Shroudmakers, Undertakers, and Hairworkers:
Women’s Professional Death Labor in 19th-Century New England
Women’s Professional Death Labor in 19th-Century New England
A Zoom Presentation by Elizabeth Sacktor
Thursday, February 12, 2026 at 6:30 pm
Register for the Zoom link.
Sliding scale admission: $5-20.
Sliding scale admission: $5-20.
Union Block, corner of Main and Pleasant streets where the downtown branch of Florence Bank is today. The second story sign - "Mrs. J. Woodruff / Hair Work." - advertises the studio of Mrs. Jerusha A. Woodruff.
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Throughout history and in many cultures, the work of caring for the dead and dying has been the work of women. In this lecture, Historic Northampton’s Elizabeth Sacktor will explore 19th-century New England women’s personal and professional networks of death labor. She will discuss women shroudmakers, undertakers, and makers of hair jewelry who lived in Northampton and elsewhere in the valley.
In the early 19th-century men began to encroach on this historically female dominated field, attempting to "professionalize" labor women had been doing for centuries for little to no pay. Sacktor will discuss how New England women navigated this change and declared their own labor as valuable, marketable, and deserving of pay. Co-director Elizabeth Sharpe will provide an introductory overview of the history of women’s caregiving and death in the home. At the Five College Women’s Research Center and at the Mt. Holyoke College Archives and Special Collections, she researched “Nineteenth-Century Women Reflect on Aging, Death, and Caregiving.” |
About the Speaker
Elizabeth Sacktor is the museum educator at Historic Northampton. A recent Smith College graduate, her honors thesis was titled: “Stitching Her Grief: Nineteenth-Century Women’s Textile Labor in the Grieving Process.” As a Historic Deerfield Fellow, she wrote “‘To Making A Shroud”: Frances Miles and the Early Female Death Professionals of Greenfield, Massachusetts.”
Co-director Elizabeth Sharpe will provide an introductory overview of the history of women’s caregiving and death in the home. At the Five College Women’s Research Center and at the Mt. Holyoke College Archives and Special Collections, she researched “Nineteenth-Century Women Reflect on Aging, Death, and Caregiving.”
Co-director Elizabeth Sharpe will provide an introductory overview of the history of women’s caregiving and death in the home. At the Five College Women’s Research Center and at the Mt. Holyoke College Archives and Special Collections, she researched “Nineteenth-Century Women Reflect on Aging, Death, and Caregiving.”