Jessy Breckenridge describes the research she did for the St. Petersburg Museum of History exhibit Meddling: The Women Who Built St. Pete.
Photo by Suzanne Townsend | The Crow’s Nest.
By Suzanne Townsend
The St. Petersburg Museum of History is strikingly modest for its downtown location. Plain white and undergoing some construction, the museum is nested at the base of the St. Pete Pier across from the Museum of Fine Arts and houses some gems in this peninsula’s great history. One of its latest exhibitions is “Meddling: The Women Who Built St. Pete,” curated by Jessy Breckenridge.
“It started off as a bet,” Breckenridge grinned as she explained that she’s actually the archives and collections manager at the museum, not the curator. “It was women’s history month and I bet our executive director that I could find and write a profile on a different historical woman in St. Pete every day for the month of March, which has 31 days. And I did.”
Soon the project became an idea for an exhibit, and then an actual exhibition. Mainly using digital archives of newspapers, Breckenridge started her research with the founder of the museum itself, Mary Wheeler Eaton. Each research subject led to several more and soon enough Breckenridge had 30 profiles ready for the gallery walls and a slideshow of many more. “‘Meddling’ comes from one of our St. Petersburg history books which was quoted as saying that the men of the town did not quite like the meddling women of St. Pete,” Breckenridge said.
The collections manager-turned-curator explained some of the challenges she came across during her research.
Until the mid 1980s, if a woman was married she was almost always only referred to by her husband’s name. This made finding information about the woman herself difficult, and having to sift through everything that was only about her husband tedious.
Another challenge came because Black history is not as well documented as white history, which makes it even more challenging and important to discern an accurate historical narrative. Breckenridge said the only woman without a photo in the exhibit is Anna Donaldson, who alongside her husband, was the first permanent Black settler in Pinellas County.
Despite the challenges, the exhibit has been received very well. Breckenridge’s work has even inspired the St. Petersburg community itself to get involved in its own local history. Breckenridge said that people have been calling in to the museum to tell about additional women from the city’s history to add to the exhibit’s slideshow. “It’s really exciting to be able to tell these stories,” she said.
The museum is exploring ways to make Meddling a permanent exhibit. “Probably some time after the first year we’ll be looking at moving it into a larger gallery space,” Executive Director Rui Farias said.
Jessy Breckinridge Archives and Collections Manager jessica@spmoh.org
Rui Farias Executive Director rui@spmoh.org
