Wedding Dresses!

Through the years since the Patterson House was opened as a historical museum, all kinds of items gravitated toward the house.  At first these items were catalogued but there were so many things needed to be done in the house and there were only 1 or 2 staff, the rest were volunteers, and the catalogue project was put to the side.

Then about 15 years ago the cataloguing project started up again, 2 volunteers working on it.  Then life took over and those volunteers had to leave the area and the project.

Meanwhile, through all these years, more items were being donated and a lot of them went into closets with the hope of being cataloged and displayed in the future.  Then, there were bags of stuff left at the office that did not pertain to the historic era the Patterson House and some of that stuff actually made it into the house too.

So now, we are back to going through the whole inventory of the house and cataloging, and even "repurposing".

I am working with the textiles and we are actually getting a lot done.  My next goal is to open the Wedding Dress boxes, hopefully in January.  The boxes haven't been open for about 15 years so it will be like opening treasure chests!  We have about 5 boxes that are listed as Wedding Dresses, but maybe there are more boxes or some mis-labeled.  We will see!

This a shot of the "Old Hall Closet" where most of the boxes have been stored all these years.  See all those big boxes on the top shelf, some of them are marked "Wedding Dress" among other things like "Mens Swimming Suit".  Then there is another closet that has at least 3 boxes marked "Wedding Dress".    All the rest of the stuff in this closet are paper documents that will be archived after the textiles are done.  There are photos, land maps, graduation certificates, letters....you name it, that is going to be an interesting project too!