Rebecca only needs a hat and coat, and she only needed the coat because it was raining ferociously that day.

She looks great, and did great even on her very first day. This all happened a few weeks ago; she’s really no longer a “newbie” anymore, and in a couple of weeks when we hire a few more interpreters to end out the season, she won’t even be the new kid anymore.

We have a phrase here, that describes the state of being prepared to receive museum visitors – camera-ready. Often the interpreters will head down to work on the Village site in the morning not quite entirely dressed. They’ve got clothes on, period clothes even, but maybe they’re not buttoned, maybe the women’s hair isn’t tied up, maybe they haven’t removed eyeglasses or nose rings, maybe they’re carrying a Dunkin’ Donuts cup.

Sometimes, we have a film or photo crew on the site before 9:00 and everyone needs to show up “camera-ready.” In that case there’ll be a big note in the Carriage House letting everyone know that.

Here Rebecca is technically camera-ready, but she still needs a couple of items to be really done.

When Tricia was taking these pictures, Rebecca was dressing herself in these clothes for the first time. Before this she had only tried them all on, with help, especially with the stays. This time she laced herself in. Once she got into the petticoats I cast a critical eye upon her things and decided to tighten the stays a little. Of course that meant adjusting the waists of the petticoats too. Here Rebecca is hooking them back up after my fussing.

Next Rebecca needs a jacket – in the 1627 English Village called a waistcoat. We have a few probate inventories from early Plymouth Colony – 1629 to 1633. A couple of them mention women’s clothing, and they seem to call the upper body garment “a waistcoat.” It can be hard to match up historic garments with the name they were given in the period, but these inventories list the waistcoat together with a petticoat, which is how they were worn in the period. If it listed a waistcoat with a gown and/or petticoat I would wonder if the waistcoat was sleeveless, but in this case, and with a complete absence of any other named garment that could be the long-sleeved upper body garment, I feel pretty confident that they were calling this item a waistcoat. So anyway.

Rebecca chose to wear a lightweight wool waistcoat this day, because it was pretty cold and rainy. Here she’s buttoning and I’m holding her girdle with suspended knife and knitted pocket. We were hurrying, because Tricia was photographing and she had to leave pretty soon to pick up her son from the English Colonial summer camp.

Here’s a detail of the knife and pocket. There are plenty of 17th-century images of people wearing a belt or girdle with a pouch or pocket and/or a knife hanging off it. Generally, those wearing knives seem to be men and/or working away from the home. Our interpreters, both men and women (and the oldest two boy and girl volunteer children, and don’t think there wasn’t a protest from the younger, knife-less ones), wear a knife on their belt. They each need a knife to do their work, and even though a housewife would likely not have kept her knife on her person as she worked around her hearth and garden, we don’t want to leave them lying around. Both because they might “walk” away and because we don’t want anyone to get hurt trying it out if they should happen to find it in a cupboard.

There is, of course, historical evidence for women having knives hanging from their girdle; those seem to be more for either eating or other delicate tasks, rather than the sturdy work-type knife we’re using.

Here are a few pictures of Lacey fixing Rebecca’s hair.

In the early 17th century working-class women (like the Plymouth Colonists) wore their hair up and covered with a white linen coif. Modern female interpreters may or may not have “period-correct” hair, but either way they have to get their hair under a coif with no bangs or other bits showing. Rebecca has gorgeous period correct hair, by which I mean long and unlayered.

Some women with long hair put their hair up in a simple bun, some braid it. Here Lacey is braiding Rebecca’s hair in a style thoroughly illustrated in The Tudor Tailor. This book shows Jane, one of the authors, braiding ribbons into her hair starting about halfway down each of two braids. The ends of the ribbons hang down beyond the end of the braids. You then use those hanging ends to tie the braids up over your forehead.

The first time I tried to do my daughter’s hair that way, the ribbons pulled right out of her slippery fine braids. I thought about it for a minute, then cut a long ribbon, folded it in half, and placed the fold at the back of her neck. I began to braid one end into half her hair. The other end got in my way and I pushed it forward over her shoulder, saying, “here, hold this end”.

Then I had a flash of insight – in the book Pride and Joy: children’s portraits in the Netherlands 1500-1700, there’s a 1596 portrait called “Hilleke de Roy and Four of her Orphans”. Hilleke de Roy was the matron of an orphanage. In the portrait she is combing a girl’s hair. One half of the girl’s hair is already braided, and you can see that a ribbon is braided in. Hilleke is combing the other half of the girl’s hair, the unbraided half, and the girl is holding the end of the ribbon, which goes up and around the back of her neck – just as I asked my daughter to do. I love when stuff like that happens.