Finding ways to recreate history through the stories of women is a widespread problem among museum curators and history enthusiasts, particularly in light of how rarely women are mentioned in historical documents.
With this in mind, Dollie Boyd, director of museums for Tusculum College was recently published in an online blog for the American Association of State and Local History on the topic of “5 Ways to Get a Woman Out of the Kitchen.”
The blog submission was requested by AASLH after Boyd presented at a summer conference for the Tennessee Association of Museums.
“When I first came to the Doak House Museum, one of my first tasks was to learn the tour script. The couple who built the home in 1830 were strict Calvinist Presbyterians – Rev. Samuel Witherspoon Doak and his wife Sarah McEwen Doak,” said Boyd. “The tour script covered Rev. Doak’s education, teaching career, ministry, the ledgers he left behind and family folklore. Mrs. Doak was mentioned only in relationship to the 13 children she bore.”
Boyd began to consider how to interpret the life of Mrs. Doak with a measure of fairness and to look at ways to give her equal time in the tour script.
“Despite the lack of historical data on her specifically, there were other pieces and clues in the history that we could use to find her,” said Boyd.
Tips for better depiction of the lives of historical women addressed in the article include considering important dates, reviewing correspondence, talking to historians about the period, studying the home environment and conducting archeological digs. The complete article may be found at http://blogs.aaslh.org/5-ways-to-get-a-woman-out-of-the-kitchen/.