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New Women’s Archive Digital Collection Now Available

Carey C. Shuart Women's Archive and Research Collection, Digitization

Blanche Espy in her first evening dress, circa 1912.

Materials from the Carey C. Shuart Women’s Archive & Research Collection are featured in the latest digital collection from Special Collections. Blanche Espy Chenoweth, Her Life, Her Times, contains photographs documenting the life of Blanche Espy Chenoweth during the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

The collection contains 67 individual photographs and a 48-page scrapbook. The photographs include formal portraits and snapshots, which provide examples both of formal dress and photographic customs from the time period and shots of life unscripted.

Chenoweth was a a lecturer, writer, and voice on the radio who covered topics related to women’s social customs, homemaking, and general well-being. She was born in Iowa in 1875 and spent the last 25 years of her life in Houston, prior to her death in 1960.

Blanche E. Chenoweth (far right) and others enjoy watermelon while in North Carolina, dated August 1923.

Throughout her adult life she lived and travelled in various cities giving lectures on women’s dress and grooming and their importance in a happy life. In the 1920s, she lectured and wrote on the problems of women at the Chautauqua Institute in New York, and in the 1930s she had a radio program in Chicago which gave advice on women’s personal problems.

Visit the collection in the UH Digital Library to see all of the photographs!

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