I think it started while listening to grandfather and uncle telling stories in the circa 1779 farmhouse in Nova Scotia. After dinner they’d sit in front of the fireplace and tell stories about our forebears. I learned that one ancestor, Captain John Parker, was a Minuteman on Lexington Green, curious since my family were Loyalists. I learned that another ancestor, my namesake Elizabeth Hawkesworth who arrived in Nova Scotia in 1783, was the niece of the renowned potter Josiah Wedgewood. As I grew older, I was struck by the improbability of this family lore and eventually unraveled the tales. When delving into family history, I discovered I wanted to know more about what was happening in those people's lives, why they ended up where they did. As one bit of information lead to another and I discovered history was nothing like what I had been taught in school. After I discovered living history, I began to delve into the stories of Florida women.
2. What role does history play or has it played in your personal life?
When I started my search for Florida’s first people, I found that there was little written about them outside of scholarly circles. I found a small book at the library that talked about the Timucuan Indians which as I learned later was chalked full of misinformation. At first, none of the archaeologists I contacted wanted to give me the time of day. Then a friend at Red Cloud, a Native American Art Gallery in St. Petersburg, suggested I contact an artist called Hermann Trappman. He was more than generous with his time and information. I ran into him again a few years later an art show where I was showing the work I had created based on the information he shared with me. The next year, he asked me out on a date, and well, the rest is history. We married in August, 1992.
3. How does history play a part in your professional life/career?
When I asked my husband, who was developing a living history park, what I might do to help, he immediately replied, “Tell women’s stories.” He explained that he felt he couldn’t reach female students when doing school outreach programs. So I did just that. I began to researched the roles women played in Florida history then created characters dressed in period clothing. As an artist-in-residence at the Science Center of Pinellas County, I shared stories of women coming to Florida in the 16th century and the Native American people they encountered. I started receiving requests to do other women.
Because I’m handy with a needle, I made reproduction clothing and ended up with a commission to make clothing for the park ranger interpretive staff at DeSoto National Memorial. I was also awarded a Florida Humanities grant in 2012-13 to offer workshops on correct period clothing to reenactors participating in the Viva Florida Quincentennial
I decided that the best way to share Florida's amazing stories with the public was to publish a quarterly magazine. The Florida Frontier Gazette was launched in 1998 with articles written by historians, archaeologists, living history interpreters, and artists. At one point I was able to obtain grants from the Florida Division of Historical Resources. The fun part was packing boxes of magazines into the back of our little pick-up truck and delivering them to museums and libraries all over the State. By 2004, grant money was getting tight and I just couldn’t find the funding to keep going. We then decided to develop a website to celebrate Florida through art, storytelling, and special events.
4. Why is studying/knowing history important?
When I first moved to Florida, I felt lost. It was an alien environment. History helps ground us, gives us a sense of place in the world. The more you learn about where you live, why it is the way it is, the more you’ll care about it. Once I settled in to learning about Florida’s natural and cultural history, it began to feel like home.
5. What is your favorite period or aspect of history to learn about and why?
I find cultural history fascinating. What was it like to travel on a caravel to New Spain in the 16th century? What did you wear? What did you eat? Where did you sleep? And my favorite question from my audience is, where did they go to the bathroom? Once you start telling these stories people are drawn in, and hopefully, leave wanting to learn more.
6. What makes Florida history so unique and inspirational to you?
Florida was a difficult environment for Europeans coming here. Survival of the fittest comes to mind. For instance, clothing, or the lack thereof, really tells it all. Spanish accounts suggest that the indigenous men and women both wore a breechcloth and little else, except for beads and pearls. Shocking to Europeans used to wearing so many layers. And their armor must have been a real pain to take care of, what with the heat and humidity causing it to rust. I see them stripping down the layers to survive.
Apparently Florida's food resources were so foreign to the conquistadors, they had no idea how to forage. According to The Account by Nunez Cabeza De Vaca, some on the Panfilo de Narvaez expedition in 1528 starved to death. A food fussy woman living in colonial St. Augustine starved to death rather than eat the “scum and vermin” of this land. So if there is one thing these stories tell me, it’s to learn to adapt.
7. How does your art tell Florida’s story?
I share Florida’s story by slipping into a persona based on the era I study. Some of my characters are real and some are composites based women of that time period. Besides my 16th Century Spanish character, I’ve also portrayed a Seminole War Period settler and a Spanish American War journalist, among others. When I walk into a classroom dressed in period clothing and carrying a basket of reproduction artifacts, kids tend to sit up and take notice. When I sit at a spinning wheel or a loom at a living history event people say, that’s a lost art. It isn’t, but they’ve had so little exposure to how people lived every day in the past. When I paint pictures of past lives, I hope people will connect to the past in a way that historical texts cannot.
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