DOLLEY Madison & HOLLY Shulman

A few years ago, when I first thought about creating a website, my main inspiration was my older sister, Holly C. Shulman, and her outstanding website, The Dolley Madison Project . Holly, Dolley. Be confused not.

Holly C. Shulman is probably the foremost scholar on Dolley Madison. Dolley was the wife of President James Madison and the most famous hostess of Washington DC. Far from being stuffily academic, the website is gorgeous, informative and fun. Produced as a project of the Virginia Center For Digital History - University of Virginia, The Dolley Madison Project has both academic clout and design pizzaz. The graphics are beautiful, including probably all the known likenesses of Dolley. There is a section on Dolley and pop culture and a section on how to read old handwriting.

Image courtesy of Holly Cowan Shulman, The Virginia Center For Digital History, University Of Virginia

Jewelry made from hair of a deceased beloved. From VCDH  website. University of Virginia

Now Holly Shulman has published a piece in the Virginia Center For Digital History Website/blog about Dolley, James and the custom of making jewelry from the hair of a dead beloved to use as a memento mori. According to Shulman, "The fascination with ritualized mourning clothes and accessories has generally been considered an outgrowth of Queen Victoria’s intensely private, but socially influential bereavement of her husband, Prince Albert. But Albert did not die until 1861, and Dolley wrote her cousin in the summer of 1837. We can assume that in her practice and assumptions about memorializing the dead, Dolley was not alone among her friends and family in Virginia. These letters inform us about their practices of mourning. It indicates a shift in how the dead were remembered, and it locates the tradition of creating jewelry with hair enclosed to the 1830s."

Holly also edits another website, an exhibition site about Wednesdays In Mississippi: Civil Rights as Women's Work. Maybe I'll post about it another time.

Comments

[Holly Cowan Shulman]

Thanks Liza! I am so glad you liked my website on Dolley. Now try the even better _Dolley Madison Digital Edition_. For those of you who follow these things it's the difference between a website done in html and an electronic archive tagged in xml. I promise, there is a world of difference. But for the visually inclined, Liza is right -- go to the Dolley Madison Project.

I am a great fan of Liza's personal blogging space. Liza has so much talent and her insight into art and artifacats is really amazing. So I'm not surprised, in a way, that she picked up on my comments about Dolley and mourning jewelry. It's such an odd concept in the 21st century. A hundred, even two hundred years ago people saw hair as an excellent way to preserve the memory of those they had lost. Hair is so very personal and it is also strong and flexible. Think of doing needle point with hair or braiding it into rings. It's as if the hair was a stand in for the person.

I'd love to know if any of Liza's readers have come across mourning jewelry, and if so, what your reaction to it is.

Thanks again, little sister!

Holly

[liza cowan]

I just checked eBay and they have some for sale. Also, check www.timedancesby.com for more on mourning jewelry.

Fascinating. I knew about memento mori photographs, but really never thought about hair. Hair doesn't decompose after death, making it the perfect synecdoche.

[Maggie Jochild]

I've seen a lot of it come across Antiques Roadshow and you're right, they label it as a practice developed by the Victorians. This jump back in time was surprising and interesting.

I've not seen it personally, but in my cultural background (dirtfarmer south, non-delta and non-mountain), there was a strong practice of taking photographs of the dead to remember them by. Especially if (a) no photo had been taken yet and (b) it was a child. I remember seeing one photo of a father sitting on the porch (no flashes then) holding a dead 8 or 10-year-old girl on his lap, his daughter. It upset me dreadfully.

The hair thing, on the other hand, makes sense to me and I personally would love to see some of my ancestors' hair. Recently, the mandatory draft registration records for World War I have become available online to genealogists. Every man between the ages of 18 and 45 were required to register, and part of this record includes a physical description -- body type, height, hair and eye color, any disabilities. For dozens of my kin, it was first and only clue I had to what they might have looked like, because photographs were hard to come by and have been lost. I spent a couple of weeks tracing lineages, noting clusters of red hair, grey eyes vs. blue, tall and thin vs. short and fat. Heady stuff for the past-obsessed.