It's A Nice Day For A Blue Wedding..... Or Several

I was a 90's child and never got to go to prom. They had a huge hullaballoo in my day because the dresses didn't conform to dress code. Girls were made to were cardigans over their dresses because they showed too much, (The trend then was strapless or spaghetti straps. Honestly they were way more covered than most) after that they put out a flyer every year with the acceptable dress code, and the consequences for breaking it (No refund of the prom ticket, and a detention in my day. Not sure if the latter still applies)

During my teaching career at a local school, we had a superintendent who had an anti-shoulder agenda. You could have boobs having out, skirt up to your whooha, but shoulders? Gasp! Last year I helped a wonderful young woman get a dress for prom and there were so many DONT'S it was mind-blowing. Just takes all the fun out of it--plus the jerk (not the aforementioned guy) waited till the last danged minute to decide can't do this--can't do that. Hey! These girls shop for months! Some of them and their families scrimp and scrape for a year just so they can have one special night. I cannot stand authoritarianism in any form--can you tell? I've seen a lot of beautiful strapless dresses (hey, Miss
America of 1960-something!) and many of them show a lot less than a covered shoulder dress. Okay, off the soapbox--I've been enjoying re-reading and seeing a lot of familiar faces!
 
My grandmother sat me down with her photo albums and asked me to take a significant amount of her copies of family photos to distribute to my siblings. She was terrified that all of the photos were going to end up in a dumpster when she passed away. I think that in her personal care home residence, she saw a lot of people's personal effects go into a dumpster after they passed away.

The thing is, people who came from families where cousins didn't marry each other have 8 great-grandparents, 16 great-great grandparents, 32 great-great-grandparents, etc. That's a lot of dead relatives to remember. Plus, people also have their own children, siblings, nieces and nephews, etc. So, I can actually see how the family history can get lost.

Any family pictures from my dad's side were lost in a fire at my grandparents' house in the 1920s. My great-grandfather's trunk was one of the losses--Daddy had inherited it, and as he was a roving cowboy, left it safely at home. Sam's revolver, bible, more books and family pictures were lost. All we had left (thank goodness) was his wedding tintype.
 
My grandmother sat me down with her photo albums and asked me to take a significant amount of her copies of family photos to distribute to my siblings. She was terrified that all of the photos were going to end up in a dumpster when she passed away. I think that in her personal care home residence, she saw a lot of people's personal effects go into a dumpster after they passed away.

The thing is, people who came from families where cousins didn't marry each other have 8 great-grandparents, 16 great-great grandparents, 32 great-great-grandparents, etc. That's a lot of dead relatives to remember. Plus, people also have their own children, siblings, nieces and nephews, etc. So, I can actually see how the family history can get lost.
It certainly did in my mom's family. Both of her parents were orphaned at a young age and raised by older siblings. Also lots of estrangements. In the process, a lot of things because distorted because they were isolated from sources of information and relying on word-of-mouth that they were too young to understand. As a result, I don't think anyone knew about one ancestor's Civil War service. That side was supposed to be 100% German, but is actually more like about 1/3 German, and nobody knew the correct last names or places of origin anymore. Very sad. Been working on righting that. :smile:
 
We had so many deaths in one generation of Mom's family that there's a kind of missing generation with only Mom and her brother to pass anything down to. The usual progression where 5 sisters and a brother would have married and had things split up didn't happen- TB wiped out all but one and she had no children. It's all here now. My grandmother died when Mom was 3- it was this endless tragedy.

One huge reason we joined Ancestry was to have a place the next generations could go to get family photos. Scanned all of them and saved to different profiles. Who knows who will one day find one to be precious? The trouble with pitching or orphaning these old treasures is not having any clue who will one day be grateful someone thought to preserve them.

You know, as generations pass anyone in one of these photos becomes the ancestor of more and more people. It's crazy ( and makes me feel really old )- have a battered old image of a 3x grandfather. He's my grandson's fifth grandfather. Makes your head spin.
 
Yes, an awful lot of long-held ' But but but.... ' of mine have been blown to heck by virtue of digging around in these old treasures. Boy is it humbling. By great good fortune I've never set myself up as a Big Pants. :angel: As in, I'm not personally an ' expert ' at a thing, merely have picked up ' stuff ' by being allowed other people's shoulders to rub. And Immersion Therapy for History Geeks. Try wading around in National Archives and Library of Congress for 5 years without loading up your soaks and making puddles with your shoes.

Who knows? Perhaps a specific culture settling in this country traditionally used wedding rings for both men and women- and it slowly caught on from there. Seeing one as a rarity in these early photos might ( guessing ) reflect some much older tradition, elsewhere?

( editing thread, please no one be confused. Ami asked for shareables, for her use. )

I just read something that reminded me of this discussion of men wearing rings.

In the book "Grant" by Ron Chernow, chapter 5 discussed about U.S. Grant's unhappy time on the West Coast in the 1850's, shortly before he resigned from the army. To quote the book: "One day, when he lost a ring that Julia had given him at their engagement, he was beside himself." The book quoted a "local businessman" who said, "The next morning half of the command was turned out and the parade ground was 'panned' until the ring was found."
 
I know only a little about my family history, because my family just never liked to talk about it for some reason.


Some families didn't, it's very odd. My uncle and I have discussed this a ton of times. There's a big, fat brick wall in our tree and I know my grandfather knew this stuff. He just didn't talk about it, no one did.

May be easier than you think finding more in 2019. Some cousin somewhere you've never heard of could be one of those dedicated to researching genealogy. Once ran into one of ours by accident, on a website and she had a goldmine's worth of information.
 
Some families didn't, it's very odd. My uncle and I have discussed this a ton of times. There's a big, fat brick wall in our tree and I know my grandfather knew this stuff. He just didn't talk about it, no one did.

May be easier than you think finding more in 2019. Some cousin somewhere you've never heard of could be one of those dedicated to researching genealogy. Once ran into one of ours by accident, on a website and she had a goldmine's worth of information.

I would like to try one of those, some day. I need to afford it first.
 
I would like to try one of those, some day. I need to afford it first.


Have you tried Family Search? It's free. I found records there that Ancestry doesn't have and the same census records, etc. Haven't been there for awhile so guessing it's even more extensive by now.

You've probably already done this but LoC's newspapers are also public access. Sometimes you can get very good stuff about ancestors just by typing their name in. Found one article about a train wreck a grgrgrandfather ( who was a vet ) was in, another about a 3x's grandmother's accident setting her nightgown on fire with her candle, another a letter written by a buddy after JPK's brother was killed at Shiloh- you never know what's out there.

Obits are good too- they list all their female children's married names and generally where they lived. Tracked down several who had family pictures.
 
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