Empower U - April 18th - Ladies Living History

Episode Transcript

(00:01):
In an instant, so staying informeddamned up to day it is critical.
I want to know what's happening.Fifty five krc the talk station eight o
six Here at fifty five KRCD talkstation. All right, Thomas, wishing
you a very happy Friday eightive andrecommending you tune in to empower You America
dot org tonight or show up attwo twenty five North and Boulevard to see

(00:23):
it live. It's Ladies Living History. What role besides housewife did the women
in the Civil War era play?Join me? Who's going to be doing
the presentation along with some other ladiesto night, Sandy Clappert, Sandy,
it's wonderful having you on the programtoday. Thank you? Tell me about
the excuse me, Ladies Living HistorySociety, an organization I before this morning

(00:43):
wasn't even familiar with, so Iget to learn something today. Oh we
are an organization that celebrated thirty yearslast year. Congratulations. Thank you.
Started out with four women back innineth who had an association with reenactors,

(01:04):
whether they were husbands or significant othersor friends, and decided that they wanted
to better understand these reenactments and maybethe women's side of the Civil War reenactments,
and they got together with those fouroriginal ladies. We have one still

(01:27):
amongst us, and by the nextyear there were eight to ten. But
I think at our peak we hadthirty. We have about twenty five now
and we've just been over the yearsjust trying to better understand women's issues during

(01:47):
the nineteenth century. Well, behindevery good man, there's a better woman.
And I'm a firm believer in that. I know very smart men Mary
out of their element and Mary smart. I'm lucky enough to have done that,
which is make me firm and conviction, way out of my league,
way the hell out of my league, and it has benefited me immeasurably.
I always joke Sandy that if itwasn't for my wife, who was a

(02:10):
nurse when I married. We metin law school, but her nursing career
at the time was so beneficial inraising children. I regularly joke, if
it wasn't for my wife, Idon't know that my children would have survived.
She was candy to have around.Oh my god, Yeah, with
that's a gross understatement. So butyou know, that's the truth. We

(02:35):
have this and I think this isan important thing to talk about, especially
when we're going to move over herein a moment and talk about the Civil
War and what women's role was duringthat period of time. It's sort of
this, we have allocated responsibilities basedupon our skill sets. You know,
I do X, Y and Zthings, and she handles other components,
and together it's teamwork and you know, so shared responsibility. I couldn't exist

(02:57):
and function well without her and withwhat she does for me and the family.
And I think she could probably saythe same thing. So that's what
it's all about. But historically speaking, and of course I understand women were
sort of second class citizens. Theycouldn't vote, they were, you know,
the fairer sex, but they didso much behind the scenes that allowed

(03:17):
men to go out and fight warsand build buildings and things like that.
That's absolutely true, and we're goingto touch on that this evening, besides
showing period gowns. Yeah, aboutearly eighteen hundreds till about eighteen eighties.
As we go through those decades.I'm not the MC this evening, but

(03:43):
I've worked closely with her, andas we go through those decades and talk
about the way the styles changed,we're going to talk about things that happened
here locally during those decades and whatwomen's how women's role changed during those decades.
Well, give my listeners a littleillustration of that. Maybe there's some

(04:04):
point of fact or illustration of beyondwhat you're gonna go to be talking about
this in depth to night at sevenpm and power Youoamerica dot org for all
the details. But give my listenersan illustration of what you're talking about.
Well, during the Civil War,funds were tight for both Confederate and Union
sides, and so the women areat home the boys and the men are

(04:26):
off fighting, and so the womenformed got the federal government to back up
something called the Sanitary Commission, theUS Sanitary Commission. And what the women
did was they had these big sanitaryfairs to raise money so that we could

(04:47):
provide fresh clothing or food, extrafood that the government couldn't provide. And
this was done in the North andthe South. Prime the North, the
women of the North tended to bemore organized, I believe, but we
had one in Cincinnati in sixty threeand it was very successful. And women

(05:13):
would make things to sell at thesefairs, and then the funds would go
to this US Sanitary Commission to bedistributed to the troops in whatever materials and
supplies they needed, or we wouldsend directly. We would send directly socks
that were knitted or shirts that weremade, or you know, sending care

(05:34):
packages out to the troops. Ohso those were Yeah, it was one
of the things that we did behindthe scenes. Well, and I have
to observe since you're going to bedoing the fashions from the time while explaining
the roles of women during this periodof time eighteen HUNDREDSU basically the eighteen sixties.

(05:55):
I'm looking at photographs that are onthe Emperoamerica dot org page. It's
a beautiful photograph of your group therein their period gowns. Those things are
huge. Those gowns are not thewomen the gowns the massive hoopskirts and the
layer And I just have to askmyself out loud. You pointed out times
were tough, there were limited supplies, and yet the clothing and the outfits

(06:17):
at those times used an extraordinary amountof material in order to create the fashion
of the day. That don't seemto or correspond appropriately. Well, I
mean, the Civil War didn't lastbut four years, very long four years.
So you have material in your clothingprior to that, and you remade

(06:38):
it. You took it apart,and you remade it to a fashion that
was more up to date. Youmight have eight yards of fabric in a
gown or in an everyday dress,and so it was. These dresses were
made and remade and sometimes depending onyour status, or you might take old

(07:01):
draperies and make something out of them. Oh, channeling, gone with the
wind, yeah exactly. Yeah.And by eighteen sixty five and people are
starting late and sixty five, peopleare starting to recuperate and come out of
this wartime. Depending on again yoursocial status, you might be able to

(07:27):
afford new fabric to make a newgown. And the styles are changing,
and that was the way they keptup with its style changes would be to
remake. They were very good atrecycling. Well that's where quilts came from
from, isn't it. That's right, all the extra scraps. Yeah,
my grandmother was an amazing quilt maker, and I'm blessed to have quite a

(07:48):
few examples of the quilts she madeover the years. And you didn't throw
anything away, basically, as myunderstanding. Of course, she lived through
the Great Depression as well, andshe grew up any dirt dirt dirt for
Tennessee farms, so she never hadreally two Nichols to rub together, so
she knew the value of literally everything. Well in quilts were reminders. They

(08:09):
were like memory books because they wouldlook at these pieces that were on the
quilt and remember, oh, thatwas grandmother's dress she wore to church every
Sunday. Why, yeah, thatwas grandpa's favorite shirt that he worked in,
or whatever it might be. Sothey were like memory books because we
didn't have a lot of I mean, we did have photography during the Civil

(08:33):
War. Obviously we have pictures fromthere, but so many times, even
earlier, you looked at that quiltand it reminded you of the person who
wore that outfit well and talking aboutone station or standing in life. Photographs
weren't cheap. They had them,but it wasn't like everybody could go around
and with a polaroid and take aphotograph of what people were wearing or what

(08:54):
the family looked like back then.Those are rare, rare occasions in the
early photography. Gays, now Ihave this, I'm minded of the whole
idea that you know, men backwhen men had to wear suits, it
was expected. You look at picturesof like old Reds games, and everybody's
there in a suit and tie,and they only own one suit though,
I mean most people had a suit, and it was that the same thing

(09:16):
with these gowns that I'm looking at, and most women was that what they
wore every every day. I mean, it wasn't like they had a wardrobe
full of clothes. The picture you'reprobably referring to would be gowns that ladies
might have gone shopping in. Okay, they did have a common work dress

(09:37):
that didn't didn't have a hoop underit, if I didn't have a corded
starts corded petticoat under it, justto keep all that yardage away from tangling
up in their lake. But thethe idea is that you had depends on

(10:00):
where you lived and your social status. You might only have two dresses,
one to go to church in andone to work in, or you might
have three or four. But ladieswho live in town, who who were
of a higher you know, middleto upper middle class, would have you
know, but half a dozen gowns, depending on what they needed them for

(10:22):
for a tea or a ball oryou know, you had a morning wrapper.
When you got up in the morning, you had this. It was
almost like the equivalent today would belike a house coat perhaps, but they
didn't have to wear all those undergarments. We have many layers of undergarments that
can't be seen to give the silhouettethat's required of that time period. So

(10:45):
but you get up in the morningand you had this thing called a wrapper.
And also it was very nice tohave when you were pregnant because it
was very it didn't fit real tighton your body. And so we're going
to show one tonight at the fashionshow. Now, and going back to
my point on this, you know, I'm trying to be practical. I'm
just I've got a real practical wayof looking things like I like like stupid

(11:09):
hats, all right. I know, I know there are religious outfits out
there, you know, like I'llgo ahead and have a go Catholics,
the giant pope hats. I don'tunderstand this function. There's form, there's
pomping circumstance, but when it boilsdown, I want something that's going to
accomplish something like keep my head dryin the in the rain, have a
bill on it to keep the sunlightout of it. Is there any for

(11:31):
or functionality to all these different layersand this this this very very large hoop
thing that I'm looking at, oris it purely a fashion statement? A
lot of it was fashion. Andbut let's say a hat or a bonnet.
A hat wouldn't give you the sunprotection. Women did not want to
have hands and because because that's sortof indicated that you were working class person

(11:58):
and you had to be outside inthe sun, and so hats were and
bonnets were made, not so muchthe hats, but the bonnets were made
to shield the face. And ineighteen sixties you even had a little skirt
like thing across the back to protectyour neck that was attached to this bonnet,
right, And so a lot ofit was just like today, styles

(12:24):
change and you know, suddenly we'reseeing wide legged pants again like we did
in the sixties sixties, and sothings kind of come full circle eventually.
But the some of these bonnets andhats can be absolutely ridiculous. Oh yeah,
I've been I've been to the KentuckyDerby, but I've been the derby

(12:46):
parties, and yeah, I've seenpictures some crazy, crazy hats, which
is why I go back to myHM that I wonder why it's like that
I can make fun of modern fashion. I can look back in history and
say, you know, why,why in the hell did you go through
that much hat? So there's noadditional benefit functionally speaking, it's not like
you're doing it for warmth. It'sall about style and to get this style,

(13:07):
like you point out, there's alot of things going on underneath that
you got to build in order toget to the final product. But you
get to learn about that tonight.Just a little look at history. It's
the history come to life with theladies living history. I'm sure you are
looking for additional members, I presume, Sandy, Oh, yes, anytime

(13:28):
we function as accurately as possible asfar as our clothing goes. We use
accurate dress patterns, We use asclose as possible to the fabrics that we
can get that we're available at thattime. We're quite particular about that,
and we've gone to conferences, we'vedone workshops, we've brought in speakers all

(13:52):
for us to learn and widen ourknowledge of the nineteenth century. Well,
that's wonderful. I'm sure it's gonnabe a great presentation tonight. You can
either show up at two twenty fiveNorth on Boulevard and see these beautiful gowns
and learn all about the history tonightseven pm. You got to register,
though, and I will encourage youto get over to empower you America dot

(14:13):
org. It's a really easy wayto register, whether you're attending in person
or want to register to attend virtually, which you can do log in from
your home and you can see theladies through your device. Just go to
empower you America dot or to doeither one of those, and I'll encourage
my listeners to do that. It'svery all fun talking to you, Sandy,
and I wish you the best ofluck and good luck to your organization
and thanks for what you're doing.Thank you. Glad you learned something I

(14:33):
do every day. Sandy, andthis was the hour of power for me
to learn. Thanks very much.I enjoyed the conversation a twenty If you
have KRC detalk stations, stick around. Speaking of women, Isabelle Brown's going
to join us the end of thealphabet. How gen Z can save America
that's gonna be an interesting one that'llbe up next. I gotta mention plumb

(14:54):
Tye Plumbing. It's always plumbing doneright, proudly serving Kentucky Sincinny Dayton area
plumbing is Listen. You gotta havegreat plumbers on your side. Their mission
to provide you with the truly exceptionalplumbing experience you deserve a plus with a
better business bureau. You know it'sdrain season. Yeah, apparently springtime you
get a lot of drain problems andthey are experts at dealing with issues concerning
drainage. So if you've got alittle problem with that, give them a

(15:18):
call because they're the right they're theexperts exceptional customer services. What you get