Living the Dream: Everyday Life in Sylvia DeWolf Ostrander’s New England

On Saturday, July 26, 2025, the John Brown House Museum will host Rebecca Donahue for the living history program Living the Dream: Everyday Life in Sylvia DeWolf Ostrander’s New England.

What was it like to live in Sylvia DeWolf Ostrander’s 19th century world? If you have burning questions about women’s daily lives 150 years ago, Miss L.E. Ackerman has burning answers. A teacher at a young ladies’ boarding school in 1875 New England, Miss Ackerman knows how things ought to be but also how things actually are. And while she has a great many answers, she has all the opinions on fashion, politics, marriage, education, suffrage, travelling, Temperance, baseball, the late War, sea-bathing, and of course, etiquette.

Practice writing in Spencerian penmanship, sitting in a hooped skirt or a bustle, or dancing a Spanish waltz. Debate the proper sequence for getting dressed or why wool is the best fabric for Summer costumes. Discuss how far the young United States has come in its first almost-century and how far Miss Ackerman, thinking of her girls’ futures, believes it still has to go.

This program connects with JBH’s current exhibit The Girl of My Dreams: Sylvia, a 19th Century Life. Developed by artist Stacy Morrison, the exhibit features contents from a small 19th century trunk that was discarded on a NYC street. Morrison salvaged the trunk and, after piecing together the original owner’s life story, that of NY and RI resident Sylvia Dewolf Ostrander (1841-1925), she has reimagined Sylvia’a life through photography, painting, and textiles that blur past and present. The resulting exhibit is a microhistory that brings to life a Victorian woman’s forgotten story which Morrison will discuss during an event-within-an-event on Saturday July 26th at 1pm.

Living historian Rebecca Bayreuther Donohue is a co-founder of The Dirty Blue Shirts, an experiential history collective that offers programs across the Northeast on a variety of subjects from the American Revolution to Prohibition. She led the first-person roleplaying program at Mystic Seaport Museum for over twenty years and managed its period costume workshop for over ten. Her current research investigates the connections amongst maritime communities & the dissemination of knitting patterns, the cod fisheries, and sheep on islands. She lives in Niantic, Connecticut, with her husband and a lot of yarn.

Event admission is included with the JBH admission tickets. General admission costs $10 per person and is free for RIHS members, other discounts are available. The John Brown House Museum is located at 52 Power Street in Providence, RI. Parking is available off of Charlesfield Street.

Tickets are available here.