DATE: Tuesday, October 21, 1997             TAG: 9710210269

SECTION: LOCAL                   PAGE: B1   EDITION: NORTH CAROLINA 

SOURCE: BY JEFFREY S. HAMPTON, STAFF WRITER 

DATELINE: ELIZABETH CITY                    LENGTH:   75 lines

MUSEUM MAKES HISTORY WITH NEW EXHIBIT WOMEN'S HISTORY PHOTOS, ARTIFACTS PART OF STATE'S FIRST TRAVELING DISPLAY

The ``North Carolina Women Making History'' exhibit that just opened at the Museum of the Albemarle is making a little history itself.

It is the first traveling version of an exhibit originally shown at the North Carolina Museum of History.

``We want to take every large exhibit at the Museum of History and make it a traveling exhibit,'' said Don Pendergraft, a curator and designer at the Museum of the Albemarle. ``This is an experiment.''

Pendergraft was the only man on a team of seven who spent more than a year condensing the popular women's history exhibit in Raleigh into photographs and text mounted on 12 large panels. The original exhibit was on display in Raleigh from 1994 to 1996 and required 10 years of research, featured 1,100 artifacts and covered 400 years of women in history.

``There was a lot of interest to keep that exhibit alive in some form,'' said Ellen Fitzgibbons, an assistant curator with the North Carolina Museum of History. ``The focus of the original exhibit was to look at the life of the everyday woman.''

The 12 panels could serve as a core display for other museums or historical societies that want to hold a women's history exhibit, said Rhonda Tyson, executive director of the Museum of the Albemarle.

Along with the panels, the MOA displays more than 100 local artifacts, and an enlarged, wall-mounted album full of photos of women in the Albemarle: a Hatteras woman hanging out her wash in 1920s, the first female deputy in Dare County, local beauty queens from the 1930s and a Bertie County woman on a hunting trip in 1900.

``The most powerful women were seldom famous,'' Tyson said. ``Those are the women who formed our lives.''

Artifacts reach back to a cone-shaped clay pot from a Currituck County field. Algonquin women buried the pot and surrounded it with hot coals to cook. The clay pot may be several centuries old.

Algonquin women were the tribe's property owners. They built the home and passed it on to their daughters, according to the exhibit. The men seldom stayed home, spending most of their time hunting and fishing. After marriage, the man moved in with the woman.

The custom of women owning the property caused some conflict between the natives and Europeans, who wanted to deal with male leaders, Tyson said.

Unfortunately, artifacts and portraits of the common women from a century or more ago are scarce, she said.

``We don't have a lot from them because their things were wore out and used up,'' Tyson said.

Mingled with the few original pieces are recreations, drawings and paintings of a few of the more famous.

A Quaker bonnet made in 1875 relates to a narrative about how the Society of Friends was among the first religions to teach women to read.

A portrait of Margaret Hollowell sits near an account of how she marched in the World War I Peace Parade in 1918, becoming the first woman in Elizabeth City allowed to walk down the street in a public parade.

One panel highlights the actions of Penelope Craven Barker, who organized the Edenton Tea Party just before the Revolutionary War.

A tarnished temperance medal was a badge of support in the early part of the century, much like the ribbons for breast cancer worn today.

The original Raleigh exhibit drew a book full of positive comments, Fitzgibbons said.

``A lot of thank you's,'' she said. ``Thank you for showing us.'' ILLUSTRATION: MUSEUM PHOTOS

Part of the ``North Carolina Women Making History'' display at the

Museum of the Albemarle includes photographs of important women from

the state's past. These photos show women from Pasquotank County.

The top one dates to about 1930; the bottom one, to about 1940.

FEATURED

The MOA is one of three branches of the North Carolina Museum of

History in Raleigh. The ``North Carolina Women Making History''

exhibit will be on display at the MOA until June 7, 1998. For more

information call 335-1453.

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