This picture showed up unbidden in my Facebook feed and unlike the many unsolicited ads that come my way, I was happy to see it. I knew nothing about the brave Revolutionary War heroine, Sybil Ludington. Her ride through Putnam County, New York to rally troops against the British rivaled that of Paul Revere.
The photo shows members of the Daughters of the American Revolution, who solicited the statue, at its installation in Carmel Hamlet, New York. The women range from old to young, with a remarkable collection of outfits among them.
The oldest looking woman, second on the right, has on clothes that give a nod to the early decades of the twentieth century. The skirt is long and she wears a man’s tie, a common look for the feminist inclined in that era. The woman third from the left has one a suit that might be from the late 1930s or early 1940s, with a boxy fit and broad shoulders. Her small “doll hat,” worn at an angle, comes from that time period. The young girl on the far left wears the common shirtwaist style of the fifties, complete a full skirt probably held up by many petticoats.
That leaves three older women (second left, fourth left, first right) wearing clothes that are right in style. Did they buy their outfits specifically for this special occasion? Note that two are without hats, and one even without gloves. The codes defining “well dressed” were changing.
