A biography written in a wedding dress

Who was Mrs. H.Y. McCord?

“I’m not the owner,” the woman told me, though she sure looked like someone who runs a vintage shop. Her salt-and-pepper hair was swirled into a messy chignon with a glittery hair claw; she wore a black chiffon dress with sleeves so frilly they almost looked like animals. She had the requisite clanky bracelets (metal, enamel, rhinestone) as well as big, fat rings set with indeterminate stones. Turns out she was just a pal of the woman who owns Vintage Voyage, and was sitting at the register as a favor while her friend took a little vacation. (I think she should start her own store.)

In any case, it was VV’s 50 percent off sale, and we were all over it. Thomas found two Hawaaiian shirts plus an eye-popping Christmas shirt that you may have to wait till December to lay eyes on. I broke down and got a pair of velvet shoes I’d been eyeballing for months. But what made the trip extra interesting was this frock hanging in the back of the shop:

The index card pinned to the skirt is tough to see, so here’s a zoom-in:

The first thing that struck me about this curled-up index card was how it assumed Mrs. H.Y. McCord and Mary Tierney were known people. The dress’s caption felt like maybe it’d been in a tiny, volunteer-run museum like the Philo T. Farnswork TV Museum, where the community knows its prominent citizens, and if you don’t know WTF, you can ask the peppy docent for background info.

Turns out, Mr. McCord was a Titan of Industry in Atlanta, GA. He founded McCord-Stewart Grocery Wholesalers, made lots of money, became lay clergy with the Methodist church, and gave money to various causes, including The McCord Latin Prize at Emory University. A trawl through Newspapers.com turns up lots of background information on the guy Atlanta came to call “Uncle Henry.”

But his wife? Like all the tiny-waisted lasses married off to Good Catches in the 19th century, she really only shows up perphierally. Her biggest cameo appearance is in the Atlanta Journal’s society pages, which wrote about the McCord’s 50th wedding anniversary in 1932:

Here’s a piece in the Atlanta Constitution that gives a little more information about Ella McCord — she was an orphan, she was educated at a Masonic women’s college. She was 21 when she married Henry McCord. Even outside of the newspaper database, there’s not much information about her life.

As for Mary Tierney — I’m not sure if this is the right person, or if she’s the other Mary Tierney: the Atlanta tennis umpire who umped at the Barcelona Olympics in 1992. The big holes in both women’s biographies makes me wonder about the finer details of their lives. I know they went to Methodist church on Sunday. But what about 2 p.m. on a Thursday afternoon? What did Ella’s front door look like? Did she have a dog? Did she go for long walks? Did she read lots of books, or watch TV? What was her favorite color? Did she have secret aspirations? Was she a Hestia type, and happy making cakes and having babies and fussing over window treatments? The fact she was orphaned makes me think she was more complicated and rough around the edges than your average society matron. I look at that wedding dress and think: did she feel like a big, happy flower wearing it? Or did it feel like a straitjacket?

Big news! And big thanks

This post is later and shorter than usual — that’s because I started an MFA in poetry at the University of New Orleans this week. It’s been pretty frenetic. I’ll still post weekly, but might kick posts to Fridays instead of Wednesdays, and will probably stick to shorter posts. (Maybe a good idea anyway, right?)

Many thanks to the new subscribers! That’s Jennifer C., Linda G., and Delia R. I appreciate you. As always, if you want to kick into the coffee fund, that’s always appreciated, but if you’re even in New Orleans (or you’re here right now) I’d be up to just meeting up for coffee somewhere to say hi. And the coffee is on me.