You don’t have to read romance novels to find compelling
love stories; there is one at the beginning of each branch of your family tree.
Have you ever watched a couple talk about the first time they met? The fondness
and memories are in their voices and in their expressions. Those same feelings
are visible in many of your ancestral wedding photographs, if you pay
attention.
If you’re skeptical, revisit your own wedding pictures and watch
your love story unfold in photographs. These images will make you want to see
photographs of ancestral weddings to catch glimpses of life and love in the
past.
As you look through your family photographs, it may seem
unusual that there aren’t as many pictures of bridal parties as there are
records of marriages on your family tree. After all, today’s brides not only
hire professional photographers to compile formal albums, but they also ask
guests to take pictures of each other with disposable cameras on every table.
Future generations can view the entire ceremony as well as the antics of the
guests.
The stereotypical photograph of a bride and groom doesn’t
always exist for weddings in the nineteenth and early twentieth century because
the style, importance, and even look of wedding photographs were different.
Humorous photographs offered for sale at the turn of the twentieth century
depicted each step in a young couple’s courtship and marriage, from engagement
to honeymoon. While many of those stages haven’t changed today, the
photographic documentation of each event has. The truth is, you may have
wedding pictures in your family collection and not know it. Take another look
at all your photographs of couples and single portraits of men and women. A photograph
might hold the answer to one of your genealogical challenges, such as the date
and place of your great-grandparents’ wedding. Photographs can help you
rediscover your family’s romantic past, if you know what to look for.
Photo Identification Tips
How do you find those wedding images in your family album?
Start with your family tree. Make a list of all the marriages, including when
and where they occurred, starting with the advent of photography in 1839. Then
try to match up those names with photographs in your collection. If you are
like most people, some of your pictures will lack names. The same
identification techniques used to date a picture will help you discover your
family’s visual wedding history. Before jumping to conclusions, be sure to see
if there might be a caption on the back that identifies it as a wedding image
such as a name or a date. If the picture remains unidentified, try the
following tips:
• Look at those unknown images and see if any clues are
visible, such as photographic method or name of the photographer. For instance,
is it an image in a case or one on paper? The method of photography can place
your photograph within a certain period of time. But don’t rely on this date
alone. Photo identification depends on all the evidence rather than a single
detail. If a photographer’s name appears on the image, try to find out when he
or she was in business by using city directories or Web sites such as the
George Eastman House database of photographers at www.geh.org.
• Bring copies of those unidentified images with you
whenever you visit relatives. You never know when Uncle George or cousin Sarah
may recognize the faces in the pictures or share a few wedding photographs from
their collection. They will probably have a story or two to tell about family
weddings they’ve attended, so keep a tape recorder handy to record those
memories.
• If you haven’t already done so, find marriage documents
such as records of intentions, licenses, and church records. The names of the
witnesses may help you identify members of the wedding party in a group
portrait. A photograph becomes more important to family history when you have
names, stories, and documents to go with it.
• Clothing is one of the most accurate ways to date a
photograph. Pay particular attention to details such as the shape of a woman’s
sleeve, bodice, and skirt and the width of a man’s lapel, tie, and the fit of
his jacket. Identifying a wedding portrait in your collection may ultimately
depend on a small detail, so it helps to know something about the history of
wedding costumes and traditions.
Clothing Clues
“Here comes the bride, all dressed in white…” begins a
traditional wedding song, but that modern image is not always accurate of the
past. Purchasing a white dress to be worn just once was expensive and many
women chose to wear their best outfit instead. Frugal Victorian brides who wore
white often altered their wedding dresses for special occasions (you’ll want to
look for that dress in other images as well). Brides actually wore a variety of
attire including the familiar white gown. Dresses reflect the fashions of the
era in which the couple married. Colors for wedding dresses varied from blue,
signifying fidelity, to purple, as a sign of memorial for the Civil War dead. In
the 1870s and 1880s, fashion-conscious brides selected dress colors from the
new synthetic dyes. That’s one of the reasons one woman proudly posed in her
brown corded silk dress on her wedding day. She was making a fashion statement.
Dating an image based on clothing can place an image within
a couple of years. Due to the tradition of wearing a mother’s or grandmother’s
dress, be careful when estimating dates for wedding dresses. In one photograph,
the groom wore clothing from the 1930s but the bride’s dress dated from the
late nineteenth century. She updated her look with a new veil. It is necessary
to look at each piece of a bride’s outfit to make sure that the dress and the
accessories are from the same era.
There are certain accessories associated with brides
regardless of their dress selection. Veils, flowers, and bows could decorate
the plainest attire and consequently can identify a wedding portrait. Orange
blossoms, the choice of Queen Victoria when she married Prince Albert, remained
a popular decoration for decades. Even men wore small sprigs of blossoms
attached to their coat to signify a wedding. According to a 1901 etiquette
book, affluent young women could wear their first tiara at their wedding. One
woman wore a simple dark dress, but chose to use fur trim and a veil as
accessories. Economical women chose to purchase a veil or borrow one, since
wearing something borrowed is a wedding tradition. While the dress is new, the
veil may be a family heirloom.
Consult fashion books such as Joan Severa’s Dressed for the
Photographer (Kent State University Press, 1997) to compare your wedding
photographs to other images. You can also find examples of well-dressed bridal
parties in American women’s magazines such as Godey’s Lady Book (1830–98) and
Brides magazine (1933-present).
Portraits and Albums
Photography dates from 1839, but that doesn’t mean there are
wedding images that early in your family. According to Barbara Norfleet, author
of Wedding (Simon and Schuster, 1979), not many people posed for formal wedding
pictures during the first thirty years of photography. Individuals sat for
portraits before or after the wedding, but not in their formal attire. Of
course, some did, and those images are valuable and sought after by collectors.
By the late 1860s, more couples had portraits taken in their
wedding clothes or paid a photographer to come to their home to photograph
them. Some women ordered multiple prints and gave away photographs of
themselves to their family and friends as mementos of the event. One woman
signed the back of her wedding portrait, “With much love to my own dear Beatie,
Souvenir of Jan. 14th, 1896.”
By the 1880s, wedding albums were becoming popular. Rather
than just focusing on the couple, photographers began including members of the
wedding party. Victorian couples received gifts prior to the wedding and laid
them out for guests to view. You can find pictures of these lavish displays in
Victorian albums. These images are a visual document of what affluent couples
received when they married. By closely examining them, you might discover
artifacts still in the family.
Poses
When you look at a portrait taken in a studio, what do you
see? Initially, you may not notice the props or poses that a photographer used
to improve the quality of their images.
Is the man standing or sitting? Photographers generally
posed men standing. If the opposite is true, it might mean the man is extremely
tall.
Is the couple standing close together? While some couples
are obviously self-conscious in front of a camera, others show their affection
by leaning toward each other or holding hands. The attraction visible in these
images is worthy of any contemporary romantic fiction.
In a group portrait of the family and couple, can you tell who
is on the groom’s side and who is on the bride’s? In family portraits, the
relatives stay to the side of the person to whom they are related.
The bridal pose suggests a date for the image. Bridal
portraits with the woman looking directly into the camera (nineteenth century)
were replaced by brides looking away (twentieth century).
Photographers choreographed the portrait both to profile the
couple and to demonstrate their own skill. After all, couples showing off their
wedding images attracted business for the photographer.
Ethnic and Religious Evidence
Wedding pictures can also provide clues to your family’s
origins. The color and style of a wedding dress, and the bride’s choice of
accessories may signify ethnic origins. Even the setting of the wedding can
reveal immigrant roots. Adding a culturally significant headdress to an outfit
is one way new immigrants combined American and Old World wedding traditions.
You might have pictures of weddings that occurred in the country of origin. For
instance, in one photograph of a young couple posed with their family, it is
the architectural details and the bower that suggests the photograph was not
taken in America. Robert Harrold’s Folk Costumes of the World. (Blandford
Press, 1978) has examples of native clothing that can assist with
identification.
Pictures of a bride and groom might also contain symbols
that reflect religious customs. For instance, brooms are part of some African
American ceremonies, and huppas identify a Jewish wedding. If you don’t know
your ancestor’s religion, a wedding portrait can provide the answer.
Family History and the Wedding Portrait
Don’t limit your wedding search to images of the couple on
their wedding day. Create a story of the couple with their marriage
certificate, invitations, photographs, the minister, and the place where they
married. For instance, in the nineteenth century, pre-printed forms could be
purchased to hold small photographs of the bride, groom, and in some cases the
minister, along with the date and place of the marriage. These were suitable
for framing and were hung in many homes. There may also be artifacts in your
family that add to the tale, including linens or wedding gowns. In some
families, quilts are part of the wedding traditions.
Never stop looking for pictures to tell the visual history
of the people on your family tree. Just because an image doesn’t appear to be a
wedding portrait, don’t discount it until you’ve had time to establish a date
for the image and compare that time frame to known wedding dates for that
person. It was only when I decided to date photographs of my grandmother that I
discovered one was taken on her wedding day. In 1912, my grandmother Alice
McDuff got married in a beautiful dress with large buttons. Because it wasn’t a
traditional white dress, I didn’t recognize it as a wedding portrait. Only
after researching the photographer, listening to family history, finding her
marriage certificate, and closely examining the image did I find the final
clue. It was a small detail. The photographer posed her so that light glinted
off the surface of her new wedding ring. A companion portrait exists of my
grandfather also dressed in a new suit and posed to show off his wedding band.
If you can’t find a wedding picture of your ancestors, there
might be a reason. Not everyone could afford to have a portrait taken in the
mid-nineteenth century. In some families, the lack of wedding pictures
indicates a conflict over the marriage such as parental disapproval or an
elopement.
Once you have a wedding portrait—or even if you don’t—try to
find a picture of the church or even the minister. David Lambert, reference
librarian at the New England Historic Genealogical Society, knew that the
Reverend Robert Cassie Waterston married his great-great-grandparents,
Alexander Livingstone Poor and Ann Whitney Phagins at the Pitts Street Chapel,
Boston, Massachusetts, on 28 January 1844, but he didn’t have a photograph of
them. He located an engraving of the church in a city directory, obtained a
copy of their marriage certificate, and surprisingly found a photograph of the
minister that married them in a local antique shop. He now has an illustrated
story of the couple’s marriage without owning a picture of the couple
themselves. While David never found a
picture of his great-great-grandparents he was able to re-create the sense of
romance with those other pictures and documents. By putting all the pieces
together, you can tell the story of your ancestors through their love stories.
Who knows, maybe you’ll even be inspired to write the next best-seller based on
their lives.
Discover More Wedding Traditions
Molly Dolan Blayney. Wedded Bliss: A Victorian Bride’s
Handbook. Abbeville Press, 1992.
Linda Otto Lipsett. To Love and to Cherish: Bride’s
Remembered. Quilt Digest, 1989.
Carolyn Mordecai. You are Cordially Invited to Weddings:
Dating & Love Customs of Cultures Worldwide, Including Royalty. Nittany
Publishing, 1999.
JoAnne Olian. Wedding Fashions, 1862-1912: 380 Costume
Designs from “La Mode Illustree.” Dover, 1994.
Arlene Hamilton Stewart. A Bride’s Book of Wedding
Traditions. Hearst Books, 1995.
Maureen A. Taylor is the author of several genealogical
books, including Uncovering Your Ancestry Through Family Photographs
(Betterway, 2000) and a guide to family history for kids, Through the Eyes of
Your Ancestors (Houghton Mifflin, 1999).
Return to the Ancestry Magazine May/June 2002 Table of Contents.
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