Jon Kukla's reference to Martha Washington's shoes in the Washington Post was not. of itself, deserving of too much attention, despite her husband's eminence. Any student of costume, male or female, will find many places online and in museums that deal with the dressing up of the great and powerful.
However, we must ask, in passing, 'who nicked the buckles off'n her shoes?' At the very least, adhering to the values of the times, a good flogging seems called for!! But even buckles, once a major fashion statement, are not all that rare. What I seem to have missed is whether Martha Washington had big feet or not or whether her later images reflect the discomfort of fallen arches, etc. It is, after all, better to share our common humanity that to ape our betters.
I have previously mentioned my interest in Lydia Mary Fay, Principal of the Midway Academy, a small girls school at Millers Tavern, that operated from c1847 to 1855 at the home of Dr. Jefferson Minor.
The link between Martha W and Mary Fay is a letter from Mary to her pastor, the Rev. Charles Dana, of Christ Church (Episcopal) in Alexandria in November 1849, in which she acknowledges his request that she destroy all the correspondence between them. It would seem that the practice of burning letters mentioned in the Washington Post piece was still common in the mid 19th century. It brings to mind our modern reliance on emails, and how we might consider saving these for future historical and family research but perhaps that is a matter for a separate discussion.
In more than four months of diligent online archive searches, I have so far found only two manuscript letters by Mary Fay, although I have quite a lot of printed reports from letters written by her from her time as an Episcopal missionary in Shanghai, China, from 1849-1878. I would, of course, be delighted to hear from anyone who knows of Mary Fay's years in Virginia (1839-1850), or who knows anything about Midway Academy, Virginia, or about the Dulany, Carter and Minor families and their lives, mostly I think, in Essex County.
In the meantime, I shall try to walk in Geo Washington's shoes and not tell any lies, even about cherry trees or, if pressed, the size of people's feet.
Ian Welch,
Canberra, Australia
----- Original Message -----
From: Jon Kukla <[log in to unmask]>
Date: Wednesday, February 4, 2009 10:22 am
Subject: [VA-HIST] Martha Washington's purple shoes
To: [log in to unmask]
> There is a photo with the article at the Washington Post website
> -
> http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-
> dyn/content/article/2009/02/01/AR2009020102023.html
> jk
>
> On Tue, Feb 3, 2009 at 2:51 PM, Anne Pemberton
> <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>
> > Jon,
> >
> > Do photographs of the purple wedding shoes exist? Are they on
> the web? That
> > is the sort of thing that could interest students who find history
> > "dull".....
> >
> > Anne
> >
> > Anne Pemberton
> > [log in to unmask]
> > http://www.erols.com/apembert
> > http://www.educationalsynthesis.org
> > ______________________________________
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> >
>
>
>
> --
> Jon Kukla
> www.JonKukla.com
>
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