The women who anchored domestic life in Revolutionary Kent come to life in new exhibit

KENT – In celebration of the nation’s upcoming 250th birthday, the Kent Historical Society has opened an exhibit that shifts the focus from the battlefield to the home. The domestic sphere and the women who ran it, the installation argues, were no less important in the cause of American independence than the treaties and military campaigns that dominate U.S. history education.

“Homespun Kent: Revolutionary Households” kicked off with appropriate Revolutionary fanfare for an evening reception on Saturday, June 27, at the Historical Society’s Seven Hearths Museum. Approximately 100 history enthusiasts enjoyed the detailed tour of Kent’s home life during the Revolutionary Era, which took full advantage of the preserved interior of the 1751 building.

“Women were the architects of an economic force that encouraged domestic self-reliance,” states an informational video that ran in a cozy parlor at the start of the tour. The homespun fabric movement was a women-led effort to domesticate cloth production in protest of imported British merchandise in the years leading up to the Revolution, which the exhibit professes both helped cultivate a spirit of independence at a crucial moment while also servicing the practical need for wartime supplies.

“It’s more important than tea because you need cloth to wear clothes!” said Deborah Chabrian, board president of the Kent Historical Society.

She explained that beyond the focus on fabrics, the exhibit is meant to amplify a quieter but no less important story of the American Revolution. “I had never really thought deeply about how it affected someone at home,” Chabrian said.

“The women had to be just as strong,” she continued. “They had to hold the country together” while the men were on the battlefield.

The Seven Hearths Museum is an ideal venue for the exhibit as a Revolutionary home itself, explained Christine Adams, executive director of the Historical Society. Built originally as a combined residence and general store, by 1776 it was occupied by Daniel Beebe, Esther Pratt Beebe and their two children.

Daniel and his son Daniel Jr. would both leave to fight for the Patriots, leaving Esther to presumably operate the store, as well as an active fur trading post upstairs and a butchery, by herself as one of the few active supplies purveyors in early “frontier” Kent.

According to an informational pamphlet distributed at the event, Esther is one of many “resilient housewives, mothers, and spinners who labored over spinning wheels, grew and carded flax, and wove wool to clothe their families, effectively anchoring early American domestic life.”

“These were stories I never heard growing up,” Adams said.

The opening reception also featured several live demonstrations of Revolutionary Era home life. In a sunny corner room, Kent Art Association Executive Director Deborah Shiflett-Fitton, dressed in colonial garb, operated an antique “walking wheel” or wool wheel which would have been used by homespun fabric makers in colonial America.

It had been sitting in the building’s attic for years, she said as she deftly operated the device, and was revived in preparation for the exhibit by accomplished furniture restorer and Historical Society Vice President Roger Gonzales.

In the kitchen, Chabrian, also clad in antique clothing, cooked corn chowder over a wood fire in one of the museum’s namesake hearths. She explained that the soup was thickened with crackers according to an old technique that would have been used by cooks in chowders in the Revolutionary days.

Once finished, the ample pot was emptied in seconds by eager guests. Attendees then moved on to an eclectic selection of small bites that had been brought in colonial potluck fashion, complimented by beer, wine, cider and charcuterie, courtesy of the Historical Society.

Chabrian said that the overarching motivation behind the whole effort, which involved months of researching books, local history accounts and even original 18th century documents still on file at Town Hall, is to “to bring an awareness to the history that we have here,” and hopefully inspire more to help steward it.

“Homespun Kent: Revolutionary Households” is on display until Oct. 31 at the Seven Hearths Museum. The museum is open Saturdays and Sundays from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. or by appointment.