gymnasium suit, 3-piece

This exercise suit, donated by Faith Bradford (1880-1970) in 1955, belonged to her mother Ellen Jane Knight Bradford (1839-1899). Ellen Jane Knight, known familiarly as “Nellie,” was the niece of Massachusetts lieutenant governor Horatio Gates Knight, and lived in his household after her mother died. She graduated from Williston Seminary (now the Williston Northampton School), a co-educational academy, and taught music. In 1865 she married James Henry Bradford, who served as a chaplain in the Union Army before becoming a Congregational minister. They lived in various places in the northeast, usually pursuing work in education, and moved to Washington, D.C. in 1881. Ellen Bradford was educated and of a creative as well as Protestant reformist bent, publishing poems and hymns, serving as a correspondent for the paper The Congregationalist, and founding with her spouse the Industrial School for Girls in Middletown, Connecticut in 1868. In 1887 she became known for creating and directing a tableau based on the bestselling 1880 novel Ben Hur: A Tale of Christ to raise money for the homeopathetic hospital in Washington, D.C.