There is something hauntingly still about the photograph taken in 1906 by Augustus Frederick Sherman. It is not dramatic in composition nor flamboyant in execution. It features a mother and her two daughters, identified as immigrants from Zuid-Beveland in Zeeland, the southwestern province of the Netherlands. They are posed simply, against a plain background. The mother sits with poise, the daughters standing on either side. All three wear their traditional dress with an air of quiet solemnity. The focal point of the image, however, lies above their eyes—massive white headdresses, poised and elaborate, framed in layers of lace, forming a kind of visual crown that speaks to something both cultural and deeply personal.

This photograph is one of hundreds captured by Sherman during his time as a clerk at Ellis Island, from 1892 until his retirement in 1925. While his official duties were bureaucratic, Sherman took it upon himself to document the human dimension of immigration. With a keen eye and a basic camera setup, he managed to photograph men, women, and children from across the globe—many dressed in their finest national attire—arriving in the United States during a time of mass migration. These were not casual images or snapshots taken at leisure. They were meditations on identity, culture, and the vulnerability of being seen in a moment of transition.

The portrait of the three Dutch women is emblematic of Sherman’s approach. He used plain backdrops not because he lacked imagination, but because he wanted to remove distraction. His lens focused on people, their clothes, their posture, their expressions—all without the noise of context. The background vanishes, leaving only the subjects and the silent language they carry through dress and bearing. This was especially important for immigrants, many of whom saw their old lives melting away even as they stood in line for new names, jobs, and addresses. Sherman, in his amateur way, preserved the soul of that moment.

The women in the photograph are clad in the traditional costume of Zuid-Beveland, a region with a proud and distinctive sartorial heritage. The most dramatic element is their headgear: the poffer. These large, white lace hats were symbols as much as garments. Originating in the Brabant region and extending to parts of Zeeland, poffers—also known in some areas as kruiken or ear-irons (oorijzers)—were not simply fashion statements. They signified class, marital status, and even regional pride. In a society where the intricacies of appearance conveyed intricate codes, the poffer was a woman’s declaration of her family’s social and economic position.

Lacework was expensive, and the larger the hat and the more delicate the lace, the greater the family’s wealth was perceived to be. These were not items that could be purchased casually; they were inherited, gifted, and maintained with reverence. Many poffers required hours of preparation and layers of hair support underneath to hold them upright. Wearing one in daily life was a commitment—often impractical, especially in a rapidly modernizing world where bicycles, public transportation, and factory work began to define everyday life. Yet to wear one in a formal portrait at Ellis Island was to make a statement: “This is who we are, and this is what we carry with us.”

The mother in the image appears to be in her thirties or early forties. Her face is soft but resolute. She sits straight, not stiffly, but with the quiet dignity of someone who knows she is being recorded not just for identification, but for posterity. Her daughters, perhaps ten and twelve years old, mimic her posture. Their expressions are less readable—somewhere between stoicism and uncertainty. They are old enough to remember the journey, but young enough to be shaped by what’s to come. Their clothing, too, is carefully arranged: dark, heavy fabrics that offset the striking white of the poffer.

What prompted them to leave Zeeland? While we don’t have specific records of these three individuals, we can draw from broader patterns. In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the Netherlands was experiencing a slow but steady wave of emigration. Industrialization and population growth created economic pressure in rural areas, while religious dissent and social stratification led many to seek new communities abroad. Zeeland, though beautiful and agriculturally rich, was vulnerable to flooding and had limited land inheritance opportunities. Many families, particularly those of the Reformed faith, saw in the American Midwest the possibility of land, religious freedom, and community.

Dutch immigrants tended to settle in pockets, forming towns and churches that mirrored those of their homeland. Holland, Michigan, and Pella, Iowa, are examples of communities where Dutch traditions were preserved and adapted. These immigrants brought with them not only agricultural skills and religious devotion, but also a powerful sense of order, cleanliness, and cultural continuity. And while men often arrived first to secure work or land, the arrival of women and children marked the real beginning of settlement.

Photographs such as the one Sherman took were often among the last formal records of such families in their traditional attire. Once settled, the practicalities of American life demanded change. Clothing adapted quickly. Poffers, in particular, vanished from daily wear within a few years of arrival. In the Netherlands itself, the practice of wearing poffers declined dramatically after World War II. The war disrupted local economies, and materials like lace and fabric became scarce. Women entered new roles in the workforce, and the cultural symbolism of the poffer began to fade. By the 1950s, poffers were largely reserved for ceremonial occasions—church services, weddings, or cultural festivals. In some places, they disappeared entirely.

But in 1906, standing before Sherman’s camera, the poffer still carried its full weight. It was a halo of belonging, a visual genealogy. The girls’ headdresses may have been miniature versions of their mother’s, tailored to signal their stage in life. One can imagine the care with which the hats were packed before the journey, wrapped in cloth, perhaps protected by a wooden box or basket. These were not just garments, but heirlooms, links to a community and a way of life that was about to be redefined.

Sherman’s motivations for taking these photographs were never fully recorded, but scholars have long debated their significance. Some see them as ethnographic studies, others as quiet acts of humanism. In an age where immigration was often met with suspicion, fear, and xenophobia, Sherman’s images affirm individuality. They don’t strip away difference; they celebrate it. He didn’t ask immigrants to dress in modern American clothing or to smile for the camera. He let them present themselves, often in the garments of their ancestors, the attire of festivals and homecomings. His work, amateur though it may have been, is deeply respectful.

The photograph of the three Dutch women is more than just a historical curiosity. It is a cultural artifact, a time capsule, and a window into the psychological state of the immigrant. We often think of immigration in terms of movement—people going from one place to another—but it is also a process of transformation. It involves leaving behind not just homes, but habits, reputations, languages, and names. In that process, the self is vulnerable to erasure. Sherman’s photograph resists that erasure. It says: they were here. This is how they looked. This is what they chose to carry into the unknown.

We will likely never know what happened to the mother and her daughters. Whether they settled in a Dutch-speaking community or scattered across the urban sprawl of early twentieth-century America. Whether they kept the poffer in a drawer or discarded it after a few years. What is certain, however, is that their image remains, and in it, a constellation of meaning.

Today, poffers survive primarily in museums and folklore festivals. In the Netherlands, regional costume preservation groups have worked to keep the knowledge of how they were made and worn alive. But they are no longer part of daily life. Their intricacies are studied, not lived. And yet, when we look at Sherman’s photograph, the poffer takes on a second life—not as a museum piece, but as a living memory.

Sherman did not take the photograph with grandeur in mind. He was not thinking of future exhibitions or the prestige of historical documentation. He was, in essence, practicing a kind of quiet resistance to the anonymity of bureaucracy. In his hands, the immigrant became a subject, not an object. And through that lens, we are given the opportunity to meet these women—not as nameless figures in an immigration ledger, but as mothers and daughters, as Dutch women proud of their heritage, at the cusp of an American story just beginning to unfold.