The Market Square Bulletin
Germantown Historical Society Features
We’ve Got Hats! Quaker Bonnets, Victorian Hats, and More!
Meredith Boyle, Cataloging Project Intern, examines a hat from the Germantown Historical Society archives.
Over the past several months, the Germantown Historical Society has undertaken a new project: a comprehensive inventory of the museum’s impressive and extensive historic hat collection. As a significant component of Germantown’s historic costume holdings, the collection encompasses hundreds of examples of headwear, ranging from early nineteenth-century Quaker bonnets to ornate Victorian styles and 1960s pillbox hats manufactured locally, right in Germantown. My name is Meredith Boyle, and I am currently conducting this project in my capacity as the Cataloging Project Intern at Historic Germantown, with the generous support of the Colonial Dames of America Chapter II.
Prior to this project, nearly all documentation related to the historic hat collection existed solely in paper form. Moreover, many of these records contained incomplete information about the hats they were meant to reflect. A central aim of the current initiative is to work towards the digitization of all associated records, a process that will not only enhance the standardization and organization of the collection, but also expand public access to its contents. Through the Germantown Historical Society’s website, visitors will be able to explore and research the hats—along with other objects in the collection—as they are progressively digitized.
In addition to digitizing already existing records, a key component of the project involves updating and expanding the information associated with each piece of headwear. As the collection is systematically reviewed and catalogued, detailed descriptions, measurements, and provenance research is compiled to create comprehensive, updated records for every hat. Each item is also photographed as part of this process, and these images are available for viewing on the Historical Society’s website.
Having only started work on this inventory in early October, I have already managed to completely document over 400 hats in the collection. It has truly been an exciting project thus far. Given the nature of the records prior to this project, opening each hat box typically comes with a surprise—whether it’s finding a rare, well-preserved Quaker bonnet from the 1830s or pieces developed by the same design house that was commissioned to make the hats for Gone With the Wind (1939).
Every hat I have managed to catalog and research so far has been useful in creating a more complex and detailed visual and design history of Germantown and Philadelphia, and more broadly American fashion history. Numerous hats in the collection are directly from the historic department stores of Philadelphia—including Wanamaker’s, Strawbridge & Clothier, the Blum Store, and Gimbels. They speak to the extensive commercial history of Philadelphia. There are also many hats that come from small, independent milliners and designers across Philadelphia, and especially Germantown. Below is an image of a wide, women’s lace and horsehair hat from the 1950s—made by the “Thoma Sisters,” a millinery that used to be located at 5279 Germantown Avenue, a building right down the street from where the Germantown Historical Society stands today.
Women’s hat, c. 1950s. Lace, horsehair, wire, velvet, grosgrain ribbon. Thoma Sisters, Germantown, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
Close-up of tag from Women’s hat, c. 1950s. Lace, horsehair, wire, velvet, grosgrain ribbon. Thoma Sisters, Germantown, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
A notable part of Historic Germantown’s historic costume collection is the amount of Quaker clothing it includes. Quaker clothing and headwear, especially well-preserved headwear, are difficult to find and Germantown has one of the largest known collections of Quaker wear. I have sorted through various examples of Quaker headwear, and I surprisingly have found several surviving, intact examples of early to mid-nineteenth century Quaker bonnets. Below is an example of a Quaker wedding bonnet made around 1855.
Women’s Quaker wedding bonnet, c. 1855. Silk, buckram. and netting. Germantown, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
Some of my personal favorite finds in the hat collection are the more elaborate, fanciful hats of the mid to late nineteenth century. For example, the straw hat below has incredibly unique ornamentation and trimmings. I have yet to find or see another hat with the same decorative ‘ear’-shaped trimmings.
Women’s hat, c. 1873. Straw, velvet, net, wire, and silk. Chestnut Street, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Front view.
Women’s hat, c. 1873. Straw, velvet, net, wire, and silk. Chestnut Street, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Back view.
Please feel welcome to explore the digitized collections as they gradually become more complete. Having only worked with the hat collections for just over a month, I have already found many examples of headwear that reflect and inform the history of Germantown, Philadelphia, and America from the eighteenth century to the 1970s. I am excited to see what else the hat collection boasts, as well as what the rest of the historic costume collection holds once it is given the same treatment.
Prior to my internship at Germantown, I graduated last year with an MA in Art History from the Courtauld Institute of Art, where my concentration was eighteenth and nineteenth-century circum-Atlantic visual culture. Before that I graduated with dual BA degrees from the University of Massachusetts Amherst in Political Science and Art History. Throughout my studies I have looked at the crossroads between the visual and the political, particularly when it comes to clothing and headwear. During my graduate studies I completed a research project on headwear around the Atlantic during the long Revolutionary period. I have held several internships in museum education, curation, and collections management, but none have offered this much of an opportunity to work directly with such an extensive collection of hats and clothing. I look forward to continuing my work at Historic Germantown and am eager to discover what else exists in the hat collection!
A Talk with the Artists Behind “American Mythologies” at the Germantown Historical Society
Tom Judd and Mark Stockton are nationally recognized artists working in Philadelphia and collaborators on “American Mythologies,” the second contemporary art exhibit at the Germantown Historical Society galleries in 2025. On display from October 3 through December 20, 2025, the show reframes familiar images of historical figures, especially presidents such as George Washington and Abraham Lincoln, placing them in new contexts, calling into question the prevalence and use of presidential image-making.
Tom Judd
Mark Stockton
Both artists work in the same area of exploring objects and persons who have a visual currency that at times questions our usual manner of digesting them. They ran into each other at shows and discovered that “we lurk in the same world.”
Karen: How was it to create a show in the Germantown Historical Society space, using some of the GHS collections?
Tom: “We started honing in on our idea for the show, took our idea to the Germantown Historical Society, and once we started to talk and work and look around at… the connections, if you will, to Germantown, there were a lot… Washington stayed across the street.”
Karen: How did you feel encountering the Historical Society and its collection?
Tom: “It was a curation once we got into the space. We brought everything we had and started putting things from our collection and the society’s collection together.”
Mark: “Certain things just felt right. We would come up intermittently…”
Tom: “The first thing that caught my eye was the wallpaper in the museum’s hallway. I photographed it, printed it, and pasted it to a panel. I played with it and the painting told me when it was done. I didn’t do it for the show. I did it months before, and then it turns out it was perfect for the show. So, that’s kind of how this whole thing came together. The hallway wallpaper kind of has that blue, and a patina of old, like, vintage quality stuff, and I think the leaks and the stains and other things around this sort of colonial classical appearance and columns, were really interesting…GHS became, literally, an actor in the play, so to speak.”
Tom and Mark recalled how they found the unflattering portrait of George Washington: “We went into this vault at the society where all these paintings are stored, and that’s where we found this insane portrait of Washington in a crazy frame. That was, again, one of those unexpected little treats. GHS offered to let us look into certain areas where we found the unexpected. It went into the show because of the odd nature of how we portray our leaders.”
"Lincoln-Shattered", Mark Stockton, 2023, graphite on Arches, 30 x 20
"Buffalo Solider," Tom Judd, 2023, mixed media on panel, 36 x 32
Mark: “Nixon is there in the show for the contrast with the colonial images. There is a dialogue about mythology and martyrdom. The images and empty portrait of Kennedy are there to stand in contrast with our current predicament.”
From the GHS collection, the artists adopted a hooked rug, various presidential souvenirs, a great coat, and a display case that was suitable for displaying the historic documents integral to the show. Some of the show is arranged to echo the classical look of the room with the white arches in it.
Tom: “Germantown Historical Society becomes part of the show—it becomes an actor in the piece. It is the perfect place for a show about exciting contradictions!”
Karen: What are the direct or indirect connections between your work and Germantown history?
Mark: “(I) just love that connection point of the story of Washington traveling to Germantown to have (his) portrait made…we loved the Gilbert Stuart connection with Germantown .”
Karen: “Gilbert Stuart’s time in his Germantown studio was productive.
Mark: “The Stuart portrait is the most trafficked portrait of Washington, and it is the image on the U.S. dollar bill. Stuart painted George Washington over eighty times, two-thirds of these portraits from life… (he) called it his “$100 portrait,” because he would make money by producing these to produce his other works, and, you know, he was kind of a portraitist of the elite.”
Mark overlaid Washington’s left eye in the Stuart portrait with a copy of the engraved eye on the dollar bill in a layered message about branding, currency, and visual reproduction.
Tom’s new piece for the show is the Washington family portrait. He took the familiar image of the Washington family and altered the placement of color, suggesting a completely new way of looking at the portrait, with the focus on the African American servant on the right.
Tom: “The show started to be about reproduction of an image that becomes currency and the way people would promote the presidency.”
Mark: (Stuart and other artists continually reproduced these images) …“just one after another, paintings, etchings. Before we had ability to (massively and cheaply) reproduce stuff, this is what people would do They would take a successful composition, and they just repeat it, and paint it, and… sure enough, when I showed up at the museum, I look across the street at the [Deshler-Morris] house where he used to stay, there’s the family portrait, mounted on the façade of the house.”
Mark: “Germantown is a perfect place for the show.”
Karen: How do you see your work resonating with current times?
Mark: “Presidency and image–There’s a pendulum that goes with it. And I think, you know, Lincoln was a 50-50 president in his day. And so much of these bits of history kind of hinged on these very significant but small percentages of people and moments.
CONSORTIUM PROJECT UPDATE: SCIENCE SLEUTHS 2025
Students pour water over a model waterwheel during a Science Sleuths Hydrology lesson at Historic RittenhouseTown.
Central to Historic Germantown’s mission is connecting our consortium sites and providing opportunities for collaboration, interaction, and community engagement. Whether it’s our HG stamp rallies where visitors go from site to site in search of clues and noteworthy finds, or our recent OnePass pilot that offered, literally, one pass to a several of our consortium sites, HG is continually exploring and experimenting with avenues for connecting our sites so collectively we stand as a stronger whole in creating opportunities in our communities.
This year, in 2025, a noteworthy multi-site effort has been the new Science Sleuths program. Science Sleuths brings together five Historic Germantown partner sites – Awbury Arboretum, Grumblethorpe, Historic Fairhill, Historic Rittenhousetown, and Stenton — to offer hands-on field studies for middle school learners.
Driven by the desire to serve our community through our sites and offer educational opportunities for youth, initially funded by grants from the Institute of Museum and Library Sciences, Connelly Foundation, and generous donors, HG has created a comprehensive, STEM-focused academic experience. Science Sleuths provides high-quality, immersive, standards-based science to schools in Philadelphia. Pairing hands-on science with visits to significant historic sites leverages the power of place-based learning and our city’s rich cultural heritage.
Whether it’s learning to test for pH, nitrates and phosphate in the Wingohocking Creek at Awbury Arboretum, visiting Grumblethorpe where a family quarantined during the 1793 yellow fever epidemic and then learning to read maps and charts showing how an epidemic can move across a population, or spending time at Historic Fairhill examining the effects of green spaces and tree canopy on urban areas, there’s no doubt students are engaging in the type of hands on experiential learning a step beyond the traditional classroom.
A student uses a pipette to extract strawberry DNA during a genetics lesson at Stenton.
This year we completed our pilot program, serving 175 students from middle school classes in four Philadelphia schools. Assessment of the pilot reveals that all teachers agreed that Science Sleuths increases students’ knowledge of program units’ science content and topics.
Students had some rave reviews as well.
“The Science Sleuths trip to the Historic Rittenhouse opened my eyes to many new things. I loved the experience because it was very hands-on…I would love to go back to learn even more,”
said Monae, a 7th Grade Student at the John F. McCloskey School.
Science Sleuths will continue in 2026. Learn more here.