And...it's back to masquerades, fancy dress balls, crazy cotillion figures, and other fun for the month of October! First up: a Christmas masquerade ball in Montana in 1899.
The Degree of Honor masquerade ball was held on Christmas night at the Hefferlin Opera House in Livingston, Montana, the elaborate building at right in the postcard photo at left; click to enlarge. At this time, the Degree of Honor was the ladies' auxiliary of the Ancient Order of United Workmen, a post-Civil War "fraternal" mutual benefit society providing insurance, burial policies, etc, to working-class men. In the late 1890s, the Degree of Honor was said to have had 40,000 members nationally. It later spun off into a separate organization and existed independently until 2017.
Livingston itself was tiny at the time, having been founded as a cluster of tents at a future railroad stop in 1882. Even today, its population is under ten thousand people (per the 2020 census); at the time of the ball, it was probably only around a thousand. This puts into perspective its description as "largely attended" in the coverage of the ball in the social column of The Anaconda Standard on Sunday, December 31, 1889: seventy-five couples following the leaders of the march. For a town of that size, that is actually quite impressive, and the coverage noted that the event succeeded both socially and financially.
The Hefferlin Opera House opened in 1892 and continued in use under various names, later as a movie theatre, into the 1950s, when it was gutted by fire and demolished, per the capsule history given with a 1920s postcard of Livingston.
Sadly, almost no details of the ball were given in the newspaper coverage and there was no hint of any particularly Christmas-related elements. The schedule seems to have been conventional, with dancing followed by the customary midnight unmasking and food:
At 12 o’clock masks were removed and the guests regaled themselves at supper. The dance was resumed after lunch and continued until an early morning hour.
Since the ball was noted as taking place at night, I assume that "lunch" really meant "supper".
But what really caught my eye about this ball, as with the early 1880s Minnesota balls I discussed three years ago, was the competitive element. I haven't (yet?) researched this in enough depth to know whether it was a general late-ninteenth-century-American trend or perhaps a prairie state or "midwestern" custom, but here it is again. As befitted a small town, there were fewer competitions, and the prizes (only a trophy and cake were mentioned) were probably not as fancy as at the St. Paul event.
As one would expect, there was a small costume competition:
For the most elegant ladies’ costume Miss Edna Turner was awarded the prize, while George M. Wilson carried off the trophy offered for the finest gentleman’s costume. As an old lady, Mrs. Connell was deemed by the judges entitled to the prize for the most comical costume, and Lou Firestone, who represented a Brownie, was given first honors for the most ludicrous-appearing gentleman present.
The "ludicrous-appearing" Brownie costume was probably something similar to that illustrated in Masquerades, Tableaux and Drills (New York, Butterick Publishing Co., 1906), as shown at left (click to enlarge) and described there as:
...of brown cloth with yellow bands, buttons and cap trimming. Yellow stockings and brown pointed slippers.
"Old lady" was a common comic costume for both women and men.
There was also a dance contest:
A prize waltz was another feature of the programme, and the trophy was captured by George Walford and Miss Baldwin. Mr. and Mrs. Thomas Lamartine were awarded second honors.
And, more problematically, there was a cakewalk contest which fully embodied the racial prejudices of the era:
One of the features of the affair was a cakewalk by three couples of pickannies, and they gave a very pretty exhibition of the popular fad. The cakewalkers were all girls. Laura Connell and Bessie Miller formed one couple. Heta and Alma Grannis the second and Ada Bartlett and Alma Laurens the third. One of the girls in each couple was dressed as a boy, and varied and graceful were the movements they executed. The cake was awarded to Misses Connell and Miller.
"Pickannies" is a misspelling of "picaninnies" or "pickaninnies", a racist caricature of black children which you may read about and see examples of in all of its repulsiveness at the Jim Crow Museum of Racist Memorabilia (just to be clear, this is an anti-racism institution). For here, suffice it to say that this means that along with three of the girls being dressed as boys, all six were in blackface. You can get the general idea from the contemporaneous cakewalk sheet music at the University of South Florida's digital collection. Click on the file image there to see the cover, which I do not care to reproduce here.
The cakewalkers were literally girls, young teenagers, not yet of an age to make their social debuts. Apparently this ball was to some degree a family event. While I didn't take the time to track down all the participants, some casual genealogical sleuthing and untangling of misspellings in the article revealed that sisters Hetah and Alma Grannis were fifteen and just-turned-thirteen, respectively. Lora Connell, in the winning couple, was fourteen, and it was likely her mother, Mary Connell, who won the comic costume prize.
Ada Montana Bartlett was almost thirteen, and apparently had an affinity for the arts and entertainment field. She would go on to marry at eighteen, and she and her husband eventually ended up in Mesa, Arizona, where, according to the City of Mesa Cemetery Walking Tour brochure (PDF), they "opened the second motion picture theatre in Mesa, the Opera House...followed by an open air theatre, the Coliseum, the Majestic movie theatre, the Rendezvous Park Dance Hall and Swimming Pool, and the Nile Theatre."
Perhaps sometime in the future I will try to look at late nineteenth century American masquerades and fancy dress balls in a more comprehensive way and determine how widespread the competition element was...
A complete transcription and link to the original article at Chronicling America: Historic American Newspapers is below.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
The Anaconda Standard: Sunday Morning, December 31, 1899, p. 20.
In Society’s Realm
[...]
In Livingston
Livingston. Dec 28.—The Degree of Honor masquerade ball took place in the opera house Monday night and was largely attended. When the grand march was called fully 75 couples followed the leaders in the promenade and the fantastic costumes wandering in and out in the intricacies of the march was a pleasing spectacle. One of the features of the affair was a cakewalk by three couples of pickannies, and they gave a very pretty exhibition of the popular fad. The cakewalkers were all girls. Laura Connell and Bessie Miller formed one couple. Heta and Alma Grannis the second and Ada Bartlett and Alma Laurens the third. One of the girls in each couple was dressed as a boy, and varied and graceful were the movements they executed. The cake was awarded to Misses Connell and Miller. For the most elegant ladies’ costume Miss Edna Turner was awarded the prize, while George M. Wilson carried off the trophy offered for the finest gentleman’s costume. As an old lady, Mrs. Connell was deemed by the judges entitled to the prize for the most comical costume, and Lou Firestone, who represented a Brownie, was given first honors for the most ludicrous-appearing gentleman present. A prize waltz was another feature of the programme, and the trophy was captured by George Walford and Miss Baldwin. Mr. and Mrs. Thomas Lamartine were awarded second honors. Music was furnished by Middaugh’s orchestra. At 12 o’clock masks were removed and the guests regaled themselves at supper. The dance was resumed after lunch and continued until an early morning hour. Socially, financially and every other way, the ball was a great success and the ladies of the Degree of Honor are jubilant because of that fact.
Comments