Harvey Girls, Setting the Stage
Harvey Girls, Setting the Standard
Setting the Standard 6: The Harvey Girls - New Found Independence
Employment at Harvey houses gave women an alternate path and opportunity to increase their agency and self reliance. They were given free room and board and earned a living wage. This was rare for women at this time. In the 1960s, the last generation of Harvey girls built upon the achievements of the women who came before them. Harvey girls became activists in the fight for women’s rights. One former Harvey girl, Teresa Conant 1950s-1960s, The Kachina Room, Albuquerque, New Mexico, began the New Mexico National Organization of women in 1968.
This is one of a series of six excerpts from the film "The Harvey Girls: Opportunity Bound" by Katrina Parks that are part of the exhibit Setting the Standard, The Fred Harvey Company and its Legacy, on view at the New Mexico History Museum through 2024. This year's Fred Harvey History Weekend starts 12:30 today at the Museum
www.harveygirlsdocumentary.com
Setting the Standard 5: The Harvey Girls - The Troop Trains
During World War I and World War II, railroads transported troops, equipment and supplies across the nation. Fred Harvey hotels and restaurants continued to provide a warm meal and a place to stay. Troop trains stopped at Harvey stations.
This is one of a series of six excerpts from the film "The Harvey Girls: Opportunity Bound" by Katrina Parks that are part of the exhibit Setting the Standard, The Fred Harvey Company and its Legacy, on view at the New Mexico History Museum through 2024. This year's Fred Harvey History Weekend will be Friday (11/4) & Saturday (11/5) at the Museum.
www.harveygirlsdocumentary.com
Setting the Standard 4: The Harvey Girls - Good Behavior
High standards governed women’s clothing and actions after work, as well as while on duty. Former Harvey girl Irene Armstrong-1930’s, El Navajo, Gallup, New Mexico states, “It wasn’t like Judy Garland’s Harvey Girls movie. If you had gone to bars and acted like she did, you would be on the next train back to where you came from.”
This is one of a series of six excerpts from the film "The Harvey Girls: Opportunity Bound" by Katrina Parks that are part of the exhibit Setting the Standard, The Fred Harvey Company and its Legacy, on view at the New Mexico History Museum through 2024. This year's Fred Harvey History Weekend will be Friday (11/4) & Saturday (11/5) at the Museum.
www.harveygirlsdocumentary.com
Setting the Standard 3: The Harvey Girls - Setting the Stage
The appearance of Fred Harvey hotel interiors was of equal importance to the quality of food and service at their establishments. Mary Colter, Interior Designer, incorporated a Southwest style into the hotel’s ambiance.
This is one of a series of excerpts from the film "The Harvey Girls: Opportunity Bound" by Katrina Parks that are part of the exhibit Setting the Standard, The Fred Harvey Company and its Legacy, on view at the New Mexico History Museum through 2024. This year's Fred Harvey History Weekend will be Friday (11/4) & Saturday (11/5) at the Museum.
www.harveygirlsdocumentary.com
We're getting ready for this year's Fred Harvey History Weekend with clips from The Harvey Girls: Opportunity Bound.
Setting the Standard 2: The Harvey Girls - Proper Attire
In an attempt to heighten the status of Fred Harvey establishments, conservative attire and uniforms were mandated for Harvey girls. These included a heavily starched black and white linen uniform during the day and ruffled black satin skirts with white hand embroidered blouses in the evening. At La Fonda in Santa Fe and the Alvarado in Albuquerque, women servers wore satin pleated skirts with ruffled white blouses and Pueblo made hand-woven sashes tied around their waists.
This is one of a series of six excerpts from the film "The Harvey Girls: Opportunity Bound" by Katrina Parks that are part of the exhibit Setting the Standard, The Fred Harvey Company and its Legacy, on view at the New Mexico History Museum through 2024.
www.harveygirlsdocumentary.com
In anticipation of this year's Fred Harvey History Weekend, we're sharing some clips from The Harvey Girls: Opportunity Bound documentary.
Beginning in the 1880’s women from across the United States joined the workforce at Fred Harvey establishments along the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe (ATSF) railroad. The ATSF was one of the larger railroads in the U.S. reaching the Kansas-Colorado border in 1873 and Pueblo, Colorado in 1876. To create a demand for services, the railroad set up real estate offices and sold farmland obtained from land grants awarded by Congress. By the 1930’s, the Fred Harvey Company began to hire local women from the towns in which their establishments operated including Hispano and Native American women in positions initially only staffed by Anglo women.
One of a series of six excerpts from the film "The Harvey Girls: Opportunity Bound" by Katrina Parks that are part of the exhibit Setting the Standard, The Fred Harvey Company and its Legacy, on view at the New Mexico History Museum through 2024. This video features excerpts from the documentary film, The Harvey Girls: Opportunity Bound.
A Union Like Ours
The Love Story of F.O. Matthiessen and Russell Cheney with author Scott Bane
Friends of History 1st Weds Lecture: Sam Adams: An African American Civil War Veteran and his New Mexican Life
Hannah Abelbeck
Photo Archivist, Palace of the Governors Photo Archives, New Mexico History Museum
This talk will dive deep into a set of photographs in Photo Archives collections which feature Samuel Adams, an African American Civil War veteran who later settled in New Mexico. The presentation will put Adams in context with his contemporaries and explore the difficulty of looking for information about minor and overlooked historical figures whose stories usually aren’t center stage.
Hannah Abelbeck is the Photo Archivist in the Palace of the Governors Photo Archives department at the New Mexico History Museum. She has a BA in English and Art History from the University of Kansas and an MA in English from Penn State University, and she’s worked with special collections archives at both universities. She researches Southwestern (especially New Mexico) photographers, documentary and vernacular photography, cultural movements, and histories of gender and sexuality. At NMHM, she is working on increasing digital access to the museum’s vast photo collections.
Friends of History 1st Weds Lecture: The Civil War in the Far West
Megan Kate Nelson
Author and Historian
Most Americans believe that the Civil War took place only in the East—Gettysburg, Atlanta, Appomattox—and that the fight involved only the North and the South. Beginning in the summer of 1861, however, the U.S. and Confederate armies clashed with each other and with Indigenous peoples in New Mexico and Arizona, fighting for control over the larger West. Drawing from her Pulitzer Prize-finalist book, The Three-Cornered War, Megan Kate Nelson will explain what was at stake for all three groups in the Civil War in the West; how the conflict evolved between 1861 and 1868; and the print, material, and visual sources she consulted to uncover the lived experiences of the war’s combatants and civilians in this region.
Megan Kate Nelson is a historian and writer, with a BA from Harvard and a PhD in American Studies from the University of Iowa. Her most recent book, The Three-Cornered War: The Union, the Confederacy, and Native Peoples in the Fight for the West(Scribner 2020) was a finalist for the 2021 Pulitzer Prize in History. She writes about the Civil War, the U.S. West, and American landscapes of memory for The New York Times, Washington Post, The Atlantic, Smithsonian Magazine, Preservation Magazine, and Civil War Times. Scribner will publish her next book, Saving Yellowstone: Exploration and Preservation in Reconstruction America, in March 2022.
Friends of History is a volunteer support group for the New Mexico History Museum in Santa Fe, New Mexico. Its mission is to raise funds and public awareness for the Museum’s exhibitions and programs. Friends of History fulfills its mission by offering high quality public history programs, including the First Wednesday Lecture Series.
For more information, or to join the Friends of History, go to friendsofhistorynm.org.
Visit the history museum at nmhistorymuseum.org
Friends of History 1st Weds Lecture: The Santa Fe Trail - When Horatio Alger met Paco
In this encore presentation, Thomas E. Chavez,
Director (Retired), New Mexico History Museum; Historian, speaks on the lasting cultural significance of the Santa Fe Trail.
The Santa Fe Trail can be of interest on many levels; from tracing its ruts, reading the journals of those who traversed it, compiling receipts of the food they ate, focusing on biographies of individual travellers, and so on. Yet, the Trail’s history has a context that begins before and continues after its existence. It’s importance relative to the European Reformation and the history of the United States resonates today. It is this context that makes The Santa Fe Trail a significant event in North American history.
Thomas E. Chávez has a Ph.D. in History from the University of New Mexico. He directed the Palace of the Governors State History Museum (now, the New Mexico History Museum) for over twenty-one years. Under his administration the Fray Angélico Chávez Library was opened and the planning and money was achieved for the new History Museum and the Stewart Udall Resource Center. He has published twelve books, three of which are published in translation in Spain. His book Chasing History: Quixotic Quests of Artifacts, Art and Heritage is a firsthand account mostly about the history museum. He is a corresponding member of Spain’s Royal Academy of History and a Research Associate Professor for the Latin American Iberian Institute of the University of New Mexico.
Friends of History is a volunteer support group for the New Mexico History Museum in Santa Fe, New Mexico. Its mission is to raise funds and public awareness for the Museum’s exhibitions and programs. Friends of History fulfills its mission by offering high quality public history programs, including the First Wednesday Lecture Series.
For more information, or to join the Friends of History, go to friendsofhistorynm.org.
Visit the history museum at nmhistorymuseum.org
Words on the Edge Exhibit Event
Save the Date: 10/29/21, 6pm, NM History Museum Auditorium
The Press at the Palace of Governors invites you to an evening of readings from WORDS ON THE EDGE
Join Santa Fe’s current and former Poets Laureate reading from WORDS on the Edge: a collection of twenty-six poems and lyrical texts issued by the CODEX Foundation that address themes of nature and its irresponsible destruction. Twenty-six notable poets and writers were paired with highly regarded letterpress printers from four countries to produce this limited-edition broadside portfolio. The poets will read selections from the collection, plus work of their own.
FREE, but seating is limited to 108 persons
For reservations, email: [email protected]
MASKS ARE REQUIRED THROUGHOUT THE READING
The complete set of broadsides will be on display in the Museum’s Meem Room
A reception will follow the reading.
Friends of History 1st Weds Lecture - Santa Rita, NM : Two Centuries of Copper Mining
This encore presentation of our 1st Wednesday Lecture series offers a synopsis of two centuries of copper mining at Santa Rita, New Mexico. We will examine the “discovery” of the copper, the emergent mining techniques in the nineteenth century, and the most important era of open-pit copper mining. We will
discuss the technologies, the economics, the workers, and the community, especially in the twentieth century, and the consequences of the growth of the massive open pit.
Chris Huggard earned his Ph.D. in History from the University of New Mexico in 1994 and is a professor of history at Northwest Arkansas Community College. He has published extensively on the history of mining in the American Southwest/West and is author with Art Gomez of Forests Under Fire: A Century of Ecosystem Mismanagement in the Southwest (Univ of AZ Press, 2001) and co-author with Terrence M. Humble of Santa Rite del Cobre: A Copper Mining Community in New Mexico (Univ Press of Colorado, 2012), winner of the 2012 Howard Bryan Western History Award, a 2012 Southwest Book Award, and the 2013 Clark C. Spence Award for Best Book in Mining History. Huggard is currently completing a book manuscript titled, On Pea Ridge: Civil War Battlefield, Community Memory, and the Making of a National Park.
Christopher J. Huggard is a professor of history at NorthWest Arkansas Community College and has published extensively on the history of mining and the environment in the American West.
Terrence M. Humble was born in Santa Rita and retired from Chino Mines as a diesel mechanic and foreman in 2001. He has been recording histories, saving documents, and participating in local preservation of Santa Rita since 1967, publishing several journal articles on his hometown's history.
Friends of History is a volunteer support group for the New Mexico History Museum in Santa Fe, New Mexico. Its mission is to raise funds and public awareness for the Museum’s exhibitions and programs. Friends of History fulfi
Friends of History Lecture: Santa Rita, NM: Two Centuries of Copper Mining
In this encore presentation of this month's First Wednesday Lecture, Chris Huggard and Terry Humble join us to offer a synopsis of two centuries of copper mining at Santa Rita, New Mexico. We will examine the “discovery” of the copper, the emergent mining techniques in the nineteenth century, and the most important era of open-pit copper mining. We will
discuss the technologies, the economics, the workers, and the community, especially in the twentieth century, and the consequences of the growth of the massive open pit.
Chris Huggard earned his Ph.D. in History from the University of New Mexico in 1994 and is a professor of history at Northwest Arkansas Community College. He has published extensively on the history of mining in the American Southwest/West and is author with Art Gomez of Forests Under Fire: A Century of Ecosystem Mismanagement in the Southwest (Univ of AZ Press, 2001) and co-author with Terrence M. Humble of Santa Rite del Cobre: A Copper Mining Community in New Mexico (Univ Press of Colorado, 2012), winner of the 2012 Howard Bryan Western History Award, a 2012 Southwest Book Award, and the 2013 Clark C. Spence Award for Best Book in Mining History. Huggard is currently completing a book manuscript titled, On Pea Ridge: Civil War Battlefield, Community Memory, and the Making of a National Park.
Christopher J. Huggard is a professor of history at NorthWest Arkansas Community College and has published extensively on the history of mining and the environment in the American West.
Terrence M. Humble was born in Santa Rita and retired from Chino Mines as a diesel mechanic and foreman in 2001. He has been recording histories, saving documents, and participating in local preservation of Santa Rita since 1967, publishing several journal articles on his hometown's history.
Friends of History is a volunteer support group for the New Mexico History Museum in Santa Fe, New Mexico. Its mission is to raise funds and public awareness for the Museum’s ex
FOH : Pueblo Sovereignty
In this encore presentation of our 1st Wednesday lecture for June, Rick Hendricks discusses the way in which Pueblo Indians have fought to preserve tribal sovereignty as it related to issues of land and water from the Spanish Colonial Period to the present day. Case studies of five pueblos will be examined, four in New Mexico and one in Texas: Pojoaque, Nambe, Tesuque, Isleta, and Ysleta del Sur.
Rick Hendricks, is the New Mexico state records administrator. He is a former state historian and editor of the Vargas Project at the University of New Mexico. He has written extensively on the history of the American Southwest and Mexico. His most recent book, Pueblo Indian Sovereignty: Land and Water in New Mexico and Texas, was coauthored with Malcolm Ebright and published by the University of Oklahoma Press in 2019.
Friends of History is a volunteer support group for the New Mexico History Museum in Santa Fe, New Mexico. Its mission is to raise funds and public awareness for the Museum’s exhibitions and programs. Friends of History fulfills its mission by offering high quality public history programs, including the First Wednesday Lecture Series.
For more information, or to join the Friends of History, go to friendsofhistorynm.org.
Visit the history museum at nmhistorymuseum.org
#NewMexicoCulture
Photo: José Antonio Vigil (Potshuno), a Nambé Pueblo warrior, circa 1879. John K. Hillers, photographer, neg. no. 055217.
Introducing Extended Summer Hours
1st Wednesday Lecture - Recasting the Vote: How Women of Color Transformed the Suffrage Movement
