What's In A Mattress?

Please enjoy this installment of New Stories From Old New Castle: Student Perspectives on New Castle’s Past, Present, and Future. Students created the blog entries as part of the Spring 2017 University of Delaware Museum Studies Class, Historical Properties (Museum Studies 605), taught on-site in partnership with the New Castle Historical Society

Sarah McNamara

As part of the Historic Properties course, in collaboration with the New Castle Historical Society and the University of Delaware Museum Studies Program, students were encouraged develop “interpretive interventions” for the historical society to use in one of the historic homes. These interpretive changes were intended to be small-scale and low-cost while complementing and extending the existing interpretive framework. I walked through the Amstel House with Dan Citron, the Executive Director of New Castle Historical Society to develop a small addition to the furnishing plan.

View of the exterior of the Amstel House located in Historic New Castle. Image courtesy of the New Castle Historical Society.

One of our final stops in the house tour is the upstairs bedroom. The most notable piece of furniture in the room is a large bedstead with a small, empty trundle bed peeking from underneath.

The current furnishing of the upstairs bedroom in the Amstel house includes this bedstead with a smaller trundle bed peeking out from underneath. Image by author.

This detail of the trundle bed provides insight to the bed's construction, but the addition of a mattress would give visitors a better understanding of its purpose in the room. Image by author.

Seeing the naked trundle bed inspired my project of creating a reproduction mattress to give guests more context for understanding function this piece of furniture. I decided to volunteer my time and effort to make a simple stuffed mattress. How hard could it be to create what I thought was just a larger version of a pillow?

I rolled up my sleeves and dug into research because I wanted my mattress to be as historically accurate as possible. Unfortunately, I found since mattresses are heavily used utilitarian objects, few historic examples have survived. This did not stop me! I soon learned that making mattresses in the past often required the skilled labor of upholsterers, and the upholstery trade was one of the most prestigious and lucrative craft professions in the 18th century. Using Thomas Webster’s Encyclopedia of Domestic Economy and other secondary sources, I determined the typical materials of period mattresses were ticking fabric for the exterior and feathers, wool, or straw for the stuffing.

This schematic in the Winterthur Museum Galleries displays the many layers that may have been present in historic bedding. The feather bed rests on a straw mattress, and both are encased in ticking fabric. Image by author.

Each material choice had an influence on the comfort, cost, and status of the object in the past, with feathers being the softest and therefore most expensive. This research brought me to the crux of my recommendation: What materials should be used for the reproduction mattress? I had to consider many variables including historical accuracy, affordability, and ease of maintenance. All museums face these issues while developing their interpretive plans.

New Castle Historical Society will ultimately decide whether the reproduction mattress will be added to the furnishing plans of the bedroom in the Amstel House. Regardless, I have gained an even greater appreciation for the time, research, and thoughtfulness that goes into even the smallest of interpretive changes in historic house museums.

For further information on historic mattresses, I recommend:

Crowley, John E. The Invention of Comfort: Sensibilities and Design in Early Modern Britain and Early America. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2001.

Miller, Marla R. Betsy Ross and the Making of America. New York: Henry Holt and Company, 2010.

Webster, Thomas. Encyclopedia of Domestic Economy. New York: Harper and Brothers, 1845.



Even Old New Castle was Once New Amstel: European Rivalry in the Delaware Valley

Please enjoy this installment of New Stories From Old New Castle: Student Perspectives on New Castle’s Past, Present, and Future. Students created the blog entries as part of the Spring 2017 University of Delaware Museum Studies Class, Historical Properties (Museum Studies 605), taught on-site in partnership with the New Castle Historical Society

Aliza Alperin-Sheriff

During the 1600s, the Dutch, the Swedes, and the English all competed for control of the Delaware Valley. The Dutch and the Swedes were primarily interested in access to the fur trade with the Lenni Lenape, the local Native Americans. The English saw the Delaware Valley as a way to connect their colonies in New England and the Chesapeake region, thereby gaining control of the entire eastern seaboard.

The first European to lay eyes on the Delaware Bay was Henry Hudson in 1609. Although he was English, the Dutch employed him to find the Northwest Passage. Hudson found the Delaware River too shallow to navigate, so he continued north where he claimed the area that became New York (then called New Amsterdam) and explored the river that today bears his name.

A Dutch map of the Delaware Valley. From the Library of Congress.

After Hudson, the Dutch continued to explore the Delaware Bay and River. They set up a few trading posts and found a sandy-shored bend in the river that they called Sandhoek. This later became the site of New Castle. But the Dutch were far more focused on New Amsterdam and the North River (the Hudson), than the South River (the Delaware). This benign neglect created an opportunity for Sweden to establish its own colony in the Delaware Valley.

The Swedes bought land near Sandhoek from the Lenape in 1638. They built a fort at the point where the Christina and the Brandywine Rivers join to form the Delaware and sent colonists to populate New Sweden and farm along the river. But Swedish control of the Delaware Valley was short-lived.

New Castle and the Delaware River, c. 2017

In 1651, Peter Stuyvesant, the renowned director-general of New Amsterdam, decided he wanted the Dutch to regain control of the Delaware Valley. After determining that Sandhoek was an important strategic location between New Sweden and the Delaware Bay, he purchased the land from the Lenape and built Fort Casimir. With this purchase, Stuyvesant officially put an end to New Sweden in 1655.

A year later, the city of Amsterdam took ownership of the settlement around Fort Casimir and renamed the area New Amstel. Amsterdam was the only city ever to have its own American colony. It was a diligent colonizer, building up the local economy and sending over settlers. However, Amsterdammer control was also destined to be a short chapter of New Castle’s history.

In 1664, King Charles II gave his brother the area encompassing what is today New York and New Jersey when the English took New Amsterdam from the Dutch. The man in charge of the effort, Colonel Richard Nicholls, decided he also wanted control of New Amstel, although it had not been included in the land grant. The English easily crushed the forces at Fort Casimir. With that defeat the era of European rivalry over the Delaware Valley came to an end and British sovereignty over North America ascended. The following year the settlers in New Amstel decided to rename their village New Castle.

Historic American Buildings Survey photo. The Tile House, a remnant of Dutch life in New Castle, was razed in the late nineteenth century. From the Library of Congress.