52 Ancestors 2022 - Week 2 Favourite Find

 

52 Ancestors 2022 Week 2

Favourite Find

 This is not, strictly speaking, a “find”.  I always knew it was there.  But having a close inspection of my grandmother’s wedding dress, almost 110 years after the wedding, was very exciting and very moving.

 I have written before (52 Ancestors 2020 – Week 41) about visiting the museum in Quirindi, NSW and being able to see my grandmother’s dress.  I had seen it before, when I was about 11 years old, and my sisters and I had actually tried to wear it.  Even at 11,  I was bigger than my tiny grandmother.

 Fortunately, it was soon after this (before it could be ruined by other fascinated children), that my grandmother donated it to the museum.

 Knowing of my impending visit, the volunteers of the museum had retrieved the dress from its tissue-lined archive box and laid it out for me.  For many years it had actually been on display, worn by a mannequin, but the fabric is now too frail for it to hang.

 

A description of the wedding appeared in the Tamworth Daily Observer on 16 August, 1911.  In it, the dress is described thus:

The bride wore a dress of cream silk striped ninon over glace silk, richly decorated with pearl and silver trimmings, with the customary wreath and veil.

The cream silk has darkened now, and the glace silk underlining has disintegrated in places.  The silver trimmings have tarnished to a rather dramatic dark grey, but the pearls are still intact.  The rich embroidery is still evident, and most of the silk tassels on the sleeves and hem remain.

The newspaper account continues:

She carried a handsome shower bouquet of white hyacinths, camellias, snow drops and asparagus fern, the gifts of the bridegroom also a costly diamond ring. 

It doesn’t mention the horseshoe attached to the bouquet, which was traditional for brides of the era.  Still attached to its ribbon, it lies with the dress.

I am so grateful that the volunteers of this small country town museum care for this precious relic of my family’s – and the town’s – history.