Clothes that document family history
Too Good to Leave Behind

Second-Day Dress
1838-1840
Gift of Lucy Scudder

Second Day dresses, (so-called because they were made to worn on the first day after a wedding) were almost as important as the wedding dress itself. This example worn by Alicia Blatchford Scudder after her wedding to Charles William Scudder. Charles and Alicia Scudder were grandparents of the donor. They were married in Massachusetts and never moved west; their descendents, however, came to the Yakima Valley in 1888 and brought this dress with them.

In the late 1830s this dress could have been worn with gold chains to which a bottle of scented water might have been attached. Another likely accessory could have been a silk parasol to protect the complexion from the sun. The most popular hair style of the period was a center part with ringlets at each side.