33. 19th Century Dress

According to family history, this cotton dress, made c.1850, first belonged to Martha Ellen Talburt Howard (1822-1860) of Washington. It is composed of a bodice, skirt, and ruffled fichu (a scarf to cover the neckline). Those components and a hoop skirt were worn by the donor, Martha Howard’s great-granddaughter, for a Fourth of July parade in Takoma Park in the early 1930s. The family, which had moved from Washington to Takoma Park in 1928, had misplaced the hoop skirt before the 1992 donation of the dress.

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