History Connections - The Gift

After listening to the Podcast on Unexpected History, all about gifts, it was pointed out there are many reasons for giving gifts, not just gifts given at Christmas. One particular story which took my fancy on this podcast was all about gifts provided by Captain Cook to the people of Hawaii. We all know how that ended up! If you would like to know more about this story, you can listen to this and other great podcasts on historyhit/unexpectedpodcast, via iTunes.

So that got me thinking – how do gifts relate to our museum. Most of the collection in KVHS has been given to the historical society as donations or gifts. As KVHS is mainly a social history museum, the gifts which have been donated have a significant history which relates to people, places, and the cultural heritage of the Upper Kiewa Valley. Unfortunately, the various incarnations of KVHS were not very diligent in keeping records about these gifts, so a lot of the collection does not have an adequate, significant history. So it’s exciting when we find history which adds to the significance of our items.

These little shoes and dress are an example of one such donation /gift given to KVHS with not many details. Never the less, we had an exhibition called "Kiewa Kids Clothes" which featured children’s clothing from the early 19th Century. Through research, we found that children’s clothing during this period was just a smaller version of what their mothers had worn. Women from Tawonga, being in a remote rural town, would buy material from a hawker, Raja Singh, who carried items for sale on a horse driven caravan. Once they purchased suitable material, women hand sewed or used a manual sewing machine, make their family’s clothes.

Once the exhibition opened, a local woman came to the museum and said: “I have photos of my husband’s family wearing those clothes.” She gave a gift of these photos which went into the exhibition. This photo such a great gift, as now we could apply context and a significance story to these outfits. So this exhibition started off from gifts, then became even more significance, all due to gifts!