Article Contributed on: 1/28/2010 2:15:30 PM
My family lacks historians. Though enough good stories have been shared over the years to fill books, they would have to be called books of family lore. We have few old documents, legal records, photographs or reliable written words to substantiate.
On my father's side, at least the family name is rare and, I was always assured, those who share it are connected in some way. My birth name was Curle, and historic research of that name, and its close variations (Curlee, Curley, Curl) is not difficult. It can be traced directly back to Scotland.
My mother's side of my family is more problematic. They are Wilsons and Taylors. Wilsons and Taylors are far too abundant to track and identify, especially in the area of all my families of origin, the Deep South, primarily Tennessee.
Though one day discovering reliable sources of my family history seems unlikely, such a void does not deny me ancestral connection.
When I was in my mid-twenties, I visited my maternal grandmother, Sarah Taylor Wilson, at her home in tiny Belmont, Mississippi. My grandmother died in 1984 at the age of 86, making the year of her birth 1898.
During our visit in the early 1980's, my grandmother said she had a gift for me. She brought out a faded rose-colored garment of unusual construction and design. She told me she wanted me to have this garment, a dress her mother had made for her when she was twelve years old.
In 1910, the year the dress was likely constructed by my great grandmother, paddle boats conducted commerce on the Mississippi River. Horse drawn buggies shared city roads with the new horseless carriages. In the Mississippi Delta, cotton was king.
Family history was not a pressing concern at that stage of my life. However, I was moved by my grandmother's generosity and impressed she could have held onto such a precious piece of her own childhood for more than seven decades. I appreciated that she was entrusting the dress to my care.
The dress, already seventy years old when gifted to me, managed to stick with me through all life's changes and moves since the early 1980's. More times than I can count it tagged along, safely packed in tissue inside this moving box or that while I relocated myself from here to there and, sometimes, back again. I have kept an eye on that dress the way, no doubt, my grandmother did.
By my calculations, the dress turns 100 this year. I pull it out to admire it. I show it off to friends. I share its story with my sons. I marvel at its spirit of determination.
It occurs to me that the rightful place for this dress is a museum, preferably in the area of Madison County, Tennessee, where my grandmother lived as a child. I have begun my search.
Meanwhile, I quietly celebrate the direct connection to a great grandmother who sewed a beautiful, enduring garment for her twelve-year-old daughter.
Happy birthday, 100-year-old dress.