than one made especially for the occasion.
I would love to see! Please do let me know if you post them anywhere with the hashtag, I'd love to add them to the website.
@@ragnkja of course! How ever I have a hard time imagining wearing a sheer dress in December…
@@AReluctantSeamstress
That’s a fair point! 😁
Did you rent out the Tenement Museum? That looks a little like the Moore’s apartment! I’m so excited for this series. I also think it is absolutely fascinating and important that you are transparent about the complexity of delving into your personal family history, and how doing so is a reclamation for you. Yes!
We were able to work with them, yes! One of the coolest shoots I've ever done.
my family is from Sicily and Norway, and I hardly know anything about them because of the push toward assimilation in the 1940-60s
all I have is a gold and garnet ring, and a jülekake recipe
If the recipe is handwritten, it’s “jūlekake”, because that’s how they used to write the letter “u” In Norwegian until relatively recently, and we don’t use “ü”.
Same! I have a great grandpa who came over in the 1920s, but we don't know anything about him other than a few photographs
1:40 This is one of the things that make your channel & Nicole Rudolph's two of my absolute favorites! 🥰 The degree to which you interweave sociopolitical context, rather than just focusing on the surface aesthetics, and surface the whole story not just the glamorous bits. Please keep it up, it's awesome!!
I'm living in the house my great grandparents built for retirement, and it was neat to see some of the things they did, why, and how. Like having a second kitchen for canning in summer/fall, the oddities of having to slide two single panes of glass separaptely to open my window because the fancy double and triple layer windows we have now weren't around then, and our winters get cold. I use the same garden they did, enjoying the wonderful carrots grown, having some blueberry bushes to make pies with... Even seeing how they built the house, although filled with lots of questions (like why the floor is insulated, and why there was a square 2 feet worth of empty space in one wall, why they had carpet in half of the bathroom...), tells a lot about who they are. Seeing how many things are from Sears and how my grandfather worked for them, the ways some things were very fancy, and others were more thrown together and looked more DIY and how that showed what they valued.
I ended up renovating quite a few things because it didn't work for me. Carpet is horrible for dust allergies, let alone when it's 50 years old, and some things were falling apart, or weren't the best use of the space (example, a chimney with water damage had to come out, and I couldn't afford real brick, so we had a bit more freedom with redoing it). But I'm glad I had the chance to talk with my family about it, about how they wanted it to be in the family, the memories, the different ways of doing things... Very fascinating and I understand more about that side of my family and why they are how they are.
I love this! It's so relatable on so many levels. My maternal great-great-grandmother Katie came here from Romania in a later wave - around the turn of the century. I've had such a difficult time trying to piece all of that together because my grandma and great-grandmother had both passed years ago, as have everyone else I could have asked about her.
Also, our Sages were something else. Like Rabbi Yochanan and his (and everyone else's admiration for his) beauty. And the arguing in the Talmud about which Rabbi was right, getting Gd involved, then telling Gd "you don't get a vote because you left and left us to do all the work." 😂
My favorite thing is to remind people the the Talmud contains at least one instance of literal mudslinging 🤣
What a delight to discover your channel. My paternal grandparents came from Sweden in the early 1900s. I began to discover their histories when I was 45 and my mother and uncle were dying. The information my brother recorded from my paternal uncle shook my sense of self and still does. There are enough potentially unbelievable bits to it that might make one’s eyes roll and jump start a movie, but over the last 30 years I’ve discovered that they seem to be true. I will email you some pertinent bits.
I can’t remember the last time I subscribed to a channel this fast. I live everything about this
Both sides of my family are from the same 3 towns in Calabria, Italy. My mom is the first of her family in America, my dad’s family having gone back in forth. He had Uncles go through Ellis Island, but so later on in the 60s did his mom leave Italy at 16 to work in a factory with her new husband. So I can only use old sketches of ‘italian peasants’, postcards/vases, and then some early 1900s best dress pictures of woman from their area. Its something Id love to do- recreate ‘peasant/folk clothes’
My father's side of the family has lived in the same little town for many generations, and the things that have survived are the sturdy things. The pocket watches. The wrought iron candelabra. The massive writing desk. My parents currently live in the house that my ancestors built. We have some photographs, but the items that survived makes them seem so much closer somehow.
I feel like photographs feel very ephemeral because they capture a single, staged moment in time, but something like a watch or a writing desk contains all the years and years of experiences people had alongside it!
This is amazing!!!
Half of my family were wealthy, and half my family were discriminated against and were very poor. They were escaping slavery.
Comparing the photos from the 20s is AMAZING! They look so different! I can tell they were both from the 20s but everything else was different.
Ironically my Jewish side were here during the revolution and mingled mixed in with the Anglican folks. They had wealth and power. I know the old shaprdic communities welcomed the Ashkenazi Jewish population.
I love your story about Carolina, My grandmother's family arrived later (chain migration - 1903 to 1906) from a shtetl near Minsk and probably lived in similar circumstances. My grandmother's older sisters worked in the garment trade, but my grandmother worked for a milliner. You've inspired me to look into the working class garments she might have worn (circa WWI). Thank you!
I am so excited to watch this series. Ive also lost a lot of my connection to my family (had to cut my parents off and most of my grandparents passed away 10+ years ago) and so much of how you were talking about this resonates really deeply with me. How i am seeking out like, historical clothing construction and seeking out the culture and religion of my family going back into the past... Because i cant connect with my family directly, but i can look into the world they lived in, read their folklore and maybe find little pieces of their culture and religion in the modern world and know that like, im doing what they did and feeling a link between myself and the past.
And its so great to see other people who connect to history and family in a similar way 😭
This sounds like a fascinating series of videos. As a Jew who also can't speak with one side of my family (my mother's side, in my case. My mom and i were very close, but after my grandmother died we cut everyone else off because they're toxic as all get out. Sadly my mom passed recently as well) this sounds super meaningful. My mom worked in costuming on Broadway and TV for many years, and i've been thinking of trying to learn to use a sewing machine as a way to feel closer to her. A project like this would likely be quite far in the future since I imagined it's not exactly beginner friendly, but it could possibly be something to strive for. Something to keep me going when I mess up and get frustrated.
This is really lovely! I will definitely contribute! My grandparents were from varied backgrounds. I have at minimum been really interested in recreating my grandmother's wedding dress (merely her sunday best, not a gown) for years. She and my grandfather were married during, or just after WWII and there was no money for anything lavish. She had a lovely corsage and pumps and im actually not sure whether anyone is still alive to tell me the color of the dress
I am so excited for this project. I'm my family's history keeper and boy has it been hard. By the time I was born so many of my older family members died or were on their last days of life, and piecing together their history is a life long project. Especially my Bohemian side. They arrived in Chicago when the "Bohemians need not apply" signs went up and changed the spelling of the surname to sound German. They even went as far as to hide the fact that my 2x great grandfather was part Jewish. Ancestrial DNA was the tool that revealed that.
I would LOVE to watch a show like that, one that tells the stories of "ordinary" immigrants (esp Jewish ones) of the 1880's. Gosh, I wish they would make one!
This is fantastic.
As far as ny own family history it's quite "boring", most of my ancestors on my fathers side are land owning farmers, and woods people from the part of Sweden that is now called Småland and Blekinge, and the borders between.
My mother have done a awsome job mapping them all the way back to the 17th century (beoyond that it's nearly impossible since there are no nobel blood and some parts of history isn't really sure how ever they where Swedish och Danish or a little of both).
On my mothers side it's even harder. My grandmother was born in Germany, her mother on the other hand was accually Swedish, Oma was sent to relatives during WWII and sort of adopted by her aunt.
On my grandfathers side there isn't much prior to the early 1800s since he came from a relative poor farming background, there is some records of s.k. Statare, wich was basically slavery of sorts, people traveling around, working in agriculture and then mooving on to the next place and so on.
I wish I could read Finnish tho, since my husbands mother came from a part of northern Charelia, that is now Russia as a toddler, and she wrote down the history of her family, as her grandmother had told her (there is a sort of stigma in being a Finnish immigrant in Sweden, they didn't talk about the past, so she didn't get any information from her parents).
How ever, she did so in Finnish/Charelian and I cannot read it.
My husband do, with some struggle, and he is going to translate it, in time. But for now, it's not doable (for reasons I will not give away).
The only thing he knows about his fathers family is that they where fishermen and shipbuilders.
I'm so disappointed to have missed this!
In my hometown, there's a group focusing on researching female ancestors & women's history, called HerStory- & there are so many ancestors for me to be curious about; my people came to Australia from Dorset, England [(part of that branch can be traced back to the 14th c) - from my mum's genealogical work, we have connections to both the First Fleet & free settlers, & somewhere in there we descend from the Austens, via one of Jane's brothers (yes, *_that_* Jane Austen)], from at least two Irish counties {(one of my many, many times removed great-grandfathers was a weaver- along with his family doing stuff like working in service, & kelp-gathering & burning, for soda ash (essential to make &/ or clean all that lovely linen & glass my gentry English ancestors had)- the Industrial revolution would have hit them hard; male weavers were essentially put out of work, when it proved cheaper & easier to hire unskilled women & children for the machines - & the Continental advances made in the manufacture of artificial soda- on hold during the Napoleonic Wars, flooded into the UK & bottomed out the kelp industry, essentially overnight}.
And both Highland (MacDonald- both my mother's maternal *&* paternal sides had MacDonalds) & Lowland (Scott) Scotland - to say nothing of French Huguenots from Lorraine, who legged it over to England in the aftermath of the St Bartholomew's Day Massacre, meaning they preceded the more famous wave of immigration the next century, after the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes- they were apparently silversmiths (I would give anything to find something they made, no matter how small or mundane) - I also have Danish & German ancestors- & **all this** is just from my mother's sides of the family...
I was so inspired that I've begun two separate stories about my ancestors; one's only very _vaguely inspired_ by them- my MacDonald ancestors (the results of hitting a wall in the historic record)- & subsequently taking the story in a more fantastical direction - but the other, with my Irish & English, I'm trying to keep very grounded- but still only vaguely inspired, to be more close to their history & journeys...
I love this video I particular. While my family isn't Jewish, we came from Poland and I have such a difficult time finding information about them. I would absolutely love to see the world they lived in, and the clothes my great grandmother wore. I am also an historian and this has been the project that plagues me; finding my own family and their whereabouts in the world. They were laborers and farmers, not the glitzy glamorous upper class. They were simply ignored and erased.
Hearing you talk about your family and how little oral history is avaiable to you reminded me of my own family a lot, and of how little I can share about what I still was told, simply because no one wants to hear it, other than my mother, who was there. :-D My family didn't emigrate. They went to live in eastern Germany instead, in what now is Czechia, in the 1600s or a little earlier, and were reasonably safe in the area they ended up in. So much so that they mixed into the rest of the population, were German and jewish and czech and felt perfectly comfortable with it. Until the Nazis said otherwise. My grandmother would only ever tell me short tidbits, and the very second I would want to know more, she fell silent, because of all the bad memories attached to the good ones, but she told me stories about her family 'back home', about how her cousin was german enough to be forcebly drafted and ended up shot, which she could describe vividly, about her other, favourite cousin who would jump off the train taking him away three times and hid for a couple of months until the Gestapo found him anyway, and that last time he didn't come back from Prag, about how her mother would have long conversations with the mayor and priest and all sorts of important people, and about how happy her mother was when she could show her children their aryan IDs. I didn't understand what any of it was about, until I became way older. Now I now that my grandmother's grandmother was an Edelstein, that her cousin died in the ghetto in Prag, and that they were happy to be aryan, even to be drafted and forced to fight in a war they did not feel comfy with, because it meant that they were german enough to not be send to concentration camps. I understand now that my great-grandmother's little chats were very likely negotiations, and I admire that she managed to keep her children safe. She wasn't a friendly woman, but she was a strong one. And whenever I want to tell people about them, about the boy who cheekishly played hide and seek for his life and the woman who would walk three hours several times a week to go and talk to loads of important men to keep herself and her family safe, about the little girl so confused and afraid and hurt she didn't want to know what any of it was about, people get uncomfortable and want me to shush. There isn't anyone left to tell those stories, my grandparents died a couple years back, their families are mostly gone by now, and the only one still remembering is my mother - and me. But when I want to bring those stories out in the world, there is little interest in them - because Nazis, concentration camps, war, race. Because that was one of the times the 'white' people were so very much the bad ones that it can't be softened. And all I want is to shout it from the rooftops, that they still mattered. All of them, including those who couldn't tell their stories. And that pretending none of it did happen is to pretend they didn't exist.
My great-grandmother went to pester officials that could have made her life hell to safe her family.
My grandmother spoke jiddish and forgot not to do it when she got older.
My great-uncle grinned his arse off when he came home from escaping the Gestapo. He did it three times and lived months longer for it. He was nineteen.
A lot of my great-uncles, aunts, cousins and other relatives died there. They died in Prague, where now no one is left to go visit the site.
We are still here. Because they fought and tricked and cheated and tried hard enough to make it through.
We are still here. And I like to think that mattered. A lot.
I love your new ancestry and immigration history project. My mum's family immigrated to New Zealand in the 1870s ish from England via Australia. She has english, Scottish, french ancestors.
I am looking forward at looking at the photos we have with a focus on their clothes, most likely their best.
My father's immigrated to New Zealand from Los Angeles USEA in 1958 and I have some of my grandmothers clothes from 40's/50's. Her family immigrated to the USA from England via Canada.
My great great grandmother on my fathers side is Ashkenazi from Romania who immigrated to Chicago USA in 1890s ish. I am very excited at taking a closer look at our old photos with a focus on their clothes, most likely their best. LOVE YOU AND YOUR PERSPECTIVE!!! V 🥰
As much as I would love to participate in all this, I am estranged from _both_ sides of my family. (Father is a monster and my mother s insane. EDIT: Oh yeah, _and_ everyone took my father's side after he was convicted for his various abuses against me.) I'm still coming to grips with the fact that I don't get to know anything about my family history except for the fact that we were Irish nobility waaaayyyyyy back in the day.
My aunt was telling me about a labour of love research project she's embarking on about some of the Hellenic histories in southern California. Specifically traditional Greek costume-making for festivals and competitions. All of those costumes were handmade by immigrant moms who drew upon photographs to construct these costumes. Like they had no idea how any of these garments were put together and so many of these costumes are just sitting in people's houses with no documentation of who made them, or how they were made, it's all in the memories of these people. Luckily many of them are still alive, so she's speaking to them and building a database of costumes. It was so cool to hear about how they constructed some of these costumes. Like, she discovered that her mon won a costume award in the 80s for something that she made, since the M.O was you just did it and didn't brag about your accomplishments.
Not American history but the story has it that that's just by chance. I hope this is still relevant. My mother's cousin wrote the book (literally) on our family history. In 2008 we had a "family reunion" for the descendants of my great great grandfather, who arrived in Melbourne (Australia) 150 years earlier with his wife and her son from a previous marriage. (They were both from Poland, but met in Manchester.) They went on to have 14 children and there were 424 attendees at the reunion; I'm related by blood to a large proportion of Melbourne Jewry. (Funny story: my brother met his 6th cousin once removed for the first time and they fell in love and married. Their daughter is her own 7th cousin.) The story that we were told was that Phillip and Hannah were booked to go to America, but when they got to the port (their luggage had been sent the night before) were told that the boat had left on the earlier tide. So with nothing more than the clothes on their backs they took the next boat "wherever" and it (and they) ended up in "Marvellous Melbourne" during the Gold Rush in 1858.
Now that I think about it, the Blashki Reunion was probably my first foray into sewing historical clothing. I was asked to make costumes for the "pageant" part of the reunion - a play about the family history. There were to be many childrens' costumes, but also a dress for the cousin who was playing Hannah. I knew that this was based in the 1850s, and recall realising that this meant that I could use patterns officially advertised as US Civil War clothing! I ended up using a number of Simplicity and McCalls patterns. I was given a small budget for fabric, but only after the event was long over was I told that I needed to sell the costumes and return the funds to the committee. (Not sure why, but most of the costumes stayed in my storage until late last year, when I sold them VERY cheap to a local costume shop. I hope others get good use for some size 6 and 9 1860s style dresses!)
Where I could, I also used buttons from my late mother's stash on the dresses to bring her along to the reunion too.
What an incredible story!
What a wonderful project! My ancestors were countrymen with very few opportunities for fashion, yet my granma loved to be very clean and dressed up as better as she could on festive days.
I would like to add some details as I had the amazing chance of talking to my grandparents when I was younger.
Their life completely changed between 50 and 60s.
Prior to that they lived like their ancestors did in a remote agricultural region in Europe.
Clothes were scarce but made on measure by the local taylor and made to resist to anything!
They didn't have corset for ladies but some kind of support was in use.
Clothes were mostly black and white and for all seasons without distinction.
Men wore black trousers with suspenders often made in moleskine and white thick shirts. Matching jackets were saved for special occasions.
Women wore very long dark skirts with cotton or linen underskirts and they often went without panties. They had blouses with ruffles for sundays and wool shawls, but they wore plain blouses and an apron everyday.
They still used wide wool capes, later on tailored black wool coats if they were lucky enough to buy one for the entire family, so that they went out in winter only one at the time and a coat could last 30 years.
As my mom was the youngest one the old family coat was reversed, cut in a more fashionable way in her size and lined.
All kids in school had to wear a black overdress with white collar up until high-school.
For poor kids that was godsent because they could hide their worn out and patched clothes below.
In summer for working in fields they had sleeveless tanks, but they never wore sleeveless clothes in church! The lace veil was mandatory in church, black for ladies and white for young unmarried girls.
Poor ladies wore cotton head kerchiefs.
Most ladies could make some work of sewing and they could make cotton or wool socks with a typical pointy shape.
At some point, when older people started to pass away and long mourning was mandatory, they dyed everything black.
As professional dyeing was very expensive, many people made it at home in a cauldron with walnut kernel, also quite expensive.
The result may vary... forget about the glamourous modern black!
There was no shop in the village. Everything was homemade according to different skills and bartered.
The annual shoemaking was an event! A shoemaker went home to home taking measures for all the family. Shoes were much in the fashion of grandmother Karolina's boots and they passed on to younger siblings but they were rarely too worn out, because kids went barefoot most of the time and kept their shoes for occasion. Sometimes they kept their shoes in hand and wore them just before going into the church.
The currency was very scarce, but my family was lucky enough to have good fields for food and my grandma raised turtledoves when protein food was rare and expensive, so one year she paid the shoemaker in turtledoves and he was very happy to bring proteins home for his kids.
Very big events for clothes were wedding and first communion.
The young girls had very beautiful white dresses full of pleats and embroidered lace and they made up their long hair in tight ringlets using pieces of bamboo cane.
The wedding dress was somehow similar but usually with a slimmer shape and around '30 they went for a decò style much in fashion among the aristocrats.
Most people were quite happy and they didn't feel too poor because they were all similar. Being considered a honourable and morally reliable family was more important. Behaviour was socially appreciated and a family member who behaved very badly could disgrace the whole family and descendants.
The very few aristocrat families had a very different life and the poorest ones (with no land) was a bit kept at distance because it was not honourable to keep close relationships with them, but they were often helped with food and some local free medical care.
When times became more abundant my grandma always wore silk stockings with suspenders and a silk underdress with quality lace.
Family history's always been one of those things I find somewhat interesting because whilst my maternal family is very well documented, all the way back to Ireland, and the genealogy research has already been done, my dad's side of the family is a genuine mystery. I'm not in contact with him but even if I was, he doesn't know anything either. He only met his own father once, had his surname changed when he was taken in by his maternal grandparents, and no-one has any idea where his father's family came from. We have a few clues - the original surname is pretty clearly Germanic and probably Jewish. We think they're originally from Denmark but my dad has an extremely Dutch looking face, to the extent that Dutch people have gone up to him and just started speaking Dutch, fully expecting him to be from the Netherlands too. The only real option left is those DNA genealogy tests but I already know that the best way to track my dad's side of the family would be with another amab family member and I'm an only child, so... I guess I'll never fully know.
LOL we might be cousins. My dad's family came from Hungary and Germany in the 1840s. My mom's side was fleeing the pogroms around 1900 and her roots are in Poland and what's now Belarus. One of my dad's second cousins went through a genealogical phase about 20 years ago and made a book detailing all the information she could find about the family including documents and pictures. It's so weird to see how dominant some features are. If you'd like use my family's records since our backgrounds are so similar, let me know.