From clothing to cooking style to game playing, these girls stepped back to the 1860s

In mid-July, a group of girls gathered at the Mahaffie Stagecoach Stop and Farm for the site’s Young Ladies Academy, which offered them a taste of what it would have been like to grow up in the 1860s.

The girls, ages 7 to 9, embraced the experience. Six of the seven participants dressed up in clothes of the period, wearing dresses, pinafores and sunbonnets. Everyone had the added accessory of a mask for safety.

“When you dress a certain way, you feel a certain way,” said Kari Coates, historical interpreter at Mahaffie. “The girls being in that historically accurate clothing, it transports them back to a different time. They slow down.”

Seven-year-old Joella Bezuayehu from Lenexa enjoyed the change.

“We got to wear stuff from a long time ago, and we even got to wear a sun cap even though it wasn’t sunny,” she said.

Coates and fellow interpreter Alyse Laporte had to get creative with some indoor activities when rain put a damper on their plans for croquet.

Some activities were already inside, including a demonstration on the cookstove in the basement kitchen of the Mahaffie house. Coates said they taught the girls how to start up and heat the cookstove, and all of them worked together to make buttermilk biscuits.

“When we do the cooking, we’re doing it in the 1860s style,” Coates said. “We don’t have measuring cups; that started in late 1800s. We taught the girls about the differences in cooking nowadays versus the 1860s. Our sugar doesn’t come in a bag. It comes in a sugar cone.”

To keep things safe, each girl only worked on her own biscuit. Coates made sure each biscuit was labeled going into the oven.

Next up were authentic toys of the time, including a Jacob’s ladder, which is a series of blocks connected by strings.

For a more hands-on experience, they created their own thaumatropes. It’s a toy consisting of two strings joined to either side of a small picture. In this case, one side of the picture showed a cage, the other a bird. When you wind up the strings, then let it twirl, it creates the illusion that the bird is actually in the cage.

“Every girl got to bring that home,” Coates said.

With a lucky break in the weather, the girls were able to do watercolor paintings outside.

“The painting was really fun. I tried to do one of the trees, but it didn’t really turn out because we didn’t have pink, so I just made a maple,” said 7-year-old Maggie Webster of DeSoto.

Another outdoor activity after the rained rolled out was a tea party, which included the biscuits they baked. For some, the peppermint tea might be a bit of an acquired taste.

“Trying peppermint tea, that really surprised me. I did not like it. I had that taste ever since yesterday,” Joella said.

Also on the agenda were a few parlor games, including one called Stir the Mush, which is similar to musical chairs. One girl stood in the middle saying, “Stir the mush,” while the others walked around her. When she hit the floor three times, everyone had to step on a paper bag on the floor, and whoever didn’t find one was out.

“I enjoy Stir the Mush just for the sheer fact that they’re always giggling,” Coates said. “They get to play a game that you don’t need to have any fancy electronics. …You don’t have to have a lot of stuff to have a lot of fun.”

Normally, Mahaffie holds four Young Ladies Academy days each summer: two for younger girls and two for older girls. This year, this was the only one they’ll have.

They’ll be back next summer, and Joella is already excited for it.

“Come over — it’s a really fun thing,” she said. “You get to dress up. You get to bake. You get to make crafts, and most of all, you even get to eat biscuits.”

This story was originally published August 6, 2020 at 5:00 AM with the headline "From clothing to cooking style to game playing, these girls stepped back to the 1860s."