These finely knit stockings represent a celebration of spring and Women’s History Month. Charlotte Ann Thompson made them from flax that was grown, spun, and made into linen thread on the Botetourt Thompson farm. After knitting the stockings, Charlotte embroidered a design of pansies down their front. The wild pansy is symbolic of the renewal of nature and the first days of spring. During the Romantic period of the 19th century undergarments lost the simplicity they had during the 18th century. Thanks to the Romantic ideology, love became a mandatory requirement for marriages. Women embroidered or detailed their stockings, which showed beneath the fashionable shorter dresses. Charlotte Thompson was the daughter of Colonel Anderson Thompson and married Captain Archibald Mann McClintic. Weir Thompson donated these stockings to the Botetourt Museum of History and Culture in 2002. He was the great-grandson of Colonel Thompson.
~ Botetourt Museum of History and Culture
