Needlework at the Bazaar: Horribly Uninteresting

Here's why you don't take some 17 year olds to needlework shows:


Julia Rosa Newberry kept a diary. She was living in New York. On April 20, 1870 her friend James Hooker Hammersley tried to interest her and sister Mary Louisa in working for the poor orphans of Brooklyn.


The administrators and board held a spring "Bazaar" or "Fair" to raise money to run the school and feed and clothe the children.

April 20, 1870
"The judicious Hooker Hammersly was very anxious Sister & I should be on his committee for the 'Sheltering Arms' a great bazaar just opened & which is to last ten days.---we went to see it, there was a fine collection of pictures, & tons & tons of fancy work, which was horribly uninteresting. I saw a number of the 'swellest' young men of New York."

After the Civil War fairs continued to be a successful method for women to fund causes. The Library Company of Philadelphia has many photographs of the Great Central Fair in 1864. Click on the green highlighted categories and see a picture:
Julia Newberry's Diary was published in 1933.

The Sheltering Arms Nursery is still helping people in its current incarnation as Brooklyn Community Services. Let's hope they are so well-funded by the city's caring citizens that they don't have to sell needlework to raise money for social services.