MY SECOND EVENT OF 2026 IN MARCH

In 2025 I did a historical clothing Powerpoint presentation for the San Diego branch of the Mayflower Colony, whose membership is comprised of descendants of that famous ship who arrived in the 1620s. About a week later I was contacted by two other “colonies”, one in Escondido, and another in Santa Ana, asking if I could do a similar one for them later that year. I told them I’d be happy to.

Originally the Santa Ana Colony was going to have me come in November but as we got closer, they had to reschedule for the following February in 2026. That was fine with me because it was getting a bit busy for me, and I was glad for a delay.

This was the insert they had for their February meeting. I find it funny at their choice of my photo they used. I gave them six to choose from.

I suggested that maybe I could get the ladies of my fashion shows to come with me to do a regular show, but when we got closer and I started inviting them, it turned out driving 2 hrs to get there at 9:30 in the morning wasn’t feasible. I decided to just stay overnight at a hotel nearby so I didn’t have to make that drive myself.

I started working on updating my Powerpoint show I do for them and wanted to include historical details for their 1620s clothes, which I didn’t know much about, nor had many photos or paintings I could use for information. My searches automatically took me to England and the upper classes clothing, which the Pilgrims did not wear. I finally found some lower class and farmers clothing that looked like ones I saw and took it from there. I even found some pattern lines they could use to create their own, plus fabric sources.

The location was at the Elks Lodge in Santa Ana, and it was a beautiful building. The room we were in was very large and I was impressed with its décor. Besides the large screen up over the stage, there were also five video screens around the room for better viewing.

 

I’m always a bit anxious about how I’ll be set up with my laptop to their projector and worry that I may not have the right connector for it to work. But they had someone there that was very familiar with doing this, and she just plugged into my laptop and handed me a remote so I could advance my slides. The only drawback to that was I couldn’t see my laptop screen so I wasn’t able to point out certain things but fortunately I had written “photo on the right” etc, in my narrative.

After showing my slides on their Pilgrim clothing, I jumped 100 years into the future and showed them how similar the Colonial clothing of the 1700s were to the 1620s clothing. It turned out just like the San Diego Colony, they too were very interested in that time period for dressing in, so I got a lot of questions about those. I’m assuming it’s because there are more opportunities for events wearing those to than the earlier Pilgrim era. Again, this wasn’t specifically a costume group but are more into their history. But there were some interested in costuming.

I’ve been bringing my dress form with me for these groups and dress it in my 1780s red/white/blue caraco and skirt. I think it stands out really well in the room and looks very patriotic. I also decided to wear my 1873 blue & white striped seaside dress since it was easy to get dressed in and gave them a mini-fashion show of myself. I brought a couple underpinnings and showed those off too.

 

One thing that fascinated me was at the beginning of their meetings they do a roll call of the descendants. They call out each name of the original Pilgrims, and the attendees raise their hands if they are traced back to them. Some would be related by 2 or 3 family lines to a single name. I’m still trying to work my brain around that. I was provided with a nice lunch afterwards put on by the Elks Lodge.