Exhibit: A-Dressing Jehossee

Exhibit- A-Dressing Jehossee: Everyday Clothing of An Antebellum Island Plantation

House Maid’s Fan-Front Dress

Adult Rice Workers Dress

Back by popular demand is Winthrop alumna and current graduate student Alison Boulton’s (’11) fascinating exhibit of clothing and other items that represent what women may have worn on a particular plantation known as Jehossee in Lowcountry South Carolina. The plantation was located on Jehossee Island south of Charleston.  After extensive research, Ms. Boulton made each item of clothing in the exhibit by hand. The items included in this exhibit are meant to demonstrate the common clothing associated with the female inhabitants of Jehossee Plantation in the year 1850. This population would have occasionally included members of the William Aiken family and their personal servants as well as Jehossee Island’s massive enslaved work force, native to the island. Jehossee Plantation was owned and developed by William Aiken, Jr., a former South Carolina Governor (1844-1846). In 1850, Jehossee Island hosted the second largest slave population in South Carolina on an innovative rice plantation that engulfed the entirety of the island itself. If you saw the exhibit last year, please come back to see it again. It has been expanded so there are items that were not a part of the original exhibit. If you haven’t seen it, you are in for a treat.

Ms. Boulton will be giving a lecture on her research and the process she used to construct the clothing on Tuesday, March 5, 2013 at 7:00 p.m. at the Louise Pettus Archives at 700 Cherry Road. Seating is limited to about 50 people so you may want to get here early to get a seat. The exhibit will be available for viewing until March 29 during regular Archives hours. (8:30-5:00, M-F). For more information contact the Archives at 803-323-2334 or archives@winthrop.edu.