Women's History Month 2021: NOT at the Museum

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We've concentrated so far on research at the museum. For this post, I want to focus on museum collections that are NOT at the museum. 

Sometimes you may stumble across a museum collection that is not at the museum. You might find these in the form of an online index, a publication, or incorporated into a collaborative database. 

Here are a few examples of museum collections found outside of the museum that can help you research female ancestors.

The Quilt Index

The Quilt Index is a database of quilts from various museums and other collections. What's great about it, is that it is essentially a database of women's names.

It is a "digital repository of thousands of images, stories and information about quilts and their makers drawn from hundreds of public and private collections around the world. It represents the work of thousands of community-based and independent scholars, digital humanists, and professionals in libraries, archives, and museums who are dedicated to preserving and making accessible quilt history."

Museums represented in The Quilt Index include the Royal Alberta Museum, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, White Bluffs Quilt Museum, Illinois State Museum, Indiana State Museum, and more.

NSCDA - American Samplers

The Sampler Survey is a database inspired by the book American Samplers by Ethel Stanwood Bolton & Eva Johnston Coe (1921) but now includes over 5000 samplers from institutions, including museums. "The goal of the Sampler Survey project is to make information on needlework found in the database as accessible as possible while sustaining NSCDA’s reputation as a source of knowledge for the history of women’s education through needlework."

Ancestry.com - U.S., Craftperson Files, 1600-1995

From the Winterthur Museum, Garden & Library, this index card database "includes the names of craftspeople, occupation, and working dates, birth and death dates, where they lived, what they made, notes about their professional lives, and bibliographical and source references." These files include women working in fields such as furniture making, jewelry, and silversmithing. 

As you can see, museum collections at the museum and outside of the museum are great places to research female ancestors. Tomorrow we will take a look at museum publications and how they can help your research. See you tomorrow!