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September 6, 2007
Lots of Fashion ... but plenty of history, too.
Paper dolls chronicle the Old West.
Written by Sally Logue Post
Robin Gilliam-Crawford, curator of historic structures at the National Ranching Heritage Center wears a costume similar to those found in the Amanda books. The books are used by costume designers and re-enactors across the country to recreate fashions of the 1800s.
Amanda is a paper doll—a character from the Nineteenth Century. But she’s also a history teacher for people today. Her fashionable clothes are really a way to tell about life on the Texas frontier in the 1800s.
Three books published by Texas Tech University Press are partly about paper dolls and partly the journal of a young girl from Tennessee named Amanda. The first of them, “Amanda Goes West,” opens with a journal entry dated April 14, 1838. Amanda writes, “We are moving to Texas!” She goes on to explain that there will be room for only one clothing trunk in the family’s wagon. The dresses that fill the trunk and those she makes in her new home are what you see on the pages illustrated by Lynette C. Ross.
The books chronicle Amanda’s life as she grows up, marries and has her own family. Her husband fights in two wars. Texas becomes a nation, then a state. The journal entries detail the challenges of making and dyeing her own cloth and hand sewing intricate garments; the struggle to acquire goods during the war; buying the family’s first ready-made clothing; and getting her first sewing machine.
The Amanda trilogy, published in 1983 and 1984 by Texas Tech University Press, was written by Betty J. Mills, who was the costume and textiles curator of the Museum of Texas Tech University for more than a quarter century. The clothing in the books is drawn from real pieces in the museum’s collection.
Related
Listen to excerpts from the Amanda Trilogy.
The Books and How to Get Them
Learn more at Texas Tech University Press
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Web layout by Kristen DeLisle.
Mills is now retired and was too ill to be interviewed, but in a foreword to the historical book “Calico Chronicle,” an in-depth companion to the Amanda Series, she writes, “While libraries are filled with accounts of the battles, Indian raids, land acquisition and settlement of the west, little is recorded that verbally or visually documents what the women wore.”
Robin Gilliam-Crawford, curator of historic structures at the National Ranching Heritage Center at Texas Tech, is a costume historian and has used the books as teaching tools for years. “What I like most is that the clothing is based, for the most part, on real garments they have in the museum collection rather than on someone’s idea of what the clothing should have looked like.”
Judith Keeling, editor-in-chief at Texas Tech University Press, credits that realism for the success of the books.
Henry Crawford, curator of history at the Museum of Texas Tech University, proves the paper dolls are not just for girls. As a historian and a re-enactor, he appreciates the accuracy of the men’s uniforms.
“The press and the museum continue to get calls about the books and the clothing collection,” Keeling says. “There seems to be a renewable market for Amanda. Many scholarly disciplines such as theater and history are interested in the books. Re-enactors use them as do some fashion programs. We’ve had inquiries from people making movies and staging pageants.”
Gilliam-Crawford likes the range of clothing in the books. “Ms. Mills gives you many options: clothes for work and for home; nicer day dressing and special occasion clothing,” she says.
This doll isn’t just for girls. Henry Crawford, Gilliam-Crawford’s husband and curator of history at the Museum of Texas Tech University, is an expert on reenacting living history. He appreciates the uniforms worn by Amanda’s husband Matthew. “Matthew fought in the Mexican War and the Civil War,” Crawford says. “The military uniform illustrations help re-enactors get their costumes right.”
“Amanda is not a perpetual Barbie who never grows up,” says Gilliam-Crawford. “You don’t really realize how much history you’re getting. This is a good way for young readers to get a feel for the passage of time, the changing availability of goods, improvements in technology and the movement of civilization across Texas.”
“I love the story,” says Crawford. “The chronology is good. I like the way the author takes several generations of a family and weaves the family into historical events. It is how James Michener wrote and how John Jakes writes.”
The final entry on Dec. 25, 1890, notes Amanda’s granddaughter’s wedding and her move to a new settlement in the Llano Estacado. Amanda writes, “My thrill of settling a new frontier will be carried on by Mary Megan, who has promised to send me frequent letters. Perhaps one day she will continue the family story in her own journal.”