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Threads to the Past at Monroe Museum

This reproduction of Elizabeth Monroe's gown is part of a new exhibit opening at the James Monroe Museum.
Photo Credit: The Free Lance-Star

Conservator Newbie Richardson works on an outfit James Monroe wore as a teenager.
Photo Credit: The Free Lance-Star

After a major renovation that included a new roof, the refurbished James Monroe Museum reopens Sunday.
Photo Credit: The Free Lance-Star

Elizabeth Monroe's wedding gown and a suit James Monroe wore while negotiating the Louisiana Purchase are shown.
Photo Credit: The Free Lance-Star

Were she to return to Fredericksburg today, Elizabeth Kortright Monroe would no doubt be pleased at how well her wedding dress is holding up.

It hasn't looked so lovely in ages, not since shortly after the day in 1786 when she married a young Virginian intent on setting up a law practice in Fredericksburg. Decades later, Americans came to know her husband as President James Monroe.

This Sunday, everyone's invited to get better acquainted with James and Elizabeth Monroe during a free open house at the Fredericksburg museum devoted to their lives and legacy.

The James Monroe Museum and Memorial Library, which has been closed since February for renovations, is re-opening with a splash--dipping into its vaults to show its entire world-class collection of James and Elizabeth Monroe's clothing for the first time.

"What we're hoping is that the costume collection will put a personal face on James Monroe," Assistant Director Meghan C. Budinger said. "Even people who live in Fredericksburg, which he considered his hometown, very rarely know why this museum is here--that he was a native of the area, that he had a law practice here in town.

"But even if they know who James Monroe was, they don't know anything about his personality, what his family life was like, their trials and tribulations."

"Our Face to the World: The Clothing of James and Elizabeth Monroe" includes 30 pieces. Highlights include Elizabeth Monroe's wedding dress and two vests that James Monroe wore during his service in the Continental Army during the American Revolution. Suits, hats, shoes and other accessories are also included.

The trove of material comprises one of the largest complete presidential costume collections in the country. The pieces were given to the museum many decades ago by the Monroes' direct descendants.

The show is a one-time event. Because the Monroes' attire is so light-sensitive and fragile it cannot be displayed for long, and it won't be shown as a group again, Budinger said. The exhibit will be on view until April 1.

The artifacts reveal the Monroes' tastes and what images they were trying to convey to the public.

"As you study the pieces in the collection, you start to see this," Budinger said, examining a re-creation of a stunning gown worn by the 17-year-old Elizabeth at the time of her marriage to James, 10 years her senior. "Their personality traits really come out.

"For instance, Elizabeth Monroe was an extremely short and petite woman, 4-foot-9 to James Monroe's 6-foot-2. And yet she chose these gorgeous dresses and these vibrant colors and beautiful embroidery," Budinger said.

"We sometimes get the impression from historical writings about her that she was very shy and quiet. I don't think anyone could say that of the woman who put on that dress.

"We've come to realize that Elizabeth Monroe was very fashionable, very outgoing, very vivacious," she added. "We've come to learn that her husband, almost equally, was quiet and shy and kind of a wallflower--even when they were living in Paris, operating in the court of Napoleon."

Mrs. Monroe came from a well-to-do New York merchant family, and at the time of their wedding some of her high-society friends wondered what it was she saw in a gangly Virginian serving in the U.S. Confederation Congress.

When her husband served as the new nation's minister to France, Napoleon praised her beauty, calling her "La belle Americaine."

"But not too many people took notice of James Monroe," Budinger said.

In time, of course, the Virginian made a considerable impression, becoming the nation's fifth president in 1817.

The museum's costume project was five years in the making and cost $50,000, Budinger said. In 2007, the National Park Service and the National Endowment for the Arts awarded the museum a prestigious Save America's Treasures grant to restore the artifacts.

The exhibit required painstaking work by two nationally known conservators, Colleen Callahan of Richmond and Newbie Richardson of Alexandria, to preserve the objects and restore them to how they looked in the late 1700s and early 1800s.

The Daughters of the American Revolution funded restoration of Mrs. Monroe's brocaded wedding gown, which Callahan said may have been given to her by her mother.

Another gown in Elizabeth Monroe's 1786 wedding trousseau was so damaged by age and exposure that it was deemed practically beyond repair. To modern eyes, it's a light beige. But hidden in its seams are traces of the original, eye-popping Pepto-Bismol color.

"Because this dress showed such a dramatic change in color, we thought it would be a great teaching tool to show people what light and time can do to fabrics," Budinger said. "Also, it's a very interesting because it shows a progression of fashion changes. This is not exactly how it looked when she wore it in 1786. She altered it several times throughout her life to wear for different occasions over the decades, and you can see that."

So Colonial clothing expert Sarah Cowan of Fredericksburg was commissioned by Ash Lawn-Highland, the Monroes' later home near Monticello in Albemarle County, to research the gown and make a stitch-for-stitch replica.

The result drew admiring glances as Cowan and Callahan hand-delivered it on Wednesday, walking it two blocks down Charles Street to the museum from Cowan's home workshop.

"Beautiful!" Budinger exclaimed as Cowan placed her creation on a custom form, made by Callahan, in one of the museum's galleries.

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Beginning Sunday, the James Monroe Museum and Memorial Library, at 908 Charles St., will be open 10 a.m.-4 p.m. Monday-Saturday and 1-5 p.m. on Sundays. Owned by the state, the museum is administered by the University of Mary Washington.

FOR DETAILS: Visit umw.edu/jamesmonroe museum or call 540/654-1043.  Also visit costumeandtextile.net.

News release prepared by Marty Morrison

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