Teaching Needlework in the Early 19th Century

Madame Deborah Grelaud advertised an

embroidery curriculum in this ad from the

Pennsylvania Gazette in the fall of 1801.

Mrs. Grelaud informs ladies inclined to learn the Science of Music that she gives lessons on the Piano Forte at her house No. 24, Filbert Street where she also keeps a Boarding School for Young Ladies who are instructed in .....Embroidery and Plain Work.

Women required to work might teach or run a school. A good education was not an absolute prerequisite and some schools had better reputations than others. One of the most fashionable girls' schools was Madame Grelaud's in Philadelphia, which took in boarders from about 1800 to 1850. 

Madame's skills seem to have been musical. Her establishment was known for public musicales that entertained Philadelphia society in the evenings. Being a French emigrant from Haiti she spoke the language and offered art and geography lessons in addition to English and Arithmetic. She advertised that she was "aided by the best masters."

Madame Rivardi's school was in the Gothic Mansion on Chesnut Street

Academic rigor was probably not a selling point. Girls attended to become finished---eligible marriage material. Parents who hoped for a better educated graduate might choose competitor Madame Rivardi's. Among familiar names in Grelaud's alumnae lists: Washington/Custis family girls, Southern belles Varina Howell Davis and Mary Boykin Chesnut and Presidential daughters Angelica Van Buren and Maria Hester Monroe.

Sculptural portrait of Maria Monroe (1802-1850)

as a 15-year-old student. Collection of the James Monroe Museum 

In 1810 Mme. Grelaud's Seminary was on the north side of Arch Street above 3rd, with the Second Presbyterian church on the corner.

Ornamental needlework and plain sewing were part of nearly every girl school curriculum until the mid-19th century. Madame Grelaud undoubtedly hired needlework teachers to assist her.

Henrietta Maria Ghegenise stitched this needlework picture at Madame Rivardi's in 1803.

A copy of a needlework sampler wrought by

Maria Hester Monroe in 1814. I have found

little needlework attributed to Madame Grelaud's.

The original of Maria's is in the collection of the Monroe Museum

at Ash-Lawn Highland, shown in the Childrens' Room.

Shall we assume the building is the school?

Sampler worked in Philadelphia in 1823 by Margret T Child (?)

The many women who taught needlework are largely erased from the record. One good source for their names and accomplishments is the MESDA Craftsmen Database.

MESDA index card scanned

Here's a search for needleworker:

http://mesda.org/collection/craftsman/?mpq=needleworker&mpf1=&mpf2=&mpf3=&mpf4=&mpf5=&mpf6=&mpf7=

Mrs. Adams advertised in the Virginia Herald in December, 1812 about her Fredericksburg school that emphasized needlework. We assume Mrs. Adams was the needlework teacher. If you wanted a class in Arithmetick or French she charged extra and also offered:

"Young Ladies supplied with elegant patterns and their work drawn at moderate expense."

Sampler attributed to Barbara Gerz, Philadelphia.

M. Finkel & Daughter

See an online catalog of samplers with much information from Philadelphia sampler specialists M. Finkel & Daughter.

https://issuu.com/m.finkelanddaughter/docs/finkelcatalog_fall2016_final-pgs_v1

Sampler patterns were passed on by professional teachers to their students and we have to assume patchwork and quilting patterns were too.

Maria Hester Monroe Gouverneur, unfinished mosaic patchwork, 

collection of the James Monroe Museum 

Maria Hester Monroe married Samuel Laurence Gouverneur in 1820 and lived in New York City, where she pieced this hexagon quilt in the 1830s while her father President James Monroe was fatally ill. She never finished it. Her g-g-g-granddaughter donated it to the museum in Fredericksburg, Virginia.
http://jamesmonroemuseum.umw.edu/

Read more about Madame Grelaud's School here:

http://quilt1812warandpiecing.blogspot.com/2012/10/madame-grelauds-female-seminary.html

Emma Zimmer Brockstedt and the Mail Order Business

Dry goods store about 1900

In 1885 Emma Zimmer, a 20 year old resident of St. Louis, is listed in the city directory as running a dry goods store at 2930 Chouteau Avenue. She was second to the last in a long alphabetic list of dry goods merchants.

In this series I've been following women business owners and Emma is one worth following. The next year she married Henry Marcus Brockstedt, fourteen years older than she. Henry ran a job printing shop; he was a  professional printer who might produce books like the city directory above or single sheets such as handbills. Born in Europe, he came to St. Louis as a young child.

Olive & 3rd Streets looking North in 1854 

Missouri Historical Society

Henry's printing business was at 3rd & Olive between 1887 and 1891 according to quilt historian Connie Chunn. Brother Walter was also a printer. Their father Johann Brockstedt ran a St. Louis grocery store. 

In September, 1886 Henry and Emma's daughter Alma was born and two years later another daughter was named Emma. 

The couple combined their businesses---drygoods and printing. In 1889 they published a catalog of  the needlework designs with a focus on patchwork patterns. The enterprise was called the Ladies' Art Company in keeping with the late-19th-century trend for art needlework (the implication being that the patterns were more sophisticated and a better use of one's time than old-fashioned fancywork.)

Cover of the 1897 edition of the catalog

Collection of Connie Chunn.

Notice the name under the Ladies' Art Co. title

"H.M. Brockstedt, Manager."

Emma Z. Brockstedt was never mentioned.

Quilters value the Ladies' Art Company for the pattern booklets, which were reworked and re-published over the years between 1889 and into the 1930s and then again in the 1970s. Connie estimates over 75 catalogs were published. I assume she means catalogs of all kinds of needlework.

Their Practical Tatting Book was copyrighted by Deaconess, a pseudonym for Emma Brockstedt, according to the copyright records from the teens. She also published crochet and cross-stitch books.

See more about the Ladies Art Company in this post:

https://womensworkquilts.blogspot.com/2018/06/quilt-blocks-through-mail.html

An ad for Fancy Work Hand-books

Written By Deaconess, probably Emma.

Patchwork was popular but redwork outline embroidery was

the rage. Many of their quilt catalogs included ads for printed paper

patterns...

Stamped decorative linens...

And stamped pillowcases.

They seem to have sold everything at one time or another...

From needlework tools

to furniture.

Their business model is familiar. In fact, it's quite like Emma Keytes Wilcockson's who with her husband Herbert operated a Fancy Repository in London in the 1850s and '60s. Emma Wilcockson knew needlework; Herbert was a printer, a practical partnership.

Read about the Wilcocksons at this post:

http://womensworkquilts.blogspot.com/2018/02/selling-patchwork-patterns-fancy.html

My guess is that H.M. Brockstedt was responsible for the printing from patterns on pillowcases to paper pamphlets and Emma Brockstedt was responsible for the needlework content. He has gotten all the credit because that is the way they presented the business.

The only mention I can find of her is in the copyright records of her publications under the penname Deaconess.

Emma probably did not write this booklet in their catalog,

Hunters and Trappers Practical Guide

 They must have been quite successful. Connie found records of 50 employees in the 1930s.

Their crypt at Hillcrest Abbey Mausoleum in St. Louis.

I haven't found much information about their personal lives. After Henry died in 1920 Emma went to live with her eldest daughter Alma in Cheyenne, Wyoming where she died on September 2, 1948 when she was 84 years old.

Alma married Charles Lane and died in Wyoming in 1973. At 19 she'd made headlines by swimming three miles in the Mississippi River.

Younger daughter Emma died in a terrible accident, playing with a bonfire when she was seven years old. A telling news story announcing her death ended with,

"The victim was a daughter of Henry M. Brockstedt....He is almost frantic with grief."

Once again, no mention of Emma Zimmer Brockstedt.

Invisible.

Ladies' Art Company printed pattern card