today during women's history month. we're incredibly fortunate to welcome jared kearney assistant director and curator at the james monroe museum in fredericksburg, virginia. for a presentation that will showcase a selection of original items from the life of elizabeth court, right monroe. elizabeth monroe's story is a fascinating one from her childhood in new york through her experiences as wife of the minister to france and later fifth us president. jared will illustrate elizabeth's life using museum collections that have been handed down through generations

of the monroe family. a bit about our speaker jared kearney began as curator of the james monroe museum and library in november of 2011 previously, he was curator of the woodrow wilson presidential library and museum in staunton, virginia and prior to that. curator of the rye historical society in new york he has been director of the holicville museum farm in folklife center on long island and worked at the greensboro historical museum in north carolina. jared received his ma in museum studies and ba in history from the university of north carolina at greensboro. he is also a blacksmith woodworker raises bonsai trees is a photographer and is acted in numerous films. it's wonderful to have him with us today. and again, there will be time for q&a at the end of our presentation. so, please feel free to leave those at the bottom of your

screen. without further ado. i'm going to turn the zoom over to jared. right well, hello. thank you so much for that great intro and thank you highlands and the james room museum for having me. i'm really excited to be here and to show you some some really cool stuff from elizabeth monroe's life now. before i begin before i started jump into the material culture some of these cool artifacts that i have here. let me ask i'm gonna ask you a question. if you're in your house and time suddenly froze and everything just sort of stood still. and hundreds of years from now folks were looking at the artifacts the items that were in your house. what would those items say about you? what story would they tell and my guess is they would probably say an awful lot, right, you

know artifacts in texas. they're not just separate from us. they're a part of our story and they're part of who we are and who we were and who we will be and i know it sounds a little deep. uh, but anyway, and that's what these artifacts do. they tell the story and i'm gonna start with something pretty cool. i'm gonna dive right in so let me pull this up and i'm gonna show you this and what i'm gonna do is i'm gonna show these artifacts to the camera and hopefully you'll be able to have a good view of these. okay. so what is this? what is it that i am holding here? this is elizabeth monroe's the sarah and it belonged to her and it is it's actually cast with a guild of gold over on top and you see how to sort of these fancy cast carvings and all that stuff you think so. okay. well, is it what exactly is going on? here. well, i'll show you so if you open it up, there's all kinds of stuff that are actually in this

nestaire and if something that she would have used, you know, and people ask about practicality of things. you know, what you know something what would elizabeth monroe, you know practically would have carried around with her. well, this exactly is one of them right here. so the necessar is sort of like a copy a comparable would be sort of like a pocket watch. are you supercologically a pocket knife like a swiss army knife, you know, it has all the kind of stuff on there. what am i talking about? well, i'll show you. okay. first of all, i'll show you this is something that would have been in there. okay. look at this little sucker. all right. look at this. so and i don't know the i don't the camera showing that well, but it's actually a little knife and it's got a little screw on the end there little threads that would actually screw in so you can have a little knife so you could use it for and she most likely would have used this for eating or i'm actually for opening graphite and i'll get a little more to that in just a second. that's because that's kind of cool too. and then of course this

companion piece you have before. all right, you see that? all right, so you have you have an actual fork with time two times notice. there's two not a whole bunch more that was typical of the time period and you know threads on the back on the end of it as well. so these things actually there's a little extender that's in here and you can pull it out and believe it or not. there's actually a little extender and you can screw those on the top. so if you wanted to theoretically you could have a meal with this thing. now the question i get is like well, will they have actually done that? probably not but elizabeth monroe would have had the ability in this capability doing it if she's so cute. um, another thing that i want to show you then of course, there's a little spoon and go along with her. that's right. very good. and then i want to show you this. okay, we pull this up here. i can get it. all right. what on earth is that? okay, this was in the necessary.

and what on earth is it well. believe it or not and sort of turning here. this is actually believe it or not an ear scoop. that's right. you heard that right? this is an ear scoop that that would have cleaned out the ear and you know, it's so it sounds ridiculous, but this is actually something that they would have used and yes people did in fact injure themselves do using this thing. it's made out of metal. it's they injured themselves use this thing. i looked it up people actually did injure themselves, but nevertheless. there you go, and you're stupid for cleaning out the ear that would have been in her lovely necessary. something else is kind of interesting. i was in here. you have a measuring stick here, right? and what was interesting about this is you know this kind of the stair. okay, this here was made by both french and english firms. okay, and you know, it's really hard to tell them apart because they're both have very very

similar similar looks to them they both, you know have these kind of cash carvings and everything and this doesn't have any markings on it. okay. so so the mystery was like a mysteries like where there's a french or english. well, you know, i was looking at this looking close up and lo and behold it actually is the metric system so that tells us that this was french. so this was made in french because english was not we're not using the metric system back in those days and to this day. so there you go. i let me show you. this little piece here. okay going to pull this out here. all right. what on earth is this? okay? this believe it or not was the notepad for elizabeth monroe, okay. so what am i talking about? well, i was talking about graphics with pen with pencils. they actually did do that. you know, they had a little graphite the pencils weren't quite the same as they are today, but you know, it was graphite in graphite will actually write on this and what

is this? well, it's not bone. it's actually ivory. and so it's a little piece of ivory slab that she could write on here and her daily life. so, you know, it goes to show that she had actually that ability that came will just write herself notes and we actually happened to museum have a another one that's bigger slabs of ivory that they would have wrote themselves notes back then so they actually did do that and it's something that you know, we still do today except it's a little different now today, right? we type it into i you know ipods or androids or whatever like that. we send ourselves a little reminder. well, this is the ipod ipad or android of back that you know, at least on some but and so well once the graphite wipe off, well, actually unless you specifically wipe off the graphite it actually stays on and how do i know this? well, you can do an experiment at your house if you want to if you take a tag like a garden tag for garden plants right one with with pen and that are right another with graphite. okay and stick them outside and the pen that the graphite the

pencil will last way longer than the pen will and everything so graphite will actually last on here and take a little that's a little museum a little antique tip for you if you ever buy one of these look carefully you might be able to with certain light be able to see some of the notes actually still wrote on. so there you go. elizabeth monroe's messier. this is something that she would have carried with her. it shows practicality. okay. there's a lot of sort of practical things here, but it also shows a certain stash in a certain style, you know someone in her position as back then at least as wife of the ambassador would have had and i'll actually get a little bit more into that and just a little bit. okay. so what else do i have here? all right, so people ask about okay. so what exactly you know as far as like acrements and things that we have with elizabeth monroe, i'm going to show you this, okay. what is going on here? okay, this looks like at least in modern terms. it looks like a modern slipper or something.

you might wear if you're you know lounging around at night or something like this, but this is actually a slipper in the ballet style. and this was very regency period okay, you can see you can see, you know, someone like, you know someone from a jane austen novel wearing something like this and this belonged to elizabeth monroe and this is something she would have worn around the turn of the century now. so it's interesting about that. is you look at this? this shoe here. okay, so this shoe belongs to elizabeth monroe's mother. so look at this, and so this would have been just you know, a couple decades later, but you you can see how radically the styles changed and how radically they were and you know, especially why does this matter? well, it matters in the sense that if you could imagine elizabeth monroe going over to with her husband over to europe, um back in those days, you know,

especially the first time and you know in the mid-17, i mean the mid 1790s the first time, you know, europe was, you know, they didn't know what to make of us, you know, the most of them thought we'd fail, you know, they were like, you know, who are these upstarts? you know, everything france was a little bit more. we're more popular with france and so we went over there, you know for all you know, they they might have been expecting the americans to show up and you know, barefoot for all you know, and so they went away didn't know what to make of this new american country. so in a sense it was important to wear styles that were reflective of the society which you were going in so if they were being ambassadors to france you would want to wear something that was sort of the latest fashion, especially in the position of being ambassador's wife because it's not just for the hoity-toity part of it. it's because it's important and establishing that we are serious. you know what? i mean? like we are serious. we are a country we are formed

and we're here to stay. hey, we're not going anywhere. we're not going to collapse like a lot of people thought we would and so as as bizarre as it sounds a little details like that actually matter and it mattered to elizabeth monroe in a matter to jameson. at the same time they were overly done. in fact, why don't i transition to this dress back here? okay, so this is a gown. it's very very regency period right? it's very jane austen and this gown belongs to elizabeth monroe and she wore this overseas and this would have been more during the second diplomatic mission after the turn of the 1800s turn of the 19th century. and so you can see it's very slick. it's very straightforward. you know, it's a lot different than those gowns that were coming out just a couple decades beforehand there were much more lavish they were much more, you know had the bonuses and they had, you know, they're much wider and bigger and everything like this.

this is more sleek more streamlined right? it's more i don't know at least for back then if you could imagine it have been more modern. you know what? i mean like nowadays it looks right back then this would have been modern. this would have been news sort of been the styled aware and it is actually made out of believe it or not. it's actually made out of velvet. and what's really interesting about this just sort of a side tangent nerd tangent here. is that velvet, you know, how they make velvet. well, they actually they have two pieces of material right that are sort of you know that are intertwined in between and back then they actually have them seen it done by hand that would cut the material in half. what am i talking about? actually a little bit little picture here. you see that? i know it's reversed. i apologize, but you can see the machine would cut and create this and this right here those threads sticking out. that's what makes that velvet texture. so whatever whatever you're seeing bell, you're actually seeing the inside of a cut two

piece of material just got cool. anyway, so elizabeth would have warn us, okay. and she we don't have it, but she would have worn especially and and formal occasions. there's likely she would have had this gold sort of drapery a scarf that would have gone around and i would have fallen around her. we do not have that so it would have added sort of a little extra something to and again it's very much in the style of the time. it's not overly done that's very much and sort of theme with with the monroe's and they're aesthetic. they wanted to have enough fanciness that they belonged in the room, but not enough to overdo it and enough to stay that this is our own sort of this is our own style. and that's reflective of what happening in america at the time. we were forming our country. we were forming our identity. all right, and so the material culture reflects that we were, you know, borrowing some things from europe, you know, we certainly, you know, certain styles everything but we also had our own thing going

we also had our own thing going. it wasn't overly done. you see that in a lot of their clothing and materials they purchased where it was good but not crazy over the top. kind of cool. what else have i got here? okay. let me show you this. this is a cameo that belonged to elizabeth monroe. you see that? something cool about this is these were all handmade and they are still handmade to this day. what is going on here? why is it white here and a pink color here, this is made of shell and what they would do if you can imagine this, if you pick a seashell and cut out a

piece for the cameo and the craftsmen. imagine the craftsmanship. the craftsman slowly starts carving away so the there is white white white and then they get down to the center part of that shell. the inside of the shell are pink, red on the inside and the outside there is that white, carving up just enough to get to the inner part of the shell, to reveal and show the outer part as the relief which is an astounding piece of hand craftsmanship and this is all done by hand. it is all done by hand. pretty amazing. so what? what is the big deal with this? elizabeth would want to make sure as part of how she is

presenting herself be in with the latest fashions and low and behold, who was a big fan of cameos but napoleon? napoleon and his wife josephine were a big fan of cameos. when napoleon was invading italy and greece, going into those old-school especially in italy, they would find ancient roman cameos done in the same way, he would send some back with josephine and josephine fell in love with them so cameos became popular, presort about fashion again in part because napoleon was invading other countries, kind of messed up, right? napoleon had these all done up, really beautiful piece. what is really cool about this

is you don't see a lot of these anymore but every once in a while you see one warning fashion, sort of spans the time period, spans the decades. that is cool about art. some artifacts span the decades. span many many time periods, someone having this in the 1960s and you are wearing one even today versus 200 years ago but then there are artifacts you don't see anymore that are not going to come around again and only because we still have them and take care of them and i'm going to show you one such artifact, all right, what is this? let me hold this up? what is going on here? what is this? you see that?

this is a vinaigrette. what on earth is a vinaigrette? something you don't see anymore. a vinaigrette aspirin was to help with smells, to put it plainly, they were the deodorant of that time period. when you have a vinaigrette like this, what they would do, i have it here and i will hold up, they actually had a little tiny sponge, not making this up, little tiny sponge that would go inside the vinaigrette and the vinaigrette, if you look at this on the inside, on the inside it is gold because the vinaigrette was thick, the sponge they would soak up the anti-odor stuff, vinegar was part of the ingredients of a lot of these so imagine the vinegar smell is a little

strange so the sponge would go inside the food compartment and would help to mask smells and little anti-deodorant accoutrements and i up a picture, this was made by john shah, and english, the inside of than a vinaigrette, it is like the flowerpot that symbolized something fresh smelling. this is an artifact, this is not an artifact, this is gone with the wind, we don't make these anymore for the purpose we would have back in the day but kind of cool. you want to talk about a

bureaucracy, some of the makers mark that are marked in a tiny little vinaigrette because of actual silver laws back in the day and i will piggyback off of that and show you if i have time -- i don't have this -- perfect. there is actually we have a perfume bottle in the collection and the perfume bottle is really kind and they have makers mark settling on the inside of elizabeth monroe's dutch maker marks and you can't see them with the eye, think about bureaucracy, is it a new thing? bureaucracy is the one constant in the universe is bureaucracy. they still did that all the way back then. something i get asked a lot

about. this is a fan favorite here, what is this. little baby shoes that belongs to allies at, elizabeth monroe did have 3 children, allies are born in 1786, marais was 18 oh 2 and james spencer was 1799 and he unfortunately passed very young but people ask, back in the day did they have baby sheets, absolutely did. this is made of leather believe it or not, tiny baby shoes that belong to elizabeth monroe's daughter so yes, that is something -- motherhood has not changed over the years. what i want to show you next is this incredible piece here. this is a trr and you can see

the prongs that go in there and this belongs to elizabeth monroe and this would have been warned by her during the public life as the wife of a diplomat, as the wife of the future president, something you would want to have to establish your serious and have the ability to be in the room with other countries and things like that but specifically look at this. these are little pieces of coral beach on gold so you can imagine the craftsmanship of actually shaping each of these pieces, each of these had to have been done and drilled into and put individually onto the trr so trrs kind of became -- making a little bit of a comeback, sort of went away for

a while but you see little kids where them and stuff like that but this one she would have bought this while she was over in france and again this is something she would have worn on special occasions, formal events, things like that, sort of a necessity to be able to mix and match at least with the other diplomatic corps, okay. i will get into this part here and show you this piece. very careful. what is this. look at that. this is elizabeth monroe's aquamarine necklace. zoom went out for some reason, don't know what is going on with that. bring that back, let me see here.

this is elizabeth monroe's necklace. this is aquamarine, you see the signal, the cross and everything going on here, it was fashionable at the time, let me show you something. when i was doing research on exhibits for this sort of thing i came across this picture of ceramic sellers in france around the same time that elizabeth monroe would have worn this necklace and if you see up close look at the necklace that she is wearing right there, see that? the bulb is stone and across, low and behold it is the same exact necklace, same exact style so elizabeth monroe knew her stuff, she knew her stuff. this is aquamarine like i said surrounded by looks like

copper, this is amazing craftsmanship. so what? so she has some fancy jewelry, what's the big deal? let me tell you a story. imagine you are elizabeth monroe and you are accompanying your husband over to france in the mid-1790s, you were born into wealth, your father is a wealthy merchant so it is not crazily opulent, you are not completely unused to the opulence of paris and everything but it would have been overwhelming. you go over there and the climate of the time, imagine this, the climate of the time, the waning part of the committee of public safety, you are right at the waning part of

that so you are in the 1790s in france and there were executions going on, there was craziness going on. there's an are of paranoia in paris france at the time, people were being executed, people were getting killed, not just people but people of your class, the upper class, the nobility, wealthy folks so you are there with your husband, one thing is at that point france appreciated the us, they had a good relationship at the time but still not a very good vibe in france so you are showing up as a young woman in france at the time, your husband's friend, the marquis lafayette as you know, he was—-

famously helped the us out in the war in the revolutionary war and he was a friend of your husband. he is imprisoned in austria and his wife, adrian, was imprisoned in the same city you just arrived in, these are friends of the family, important folks. the wife's uncle, the uncle of adrian pleads with monroe to do something to free her from person in paris because the chances of her being executed were really really good, really high. this wasn't a joke, this is what not a slap on the wrist, this was a serious thing, the

policeman wrote a letter, the problem is james monroe is in a tough bind because as an investor he can't make these crazy waves. you can't go over there and start making giant waves saying you got to release -- he had to walk a tight line so what do you do, you want to help out the wife of your friend who might likely be executed but what can you do? this is where elizabeth comes in. you can imagine this young woman in france with all the new sights and sounds probably a little scared, a little intimidated, what does she do? at the time there were not a lot of fancy carriages in

paris, everything was in chaos so they get a carriage and elizabeth -- make the carriage look really important like a diplomatic carriage so she gets in the carriage and she has jewelry just like this, a trr just like this, with a cameo just like this, caring this as part of the package just like that. maybe address something like this, so she looks like the wife of an ambassador. they go down, she drives a carriage, they get to the front gate, she gets out of the carriage and you can imagine a crowd gathers around. at this point she was sort of known, they called her the beautiful american, she was

actually known a little bit, wait a minute, is that the diplomat's wife, is that elizabeth monroe getting out of the carriage, what is she doing here at the prison, she gets out and the crowd starts to gather up, she strolls up to the gate and she demands to see adrian, you can imagine the captain of the prison guard is standing at the gate and here's the diplomat's wife coming up looking important, looking like if you don't do what i say you will get in trouble and that's the point of the show. what did he do? he lets her in, he had no choice and you can imagine poor adrian. she doesn't know what is going on. all she knows is they come to her door and say we need you. so she might be getting executed but what does she see?

elizabeth monroe standing there. what was interesting about that was that moment was not lost on people. imagine people standing around in all this darkness, this paranoia, doom and gloom and no hope for the future this little light of bravery that happens in the middle of that and people started talking about it and word gets around. monroe couldn't do anything officially but behind the scenes approaching the committee of public safety, what can we do here? the short story of it is you've got to imagine adrian's mother and grandmother are both executed so her coming up, the short story is this. adrian was actually released. she was actually let's go because of the act of bravery that elizabeth did and part of these artifacts helped her

create that presence, create that story that she was somebody that needed to be listened to and you are going to let adrian go and adrian ended up going 3 and adrian went to austria and negotiated with the emperor to let her stay in the prison for five years. anyway, to wonder who elizabeth monroe was and what do artifacts tell about that, that is the heart of it. all these things that sort of -- in a way, helped save a woman's life as bizarre as that sounds in a roundabout way. these artifacts are here. we have them. that is why it is important to cherish these artifacts and let

them tell their story and save them for the future because if you and i don't, then who will? i think i will stop it there and see if we have any questions from folks. >> thank you so much. that was spectacular. thank you for speaking so passionately about the importance of material culture and that items can tell us these important political and diplomatic and international history so that is beautiful, thank you. we do have some questions from our audience and i'm going to go in the order they were entered into our q and a, so to begin with, there is a question about do any objects reflect elizabeth's new york heritage? >> yes, short answer is yes. we actually have a wedding

dress, could have been her wedding dress that was used from material that most likely belonged to her mother so this would have been -- i'm going to show you. come with me. >> take us around, thank you. >> kind of cool. >> i love the collection spaces, this is truly behind the scene. >> can you he see this here? >> yes. >> this belonged to elizabeth monroe but the material that is older and likely belonged to her mother so this material would have come from overseas but it would have been imported made the by her father who was a merchant so that new york stamp. show you that. all right. >> absolutely beautiful.

kind of in line with thinking about materials, there was a question of what other material was in that spectacular royal tru showed us. >> gold? mostly gold. these teens here i think are copper if i am not mistaken. it might be in our boy of copper, a little bit stronger. it is definitely soft. if it has another metal in it, probably 10, a little bit less but mostly gold and coral, just astounding. the craftsmanship on that is amazing. >> on that line of craftsmanship and the notion of the makers of some of these

items there was a question since we were looking at her objects, her property can you tell us about her relationship to slavery in this era when slaves were considered property and may have been making some of these items as well. >> wonderful question and the short answer is the monroe's bound over the course of their life some 250 slaves if i'm not mistaken about that. their wealth as far as management of their farm everything was all based on slavery, monroe bought and sold, elizabeth monroe was in that family. as far as her personal relationships i don't know as much. we actually have in the museum, we have several items that were

crafted by slaves and that is the truth of it and we have a betty lampe. i wonder if i can pool out -- very generic, we do have items that were crafted by slaves. don't believe any of these particular ones were but we have those items. that is the truth of it. >> thank you. a question about elizabeth's parents. were they well-traveled? >> lawrence was a merchant. there was traveling going on. as far as translating to elizabeth, don't know how much he went in and out of the country but he would have been

familiar with international sort of vibes and people coming and going, how well-traveled? don't know the exact sentiment but there would have been some. >> items on display at the james monroe museum with a description and story on each item, are these items for example on display? do you keep them in storage? preservation, conservation are always an issue with textiles in particular. >> short answer, yes. a lot of these are out on exhibit. we don't have an exhibit up right now that has qr codes on each of the artifacts that you can scan and bring you to a different chat where i talk about them. they are on our facebook, some of the one youtube but mostly facebook. so the answer is yes. these are not currently up but

the cameo and the dress go back up so come on by and see. >> lots of places to see these items and learn about them. the curator chats, i will check out so that sounds wonderful. there is i got two more questions in our q and a. does the collection include french or british ceramics that were owned by the monroes? >> yes. we have some of those. that i know i can grab from one second as i run over. it is going to run over and grab. >> we will bear with you. >> over here. all right. all right.

i am coming back up. this here is a good example. this is one of the first white house china to come out, you can see the monroe crest on there and it has 20 stars around the inside which symbolizes 20 states, 1817 and has the gold rim but this was made in paris, hard paste porcelain is a little tougher, you see it is stronger than soft which you see a lot of today and something that is interesting is whenever they were putting in bids for ceramics to decorate the white house, this would have been later to decorate the white house there were 30 firms around paris at the time that were making porcelain that

would be good enough to be in the white house and monroe was so beloved in france all 30 of them did and that was a money thing, all 30 of them and that is a lot. everyone wanted to make porcelain so the friends of france. >> so beautiful and elegant. i love that piece. question, really interesting question about the dress, the gold dress had lacing up the back, does the other dress have closures in the back or would she have been sewn into that dress? that the question i have had with some of these dresses. >> sewn into it. i don't know about fat. i will be honest. i don't know much about the actual putting the dress on. i feel like i heard that somewhere but i don't want to speak out of turn.

there are classes in the back so i don't think she would have been sewn into this, this one certainly not. this was sleeker, not worried about getting your coat in but i have heard that but my answer is i don't think so, certainly no on this one and the other one has clasps i think she was put in. >> there is a question about that aquamarine necklace. what a merchant's wife as depicted in the picture you shared which is an amazing find have worn something so costly or less valuable material? >> great question. interestingly, the aquamarine is not that crazy -- it is not like diamonds or emeralds or something. it is on a lower tier to be

frank as far as that goes. this would have been more affordable and when i say affordable that sounds hoity-toity but this would be in the grasp of someone who is not crazy wealthy. it is very, the style was the same but the gems, we don't really know, the gems could have been something even less than aquamarine so that is a good catch. could have been glass or something the difference between glass and crystal is the lead content. you are right. a clerk or merchant in this situation, may have had style which i think is worth it.

>> the look is what mattered. question is coming to us from our facebook audience. from the dress she looks like she may have been a short woman. >> looking at 5 foot to over there so absolutely right. >> not a terribly -- >> i must've made a striking couple with monroe being -- >> a tall gentleman and her being shorter. there was a question about, really interesting, this particular period of european history. in the french revolution which separates secular from the religious, would wearing across have been especially dangerous for anyone really? >> it didn't seem to be, good observation. i don't think it was to the

point where it was considered an offense, you do see them, you see crosses, pictures of that time period and stuff. i would imagine, religion certainly in general was not a great topic at that point in time but doesn't seem to have affected her a whole lot. >> that exhausts the questions in our q and a. you've got 10 minutes left so i had a quick question if that is okay about mostly starting -- several people asked for the spelling and hope i did a justice in the chat, i know i did but how do we learn or you is a curator learn about unfamiliar, unknown objects that are obsolete, what are the

ways you can figure out what something was used for like the spoon for example? how do we learn about these kind of weird little things? >> great question. you get an artifact, you don't know what is going on with it. i call it the craftsman approach to history, i like to start with how it was made, that's where i like to start especially if you don't know much about it or anything like that. how was it made, it was not carved, meaning someone mold about cast out of it. what are the materials made of? are material something that would have been time appropriate. for example if it is gilded, were they not doing around the time period we think it was it was either an anomaly or a different time period so i like to push out was actually made,

who was making it in that particular style at the time, that helped a lot, we have gloves here, dumb skin gloves, not much of a moment but at the least you know dove skinner's material was popular in the us, we have an abundance of raw material, horrible way of saying we have an abundance of deer, more than europe soto skin is how they would have made them. that's one way to pinpoint it down and with the internet we have a lot more access to things now, word searches and compare and contrast and do detective work and drill down where you can find them and another thing i like to do is a lot of times there are makers marks that are not visible to the naked eye so i will take a magnifying gas the glass and scour every inch of it and a

few times i have found that, the perfume bottle, you can see that there is no way and that is another way, scour everything you can and eventually the pieces come together especially when there is no cigar. >> are there any existing written documents about elizabeth monroe's personal items, do we know anything from letters, perhaps from her hand? anything about her through letters? >> as far as these artifacts specifically i don't know of any letters talking specifically about these items like by the way elizabeth purchased aquamarine necklace or something like that so as far as i know there's not a whole lot that actually tracks down a specific item unfortunately. i wish there was. if you find one, please send it our way.

>> any items you would love to know more about or that you know she had. >> i would love to know more especially the wedding dress i showed you before, on her wedding day, we say wedding dress because it was the same time she would have had her wedding and if she would have worn it to the wedding it is more supposition but i would love to have a letter saying she wore a floral pattern with this on her wedding day. >> that would be the bow on the interpretation. i love that. there's one more question or a couple more questions. do we know anything about the dutch heritage of her name? >> dutch heritage? this again i don't know much

about the dutch heritage side of her but that is a great question. i could find out and get back to you. >> there's a lot about elizabeth and her wonderful research questions, her upbringing which is the question in the q and a, how was she taught as a child? was a governess? did she go to a school? >> guest: we actually have samplers and things like that that a lot of the teaching would have been with new york being a dutch colony the education would have been a little bit better. we have examples of samplers that were done by her children the would say, actually learn how to read and write and do that so you are looking at

sewing and life skills like that so education would have been certainly more in new york than it would have been a lot of other places in the us at the time. a little more comprehensive. >> we have a sampler from mariah, her younger daughter that she rocked when she was 11, something in the next generation. at the last minute i have one more question for you. you talked a lot about these makers marks which i think our personally fascinating, locating them, how small they can be. did she have any favorite makers, any consistent makers you have come across? >> that is a good question too. a lot of her items are not marked by who made them but a lot of them are french in

origin. he had a real affinity for french culture like her husband did and a lot of that spanned time to be on the forefront so in a sense, the tendency would have been for french makers for sure, what specific ones, i don't see a specific pattern that it would come from one person or another but definitely french. >> wonderful. i am sorry. wonderful. any other questions from the audience? nobody? wonderful. >> these were spectacular. >> awesome audience, thank you for joining us today. thank you for this wonderful conversation.

this is been wonderful. i hope you see these comments and the chat. i learned a lot today about elizabeth and it is an incredible way to access her and to think about women's history and as you pointed out so eloquently their role in these important political moments and how we do that through style. >> that have gone missing in history. >> in her books buys, lies, and algorithms, amy ziegler it tracks american espionage from revolutionary war spies to today's digital world drawing on hundreds of interviews with intelligence officials, she provides an inside look into the world of spies and spy craft, here's a special report she did for the book. >> if i could say one thing to the president, this is a moment that requires transformational change in the intelligence

community, business as usual is going to set the united states back by generations. this is a moment of technological change unlike anything we have experienced. we've never had so many technologies converging at the same time. ai, the internet, commercial satellites, quantum computing, synthetic biology to name a few. it is an ad to app store fail moment for the intelligence community and the adaptation required means harnessing open source information and to the extent of the community. >> you can watch the full program, c-span.org/history. the title for book, spies, lies, and algorithms. >> i am kimberly ivey, and i