Official Newspaper of Eddy County since 1883
Official Newspaper of Eddy County since 1883
Laura Stone was married to Samuel Peabody in 1861. Together they raised four children, all of whom were born in Canada. The family settled in Munster Township in the 1890s. The 1920 census indicates that the widowed Laura Peabody spent her later years living in New Rockford with daughter and son-in-law Mary and Horace Clark and granddaughter, also named Laura. It was this granddaughter, Laura Clark, who donated several of her grandmother's items including lace collars, delicate scarves and a hand-embroidered apron to the Eddy County Museum. Courtesy photo.
The details of the lacework on Laura Peabody's scarf suggests that fashion was of great importance to some of the women who settled in Eddy County. Such artifacts can help shape our understanding of just how much cultural and economic diversity existed among early residents. Courtesy photo.
I must confess working as the archivist at the Eddy County Museum has been one of my most favorite positions I've ever held. That's a tough call to make considering I've waited tables at a Colorado mountain resort, cleaned thousands of Late Woodland artifacts from one of the largest prehistoric settlement sites in North America, curated faunal specimens at Southern Illinois University, taught college level classes and written for the New Rockford Transcript.
My role as an archivist began in the fall of 2016, when then Eddy County Museum approached me about some data entry work. The role of the Eddy County Museum archivist was relatively new and was created under the leadership of Jessica Hawkes thanks to grant funding from the North Dakota State Historical Society. While she and other volunteers diligently recorded the contents of the Hulbert Schoolhouse and Brantford Depot, my job consisted of entering these records into the archival software and populating the website at eddycounty.catalogaccess.com.
Before I even began the data entry, I sat down with a spreadsheet of more than 3,000 items and began to look for patterns. Patterns I did find, albeit they were surprising. I was expecting a lot of farm implements and taxidermy creatures, and while those things were certainly present on the list so were many delicate, feminine items.
I clearly recall the epiphany I had while entering data on the artifacts that Laura Clark donated in the memory of her Grandmother Peabody. The collection included daguerreotypes as well as cabinet cards, white lace collars and ornate scarves, most of which date back to the 1890s.
This small collection of items was just the beginning of a pattern I saw over and over again. The 1890s were a time when women used parasols, wore corsets and made their wedding dresses by hand. Men wore derby hats, donned waistcoats and carried pocket watches. Based on the evidence it seemed that many early residents of Eddy County were connected to society and culture at large by keeping up with fashion.
Soon I began to see the early days of Eddy County in a different light. This was a diverse place, and the artifacts tell us that the early settlers of Eddy County were far from isolated. They were connected to neighbors, through churches and via school. They had picnics and special gatherings. They engaged in commerce on the main streets and corresponded with friends and family via letters and postcards. Their backgrounds might have been diverse, and they might have spoken different languages, but these people were connected in ways us modern folk may never understand.
