I have managed to collect the most telling of the vintage photographs found in our family attic into a Power Point show (viewed the same way a slide show can be, via a projector). I am honored to have been asked by the Sandwich Women’s Club to present this collection at their November 12 (2012) meeting, 7 PM, at the historic Bee Hive Tavern. I’ll be focusing on the domestic experience of women on Cape Cod in the 1880′s. As they say, the past is a foreign country. The thoughts, assumptions and societal mores of our great great grandparents are interesting, instructional, and foundational to our own thinking. I thank my own ancestors for leaving me such graphic clues to their life challenges and triumphs.
The ability to view actual images of moments in daily life helped me immensely in my writing process. I was able to imagine the hours of a day, and how quickly a day would go by for a Cape Cod housewife of the 1880′s given the amount of tasks and daily chores she would need to complete in order to be a respectable member of her community. A good education was provided by the Wellfleet High School, a small waist was accomplished via corset, and then this lovely educated female was expected to garden, launder, cook, put food by, keep house, keep accounts, and guard the health and morality of her household.
