Homestead National Monument of America staff and members of the Daughters of the American Revolution admire the dress form donated to Homestead by the DAR/NPS

The Nebraska Daughters of the America Revolution recently donated a conservation quality dress form to Homestead National Monument of America.  This dress form will allow the monument staff to properly display women’s clothing for the public to see.

There is a sizable collection of women’s clothing in the museum collection at Homestead. Thanks to the efforts of the DAR, these items can be displayed for all visitors to see. This project was headed by Jackie Ohlmann, Honorary State Regent.

On October 1, members of DAR were at Homestead to celebrate this new dress form that is currently on display, with a Victorian dress.  This dress exhibit can be found in the monument’s open curatorial exhibit area at the Homestead Heritage Center. 

Even before there was a Homestead National Monument of America, the Daughters of the American Revolution had a hand in preserving the story of homesteading. In 1925, after the first attempt at creating a national monument failed, the DAR placed a stone monument on Daniel Freeman’s plot of land commemorating it as the first homestead filed under the Homestead Act of 1862.

Over the last ten years, the DAR has provided funding for a variety of projects, including digitizing and transcribing oral histories that Homestead National Monument of America collected over the years.