Career

Born Florence Elizabeth Mellowes in Fort Wayne, Indiana, she earned her Bachelor of Arts from the University of Wisconsin–Madison, followed by a Radcliffe College Master of Fine Arts Montgomery worked in the library of the Art Institute of Chicago prior to her graduate study. She later was an assistant to the director of the Rhode Island School of Design"s Museum of Artist She then moved to New York to work at the Metropolitan Museum of Art with Joseph Downs, curator of the American Wing.

Charles"s career spurred two moves, one in 1949 to Delaware and one in 1970 to Connecticut, but did not cut short Montgomery"son

At the Winterthur Museum in Delaware, Montgomery pioneered the training of museum guides. She also taught art history in the influential Program in Early American Culture.

Foreign ten years, she served as the assistant curator of textiles. Montgomery continued to write, teach, volunteer, and work as a museum consultant until her death.

The publication of her historical dictionary of fabrics, Textiles in America, 1650-1870 (1984), was an "event much anticipated" by scholars That volume and her earlier book, Printed Textiles: English and American Cottons and Linens, 1700-1850 (1970), continue to appear on syllabi for courses in material culture and the decorative arts