Catching up -- I'm so behind!

My grandparents' wedding
portrait from 1945.  Photo:
Elizabeth Urbach.

We've been keeping busy around here lately.  My grandma, who passed away last month, wanted to be buried in her hometown of Hibbing, Minnesota, up near the Canadian border with the U.S., and the weather has finally warmed up enough that they can have her interment.  So, several members of my family will be flying out to Minnesota next week and spending a few days there with the family for my grandma's second funeral and burial.  It will be a lot of flying and driving, and hopefully, a really good experience with the family, since it will also probably be the last time we go out to Minnesota, and maybe the last time we see those relatives in person ...

Mrs. Burnett's dress, part 2.

Harriet Burnett's dress,
ca. 1849
Photo: Elizabeth Urbach

Wow, I hadn't realized how long it's been since I last posted!  I've been keeping busy, though, with historical things.  Researching Harriet Burnett's governor's ball dress (see photo at left) has been really interesting.  Unfortunately, I couldn't find any period description of the dress at the ball in any of the contemporary newspapers, because San Jose didn't have its own newspaper until 1851 and the ball was in 1849.  The nearest local papers were out of Monterey and San Francisco, and relied on the mail bringing news from San Jose in order to publish the Legislative happenings.  Unfortunately, the winter of 1849 was so rainy and stormy that the roads were unusably muddy and no news could get out of or into San Jose!  It took until the end of January 1850 for the rain to let up and the roads dry out enough that the mail could get through to Monterey and San Francisco, so by that time any excitement about the ball had died down, and the papers recorded the inauguration of Governor Burnett, and mentioned, almost as an aside, "there was a ball in San Jose." 

There was no further description or mention of the event itself, although an interview with someone who was there, done many years later, and published in 1941, has the woman recalling that the ball was "the" event for the Bay Area for years afterwards.  I think the only place where I could find a fuller description of the ball, would be in the letters or journal of someone (a woman) who was there, but I don't know of any journals or letters from 1849 in San Jose that have been published, or are available to the public!  I think I'm at a dead end in verifying the provenance of the dress, so I've just made a record for it in the museum database, saying that the dress "is said to have been worn" at the Inauguration Ball.  I'll have to leave it at that for now.  It's been really fun reading all those old newspapers, though.  I found a website, the California Digital Newspaper Collection, that has scanned the papers into digital form and made them readable (you can enlarge the printing from the teeny-tiny original size!). 

Displaying my grandma's wedding dress.

The dress on display at History Park. 
Photo: Elizabeth Urbach.

I was allowed to put my grandma's wedding dress on display this weekend for a special event at the museum where I work.  In preparation for the event, I had to design the exhibit, arrange for items like a dress form and other display props,  and do my own set up and take down.  I also discovered that the gown and veil needed some TLC. before it would survive the display!  Even though they were only made in 1945 (and there are many things from the '40s that are in such good condition they can still be used), the gown and veil were literally falling apart in places.  I researched what it would take to restore them and found that I had neither the tools nor the money to do so properly ($80 per yard museum-quality silk crepeline for a support lining, anyone?).  The rayon satin of the gown, and the nylon (or rayon?) net of the veil were badly ripped in places, and the gown fabric was literally breaking off into bits at the edges of the torn areas.  The best I could do was to baste strips of well-washed cotton muslin from seam to seam across the torn areas, to take pressure off of the fabric, and then baste the edges of the tears to the muslin.

Ca. 1945 wedding cake topper made of icing sugar.
Photo: Elizabeth Urbach.