HATMAKING IN EARLY PIONEER DAYS

Those seen in this picture are left to right:
Ella Candland, Johanna M. Hafen, Mina Bjelke, Bertie M. Eatinger, and Tina Nelson


By Wilhelmina H.M. Ericksen 1928 (Book of Mt. Pleasant)

A Becoming Hat adds much to the appearance of a lady, and emphasizes her good grooming. This fact was realized in pioneer days, even as it is at the present, but there are many difficulties to be overcome at that time in the art of millinery, which present day hat makers know nothing about.

Many materials, available now (1928), were unknown at that time. In fact, straw for the summer hats and old velvet, silk, felt or wool goods for the winter bonnets, with trimmings of the same material or dyed chicken feathers and home-made flowers were about the limit of their millinery supplies.

A millinery shop, in those days, was not just a place where ladies, young and old (could try) on hats which had been manufactured in some distant city, (or) until they found the most becoming one and bought it. It was not a shop where they could go and select a becoming hat shape; and order it trimmed according to (their own) fancy. The pioneer milliner gathered her raw materials and proceeded with much painstaking and tedious labor to manufacture both hat shapes and trimmings.

Mt. Pleasant pioneer milliners were Mrs. Marie Jacobsen, Mrs. Ida C. Larsen, and Mrs. M.F.C. Morrison. In the early (1870’s), Mrs. Louise Aldrich did much of the straw making and taught a number of young women the art of braiding the straw and making the trimmings.

While their efforts produced hats rather crude when compared with the finished bonnets of today, yet they developed a great deal of skill and artistry along this line and completely satisfied the desires of themselves and their less gifted sisters for attractive head adornment.