• 
• CLASS
• JOBS
• AUTO
• HOMES

Delavan seamstress dresses the part

Photo

Photo by Terry Mayer

Beverly Wassam, who owns the Delavan business At Another Time, has helped dress a lot of characters during her long career as a historical seamstress. She will observe the 20th anniversary of her business in July.

Beverly Wassam and neighbor, Jennifer Ball, take a carriage ride with Wassam’s Shetland named Ponyboy.

They say clothes make the man, but clothes also make possible a trip to the past in Beverly Wassam’s hands. If we really could go back to the past, there is little doubt that Wassam’s newly made historical garments would fool the most ardent consumer of piece goods or millinery in the mid- to late 1800s.

(Read all of this week's stories from Walworth County Sunday HERE. )

“I call her a historical seamstress,” said Melanie Lichtfeld, one of the organizers of the Columbus Horse and Carriage Festival’s Carriage Ride to 1864. Lichtfeld ordered two dresses to be made by Wassam, who owns At Another Time in Delavan. Lichtfeld will wear Wassam’s dresses to the Columbus event June 16 and June 17. Lichtfeld will portray Ms. Belle Boyd, who became an espionage agent for the South during the Civil War.

Boyd is just one of the characters you’ll meet when Columbus turns the clock back to 1864 to help mark the multiyear sesquicentennial observance of the Civil War. Most of the buildings lining Columbus’ Main Street were built in the Civil War era, making it easy for visitors to turn the clock back to an era of hoop skirts, crinolines, snoods and riding jackets. The ninth governor of Wisconsin, Gov. James Taylor Lewis, will be there. A resident of Columbus, Lewis garnered nearly every vote in that city in his 1863 gubernatorial election. President Lincoln will be coming up for the weekend from his home in Illinois.

FULL STORY