Keyes Millinery

Millinery is the art of designing, making and selling women’s hats. It was one of the few professions open to women in the 1800s. Celestia S. Keyes (1842-1908) opened her first shop in her home before relocating to West Main Street. She employed several women and also sold women’s accessories, including ribbons, veils, and mourning goods, running a mercantile business for nearly forty years. 

When Celestia was sixteen, her father Samuel Keyes built the Big Mill on Benmont Avenue for Seth B. Hunt. Hunt told Samuel that if one of his daughters would climb the rungs inside the smokestack, then he would reward her with the first shawl produced at the woolen mill. Celestia accepted the challenge, and courageously climbed the newly completed smokestack. She received the shawl as promised, which is now in the Bennington Museum collection.