While this is a woman’s day bonnet, the “cap” Sidney sewed used many of the same techniques. This particular bonnet is made from white cotton batiste (c. 1825-1850) and alternates between bobbin lace insertion and strips of Schiffli embroidery. It also has bobbin lace edging, tucks, an adjustable drawstring, and grosgrain ribbon, which was added at a later date.
NT.59.67.904
On June 8, 1823, Sidney Conrad interrupted her sewing to write a letter to her sister Elizabeth. Sidney was living with another sister, Mary Conrad Weeks, at her Parc Perdu plantation. At the time she wrote her letter to Lib, as Elizabeth was called, Sidney was “working a cap for Frances,” her nearly three-year-old niece and oldest child of David and Mary Weeks. Sidney was so proud of her work that she teasingly wished the children of her older sister, Ann Conrad Towles, were young enough to wear caps that they might have “a specimen of my elegant needlework.”
Charlotte Swayze, in a letter written to her aunt Mary Conrad Weeks in 1827, described her days in a way that was very familiar to all young women from wealthy 19th-century planter families. “…I get along right merrily. I sew a little, read a little, and my piano is everything.”
Young ladies were taught fine sewing either at home by mothers or older sisters or in needlework classes at boarding school. At age fourteen, Frances Weeks, the one for whom Aunt Sidney “worked” a cap in 1823, attended a school for young ladies in Baton Rouge run by Mrs. Granet. While there, Frances received instruction in music, drawing, manners, dancing, and needlework, in addition to academic subjects.
To practice their needlework skills and drawing room manners, students sat in the parlor under Mrs. Granet’s watchful eye to produce needlework for family and friends. In January 1835, Frances wrote that she was about “to commence to embroider a bag” for her mother.
Frances’ sister, Allie Weeks, attended boarding school near Washington, D.C. in the early 1840s. Her curriculum was similar to that of her older sister. Allie studied biography, history, and mathematics, but also received instruction in music, dancing, and sewing. In a letter to her stepfather John Moore on May 30, 1843, Allie wrote the following. “Tell Mama she will be astonished to find how expert I am at my needle. I once though I never should like to sew but now I am really fond of it.”
Allie practiced her skills by commencing “to embroider a piano cover on black cloth” which she expected would be “beautiful after it is finished.” In addition to the piano cover, she also practiced making clothes for her young cousins. “The little dress that I worked for cousin Sidney’s youngest daughter I finished the first of the winter. It is blue muslin embroidered in silk.”
Several books of the period, including The American Frugal Housewife by Lydia Child and A Treatise of Domestic Economy written by Catherine Beecher, instructed women in the domestic art of sewing. Godey’s Lady’s Book printed patterns for crochet, knitting, or needlework projects and urged women to practice these domestic arts.
While Frances and Allie both write of embroidering bags and piano shawls and other forms of fancy needlework in their early letters as students, once they become wives and mothers responsible for running plantation households, there no longer seems to be time for such fancy work. When researching southern manuscript collections for her book The Plantation Mistress, historian Catherine Clinton found “the lament of the overworked seamstress was a common theme.” Most letters written by plantation mistresses indicate that they “found the production of cloth and the manufacture of clothing to be [their] most demanding tasks.”
In an 1854 letter to her mother, Allie writes of all her responsibilities managing her plantation, primary among which is the sewing of clothing for enslaved individuals. “The negro clothes and several things...require my attention. I know Netty [an enslaved woman] will make the negro clothes as well during my absence as if I were here but she has so many other things to attend to she cannot make them all, and while it is healthy, I want to stay and have all I can done.” Allie mentions she would have sent some of the clothes to her mother to sew up, but “Nancy [another enslaved woman] is sewing now and I think we can get through with them before sugar making commences.”
In another letter to Mary written by her son William Frederick Weeks in 1855, it is clear Mary was making up some of the winter clothes for the more than 200 enslaved people on Grand Cote helping William’s wife, Mary Palfrey Weeks, in this mammoth task. Just as in Allie’s case, both women were supervising enslaved women in the production of clothing for enslaved individuals, but they were also sewing themselves to make sure all the clothes were made up before everyone’s attention and labor were directed toward sugar making.
Originally published in The Shadows Service League Newsletter (Vol. 13, No. 8), August 1991.
Edited by Adam Foreman, EdD, October 2026.
