Gah. (Corrected information)

Thanks be to God for angels in my life. After paying for school and textbooks, I'm incredibly grateful to those folx in my life who have, through nothing I've done, love me enough to make my life a bit easier. You know who you are. I cannot thank you enough, and I pray that I can pass on the love that I'm being shown.

On another note, I'm uploading pictures like mad, although I might want to warn everyone that I do post pictures, and if you're on a slow connection, it's going to be hard to wade through them. From what I can tell here, I can't make filters or anything, so you'll have to take your chances I guess.

So, on to fabric porn:
I'm not sure if you can tell, the not only are there pleats around the bottom of the hem, there is a pleated trim around the pleats. I would have gone blind. I may still.

This is a detail of a gown belonging to Anna Tuthill Symes Harrison.

From www.whitehouse.gov:

A clandestine marriage on November 25, 1795, united Anna Symmes and Lt. William Henry Harrison, an experienced soldier at 22. Though the young man came from one of the best families of Virginia, Judge Symmes did not want his daughter to face the hard life of frontier forts; but eventualy, seeing her happiness, he accepted her choice.

It's very hard to see in this picture, and I will post another one, but the brocade was woven with a custom pattern, the leaves of a particular oak that grew along the banks of the Tippecanoe River, a battle in which her husband, President William Henry Harrison, fought in.

From www.whitehouse.gov:

While Tecumseh was away seeking more allies, Harrison led about a thousand men toward the Prophet's town. Suddenly, before dawn on November 7, the Indians attacked his camp on Tippecanoe River. After heavy fighting, Harrison repulsed them, but suffered 190 dead and wounded.

The Battle of Tippecanoe, upon which Harrison's fame was to rest, disrupted Tecumseh's confederacy but failed to diminish Indian raids. By the spring of 1812, they were again terrorizing the frontier.

In the War of 1812 Harrison won more military laurels when he was given the command of the Army in the Northwest with the rank of brigadier general. At the Battle of the Thames, north of Lake Erie, on October 5, 1813, he defeated the combined British and Indian forces, and killed Tecumseh. The Indians scattered, never again to offer serious resistance in what was then called the Northwest.

Thereafter Harrison returned to civilian life; the Whigs, in need of a national hero, nominated him for President in 1840. He won by a majority of less than 150,000, but swept the Electoral College, 234 to 60.

I really will get around to finding out which lady these dresses (meaning all the pictures, not just this post) belonged to. I should have brought a notebook to record the information in, but I'm not so good at the documenting fabric schtick.