The picturesque Beckwith Ranch, formerly called the Waverly Ranch by the Beckwiths themselves, remains a historic time capsule for the Custer County community.
From 1869 through 1907, the Beckwith family built one of the most successful cattle ranching dynasties in Colorado. Yet, after 40 years, their dynasty was sold off by Elsie Beckwith after the passing of her husband, Elton Beckwith – the last-living brother of the ranch’s operation. Many ranching families called the ranch and mansion their own, but the property was eventually abandoned and in serious decline by the early 1990s.
In 1997, Linda Kaufman established the Friends of Beckwith Ranch as a nonprofit and served as its first Board President with the mission to restore and care for the Beckwith Ranch house and buildings donated by Paul and Phyllis Seegers. The Ranch’s histories began to unfold carefully and precisely as valuable advocates and historians restored walls and fostered educational programs.
Holly King, a self-proclaimed “history fanatic” and dedicated volunteer for the Beckwith Ranch as well as the Ranch Advisory Board’s Grant Acquisitions and Wedding and Private Events planner, has spent the past few months creating a new exhibition which is featured upstairs at the Beckwith Ranch mansion.
At the beginning of March, the Molly Brown House Museum in Denver reached out to the Beckwith Ranch to let them know they were letting go of decommissioned clothing. When King got the call, she said she was “racing up there” and “having a ball,” along with Courtney Miller, the current Board President, and his wife Lin. “I was so fascinated by it, I ended up going back the next weekend,” King explained.
In all, they brought back 60 to 70 wardrobe artifacts, including clothes, shoes, fans, gloves, hairpins, and capes. Each piece dates back to the 1870s through the 1920s – the kinds of fashion that likely filled the ranch in its prime. What excited King the most were the gloves and fans because of the social signals they communicated in the late nineteenth century. “Women were always chaperoned. They weren’t allowed to be in the same room with a man, unchaperoned,” King said. “The young people developed their own communication style, and it could be through the fans, or it could be through the gloves.”
Glove etiquette was often used to express untold feelings, whether positive or negative, in a discreet manner. Upstairs in what would have been the master bedroom, King has displayed several thoughtfully presented glass casings of gloves and fans along with the following list (not complete) from Henry Wehman’s, The Mystery of Love, Courtship, and Marriage Explained (1890).
Glove Flirtation:
– Twirling around the fingers: Be careful, we are watched.
– Using them as a fan: Introduce me to your company.
– Biting the tips: I wish to be rid of you very soon.
– Striking them over the hand: I am displeased.
– Striking them over the shoulder: follow me.
King wanted to bring back plenty of hatpins from the museum as well. “In Europe,” she explained, “it got to the point where women were using them as weapons. So, in many places…women weren’t allowed to have hatpins on trains.” On the bedside table to the left of the master bedroom bed, a styrofoam mannequin’s head holds 12 hat pins, all different shapes and colors.
The plaque accompanying them reads, “around 6-8 inches (15-20 cm) in length…hatpins were sometimes used by women to defend themselves against assault. Ordinances were passed from 1910 that limited the length of hatpins (half an inch beyond the crown of the hat) in Chicago, Milwaukee, Pittsburgh, Baltimore, New Orleans, among other cities, as there was a concern they might be used as weapons. Also by the 1910s, ordinances were passed requiring hatpin tips to be covered so as not to injure people accidentally.”
Referred to as the “mauve decade,” the end of the nineteenth century saw a rise in mauve-colored fashion – catty-corner to the hatpin display rests a mauve full-length winter dress with a black cape. One aspect of the late 1890s which King discovered while researching the artifacts was the importance of capes. “Capes kept their clothes clean. There was no such thing as a dry cleaner,” King said.
Other pieces of clothing in the master bedroom are also thoughtfully displayed: a pristine opera cape which King “can’t believe what kind of condition it is in.” Vests, petticoats, and shoes – incredibly narrow shoes. Additionally, just down the hallway in what would have been Velma’s nursery (the Beckwiths only child), there are children’s clothes hung against the wall and tiny slippers. When speaking about the children’s clothes, King said, “it’s all hand stitched. So, it was just a little coat, and somebody actually went in…and actually made button holes.”
Eager to display an impactful historical exhibit, King has carefully filled each upstairs room with dressed mannequins and display casings featuring an array of artifacts. In Velma’s room there are two more “casual” dresses displayed – a buttery-yellow prairie dress common for this area as well as a textured pastel pink day dress. When King went to order mannequins to display the collection of artifacts, she ordered the smallest size she could find. However, because the clothing is so small none of the clothes fit, so King had to work creatively by using clips up the back to make the mannequins work.
While it was unusual to have closets, Velma’s room had one, and the wallpaper is original to the room. King expressed another interesting thing about the late 1800s: the wallpaper. Arsenic was used in wallpaper to keep its colors vivid – yet, because clothes were hung against the wall on hooks rather than along a rod, wardrobe style, the clothing hung directly against the arsenic before being worn. Therefore, illness or death often followed until people realized the wallpaper’s threat.
King displays a corset and a pair of bloomers on the bed in Velma’s room – both incredibly small. Elegance was most important, and outfits were intentionally impractical. “By the time I went through the process of realizing all the parts and pieces that went with the clothing, I mean, the clothing was coming in in serious poundage,” King exclaimed. Women wore stockings, bloomers, corsets, full-length slips, petticoats, and a lower back bun which tied in the front around the waist to keep the back of the dress up. Then there was the skirt and the blouse and then the jacket. “So at that point, as I was lifting these things,” King said. “I think I’m almost hitting about 18 to 20 pounds.”
In the foyer at the top of the stairs, there is a wedding dress from 1910 – while the current exhibit is intentionally from the 1890s, King said she put out the wedding dress in preparation for an upcoming wedding. “I have probably four more wedding dresses, and they’re so complicated in terms of trying to figure out how they go,” King said. “I just one day go, ‘I’ll think about this later. This is just too much.’” Made out of a combination of silk and satin, the wedding dresses are incredibly fragile and the shoes which accompanied them are remarkably slim.
Adjacent to the 1910 wedding dress, hangs a bathrobe which, “I didn’t realize until I got it home that it wasn’t finished,” King said. Sections of lace along the bodice are not connected and the sleeves are completely different – the fabric, an aged white. The sign to the right of the mannequin reads, “Bathrobe that was under construction but never finished. 1890.”
Lastly, King acquired umbrellas too, “Some of them are so fragile, I don’t even dare [open them],” King said. For the time period, women never wanted to be tan – they kept their hands covered as well as the rest of their skin. “You just made sure that no sun touched you,” King said.
With enough artifacts of clothing to put out another entire display later this summer, King will swap out the current exhibit of clothes from the 1890s with those from the 1910s and 1915s. The clothes are kept in the larder, the old refrigerator room, in acid-free boxes packed in acid-free tissue paper. Only if the upstairs level of the Beckwith Ranch mansion becomes too hot will she unexpectedly pack up the exhibition; otherwise, mansion-goers can expect an exhibition to be in place through October.
With a guided listening tour or with Beckwith Ranch’s enthusiastic and well-informed volunteers, the decommissioned Molly Brown House Museum clothes are worth visiting, and be sure to read the rest of the Glove Flirtation guide or even The Secret Language of Victorian-Era Hand Fans also displayed, for you might just want to implement a secret way of societal communication in today’s time.
Brett LeVan
