Mudd House Victorian Christmas

[Thomas Kearney]

https://www.flickr.com/photos/86528312@N...1480839310

I added some more pics to the album. Thanks Roger and Eva for the kind words!

[Eva Elisabeth]

Thanks again - I envy your bright blue sky, Thomas (another reason to be there)!

[Carolyn Mitchell]

(12-06-2015 08:20 AM)Thomas Kearney Wrote:  https://www.flickr.com/photos/86528312@N...1480839310

I added some more pics to the album. Thanks Roger and Eva for the kind words!

Thanks for sharing your wonderful photos!

[L Verge]

I'm sending thanks also because I have not been able to visit the Mudd Christmas show for years thanks to my problems with mobility.

The Christmas displays at Surratt House opened this past Wednesday, and we have already had good crowds before our main event this coming Saturday, December 12. Our theme this year is "All Dolled Up," and boy are we ever! Two of our volunteers put together their fantastic collection of dolls and antique toys, and they are tastefully displayed in eight of our ten rooms in the historic house. (We decided the tavern and the modern bathroom did not need any...)

We have a table-top tree, much like the one of Victoria's and Albert's that was publicized in newspapers of the late-1850s (with a bucket of water and long-handled sponge to catch any fire that the candles might ignite); our stockings are hung from the mantle with care, and seasonal foods are displayed everywhere. The latter include Maryland beaten biscuits, Southern Maryland stuffed ham, oysters, a snowball cake, ribbon candy, peanut brittle, and marzipan. On Saturday, our guests will be offered cider and cookies at the end of their tour. And, our volunteers will get to cut and enjoy a fresh snowball cake.

Upstairs bedrooms hold more dolls and toys, including a rare Noah's Ark. During the 1800s, it was often frowned upon to let children play with toys on Sundays. The one exception was a toy Noah's Ark complete with "passengers," since it told a Biblical story.

In a small room over our kitchen wing, we created a domestic slave quarters many years ago to tell the story of the one household slave that we know the Surratts had from 1859 on -- Aunt Rachel. A traditional gift for slaves at Christmas was a bundle of new or slightly used clothing. We have such displayed on Aunt Rachel's bed, and our collection of dolls includes a number of rare black dolls from the period.

And yes, I will try to get photos posted of some of the displays. We also give our visitors a booklet on Christmas of Yesteryear. If you are interested in receiving one, please let me know at laurie.verge@pgparks.com. If there are any left over, I will be happy to send you a copy via U.S. Mail.

[PaigeBooth]

Beautiful pictures, Thomas; thank you for sharing them!

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Laurie-- that sounds wonderful. Please be sure to post some pictures.

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(12-06-2015 06:01 AM)Eva Elisabeth Wrote:  Thanks, Thomas - love the photo of the living room. The Xmas tree looks great, and also all the poinsettias! I wonder when the first poinsettias came up for Xmas. (They need less than 12 hours of daylight for several weeks to produce these red leaves btw!)

Eva-- I found an interesting article about the history of poinsettias that you might enjoy reading here: http://www.proflowers.com/blog/history-o...poinsettia

[Thomas Kearney]

(12-06-2015 01:07 PM)L Verge Wrote:  I'm sending thanks also because I have not been able to visit the Mudd Christmas show for years thanks to my problems with mobility.

The Christmas displays at Surratt House opened this past Wednesday, and we have already had good crowds before our main event this coming Saturday, December 12. Our theme this year is "All Dolled Up," and boy are we ever! Two of our volunteers put together their fantastic collection of dolls and antique toys, and they are tastefully displayed in eight of our ten rooms in the historic house. (We decided the tavern and the modern bathroom did not need any...)

We have a table-top tree, much like the one of Victoria's and Albert's that was publicized in newspapers of the late-1850s (with a bucket of water and long-handled sponge to catch any fire that the candles might ignite); our stockings are hung from the mantle with care, and seasonal foods are displayed everywhere. The latter include Maryland beaten biscuits, Southern Maryland stuffed ham, oysters, a snowball cake, ribbon candy, peanut brittle, and marzipan. On Saturday, our guests will be offered cider and cookies at the end of their tour. And, our volunteers will get to cut and enjoy a fresh snowball cake.

Upstairs bedrooms hold more dolls and toys, including a rare Noah's Ark. During the 1800s, it was often frowned upon to let children play with toys on Sundays. The one exception was a toy Noah's Ark complete with "passengers," since it told a Biblical story.

In a small room over our kitchen wing, we created a domestic slave quarters many years ago to tell the story of the one household slave that we know the Surratts had from 1859 on -- Aunt Rachel. A traditional gift for slaves at Christmas was a bundle of new or slightly used clothing. We have such displayed on Aunt Rachel's bed, and our collection of dolls includes a number of rare black dolls from the period.

And yes, I will try to get photos posted of some of the displays. We also give our visitors a booklet on Christmas of Yesteryear. If you are interested in receiving one, please let me know at laurie.verge@pgparks.com. If there are any left over, I will be happy to send you a copy via U.S. Mail.

Thanks everyone for all the kind words. Laurie, I'll be there Saturday. I'll be the schmuck dressed in the LL Bean sweater and Orioles Santa hat!

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(12-06-2015 02:46 PM)PaigeBooth Wrote:  Beautiful pictures, Thomas; thank you for sharing them!

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Laurie-- that sounds wonderful. Please be sure to post some pictures.

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(12-06-2015 06:01 AM)Eva Elisabeth Wrote:  Thanks, Thomas - love the photo of the living room. The Xmas tree looks great, and also all the poinsettias! I wonder when the first poinsettias came up for Xmas. (They need less than 12 hours of daylight for several weeks to produce these red leaves btw!)

Eva-- I found an interesting article about the history of poinsettias that you might enjoy reading here: http://www.proflowers.com/blog/history-o...poinsettia

Interesting article, as for the photos, I will have some up next Saturday.

[Eva Elisabeth]

(12-06-2015 02:46 PM)PaigeBooth Wrote:  Eva-- I found an interesting article about the history of poinsettias that you might enjoy reading here: http://www.proflowers.com/blog/history-o...poinsettia

Thanks, Page - very interesting! Btw, in German the poinsettia is called "Christmas star" ("Weihnachtsstern").

[RJNorton]

(12-06-2015 01:07 PM)L Verge Wrote:  I'm sending thanks also because I have not been able to visit the Mudd Christmas show for years thanks to my problems with mobility.

The Christmas displays at Surratt House opened this past Wednesday, and we have already had good crowds before our main event this coming Saturday, December 12. Our theme this year is "All Dolled Up," and boy are we ever! Two of our volunteers put together their fantastic collection of dolls and antique toys, and they are tastefully displayed in eight of our ten rooms in the historic house. (We decided the tavern and the modern bathroom did not need any...)

We have a table-top tree, much like the one of Victoria's and Albert's that was publicized in newspapers of the late-1850s (with a bucket of water and long-handled sponge to catch any fire that the candles might ignite); our stockings are hung from the mantle with care, and seasonal foods are displayed everywhere. The latter include Maryland beaten biscuits, Southern Maryland stuffed ham, oysters, a snowball cake, ribbon candy, peanut brittle, and marzipan. On Saturday, our guests will be offered cider and cookies at the end of their tour. And, our volunteers will get to cut and enjoy a fresh snowball cake.

Upstairs bedrooms hold more dolls and toys, including a rare Noah's Ark. During the 1800s, it was often frowned upon to let children play with toys on Sundays. The one exception was a toy Noah's Ark complete with "passengers," since it told a Biblical story.

In a small room over our kitchen wing, we created a domestic slave quarters many years ago to tell the story of the one household slave that we know the Surratts had from 1859 on -- Aunt Rachel. A traditional gift for slaves at Christmas was a bundle of new or slightly used clothing. We have such displayed on Aunt Rachel's bed, and our collection of dolls includes a number of rare black dolls from the period.

And yes, I will try to get photos posted of some of the displays. We also give our visitors a booklet on Christmas of Yesteryear. If you are interested in receiving one, please let me know at laurie.verge@pgparks.com. If there are any left over, I will be happy to send you a copy via U.S. Mail.

Many thanks to Laurie for sending some photos of the displays at Surratt House for Christmas:

Our snowball cake with visions of Victorian sugar plums dancing on the table in our family dining room

An oyster tree decoration in the public dining room to signify the importance of this crustacean to the economy of Maryland

An original Civil War-era dress

Note the Silent Witness doll and book (as in story from Appomattox)

A quilting bee in our sewing room

Boy dolls for little boys

Noah’s Ark, a favorite Victorian toy

A tribute to Teddy Roosevelt’s 20th-century bear on an 1890s hobby horse

Another view of our parlor

Appropriate tree for Civil War era with our lovely dolls beneath

Even dolls make cookies at Christmas

Kitchen toys to train little girls properly

Our snowball cake with visions of historic sugar plums dancing on the table in our family dining room

Meet Mr. and Mrs. Winterbottom

[Eva Elisabeth]

Wonderful photos, thanks for sharing and posting! So lovingly displayed and done - one can feel the atmosphere just from seeing the photos!

I have a question (and apologize in advance that I probably don't use as don't know the politically correct terms) - these black dolls, whose were they? Black childrens', white, or both? I assume toys were only for the super-rich (because even my mother's generation grew up greatly without any toys, in/after the war no one could afford).
I didn't have any dolls (not fluffy enough, I loved toy animals), so I am no expert, but seem to remember black dolls were absolutely "in" with other girls because they were so exotic. So I wonder about this.

[L Verge]

(12-12-2015 03:11 PM)Eva Elisabeth Wrote:  Wonderful photos, thanks for sharing and posting! So lovingly displayed and done - one can feel the atmosphere just from seeing the photos!

I have a question (and apologize in advance that I probably don't use as don't know the politically correct terms) - these black dolls, whose were they? Black childrens', white, or both? I assume toys were only for the super-rich (because even my mother's generation grew up greatly without any toys, in/after the war no one could afford).
I didn't have any dolls (not fluffy enough, I loved toy animals), so I am no expert, but seem to remember black dolls were absolutely "in" with other girls because they were so exotic. So I wonder about this.

Great question, Eva, and one that is answered in the exhibit booklet that we give to visitors - and which I will send to you. As to who played with these dolls, you can almost tell from the style of doll. Rag dolls and corn husk dolls were found in black and white households from the Atlantic coast to the prairie farms. One did not have to be rich to have dolls produced in their cultural style, and really the truly expensive dolls came after the Civil War era. Of course, they went to the Roosevelt and Vanderbilt layers of society.

The first black dolls were produced in Europe. And, this will make you happy, Eva, one of the major producers was Carl Bergner of Germany. He's famous for a three-face doll with one face a crying black child and the other two, happier white faces.

By 1892, Jumeau of Paris (one of the most famous dollmakers) advertised black and mulatto dolls with bisque heads. I think we can assume that these were produced for the white market and the more affluent African American families.

American manufacturers began including black dolls in their production lines in the early-1900s. Believe it or not, Madame Alexander dolls were around at this time (1910 and 1930) and produced black dolls.

I think it's safe to say that the style of the doll can tell you what level of society bought it. Also think about homemade dolls from nuts, wishbones, corncobs, etc.

[Eva Elisabeth]

Thank you so much, Laurie - for this fascinating reply as well as for the booklet I am looking forward to!!! I have never heard of Carl Bergner! Strangely he/his dolls seems better know if in England/the US, when I Googled "Carl Bergner Puppen" mainly English sites appeared.

[L Verge]

I forgot to put a caption on the very last photo. You were introduced to Mr. and Mrs. Winterbottom in the previous photo, and the last one shows Max the dog and a visiting lady seated on the other side of the tea table. There is another visitor who came unannounced and caused a stir. She is seen on the far left, posed in a side view. Her name is Mary Todd Lincoln.

Yes, it is a doll patterned after the First Lady, and there was even a hair style on these dolls reflective of Mrs. Lincoln's. Needless to say, an original MTL doll like this now commands a good price. We do have a close-up of this doll by herself, so I will try to post it later.

I should mention that the photo with Mr. & Mrs. Winterbottom shows a German feather tree (yes, made out of feathers) that would have been popular by the 1850s when German immigration brought the idea to America.

[Eva Elisabeth]

Please help with this, too - what is a snowball cake and which are the historic sugar plums (respectively what are sugar plums at all)? And what are the colorful bits in front of the cake?

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PS: Mary would love her doll likeness!

[L Verge]

(12-12-2015 07:32 PM)Eva Elisabeth Wrote:  Please help with this, too - what is a snowball cake and which are the historic sugar plums (respectively what are sugar plums at all)? And what are the colorful bits in front of the cake?

---

PS: Mary would love her doll likeness!

Sorry that I missed these questions last night when the thread turned back to the Mudd House Christmas.

A Southern Snowball Cake is nothing but a large coconut cake, but many ladies of the house prided themselves in the quality of their recipes for it. It was traditionally three layers of tasty, yellow cake frosted with a boiled, white icing, and the freshly shaved coconut meat was sprinkled on the cake as the icing cooled. A good Southerner would never mix the coconut in with the icing!

Some bakers would also shave the layers once piled on each other , but before icing, in order to achieve as much of a ball shape as possible. There's a recipe for such a cake in the booklet I'm sending.

The dishes around the cake are filled with candies that date back to the Civil War era: hard candies mainly, like raspberry balls, peanut brittle, ribbon candy, hard candy sticks. We have decorated around the cake with ivy and silk roses.

Roses are a symbol of the Virgin Mary, so Victorians used fabric roses from millinery stores or fashioned roses out of crepe paper and used them for Christmas decorations. We have a boxwood tree on the hall table that is decorated with such roses, sprigs of baby's breath, little red bows, and mercury glass balls.

As for the sugar plums, we found out that that is now considered an obsolete term. Some sources refer to them as "comfits." There is no fruit in a sugar plum, so scratch that idea. The "antique" sugar plum was layer upon layer of sugar coating around a middle of seed or nut. Caraway and Cardamon seeds were often used as well as almonds. Today's Jordan almonds might come close to being the sugar plums of today. Jelly beans and jawbreakers are sort of the same idea.

The "plum" probably referred to the size and shape of the confection. However, "plum" is also a slang word for something good, such as a prize or a "plum assignment."

[Eva Elisabeth]

Thank you so much, Laurie - this was so interesting to learn!!! You made my mouth water as for the cake - I love all things coconut (have never "encountered" a coconut cake - sounds delicious)! And I just knew the "sugar plum fairy": http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Nuk5Sknh1rY