Episodes Around: 18850225

  1. The founding of the Women's Exchange for Women's Work in Charleston
    date 1885map CHARLESTON, South Carolinatags Women

    The Women's Exchange for Women's Work was founded in Charleston in 1885 with the intention of helping the “educated poor' become self-sufficient. Numerous goods were sold there, including foods, flowers, and various crafts. So that it would not be a “humiliating charity,' they placed a 10% surcharge on the goods. A similar exchange was soon opened in New Orleans. These...

  2. The Double Hip “Ironsides” Corset shapes American Women
    date 1885map NEW YORK, New Yorktags fashion, corsets, women's rights

    Victorian women liked their corsets tight.  If a person looked up and down any busy street in the late nineteenth century, they saw townswomen that struck dramatic silhouettes.  The corset, a tight fitting, boned garment, restricted movement and reshaped the natural position of organs inside a women's body.  A trade card from 1885 featured a corset typical of the period dubbed the Double Hip...

  3. Ulysses S. Grant Pens His Memoirs
    date 1885 to 1886map ALLEGANY, New Yorktags Civil War, historical memory

    An inquirer once asked Grant about meeting General Lee at Appomattox: "What were your thoughts, General, in that sublime moment when you knew that at least Lee would surrender, and the heavens of your glory where about to open?" Grant's only answer to that was: "My dirty boots and wearing no sword." General Lee was dressed in a new uniform and sword by his side for the occasion, and Grant was...

  4. Whitman mourns for the fallen star of the Union
    date 1885map COLUMBIA, New Yorktags Politics, Health/Death, assassination, Murder

    Walt Whitman, one of the major American writers of the Civil War, wrote When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom'd after the assassination of the very charismatic leader of the Union during the Civil War, Abraham Lincoln. This poem mourned the death of the powerful, western fallen star which was now hidden by blackness, leaving only desperation and bitterness behind. The poem followed...

  5. Death of Capt. K G Gittio
    date February 25, 1885map NORFOLK CITY, Virginiatags Health/Death, Economy, Migration/Transportation, Urban-Life/Boosterism

    Few citizens of Portsmouth could escape the mourning of K G Gittio's death. On February 25, 1885 it covered the front page news, flags flew at half-mast, locomotives were shrouded, and traffic stopped, while people flooded to his funeral. The city had lost a respected citizen and a leading businessman, regarded as one of the South's best railroad men. Gittio, thinking he had a cold, had...