(Mother) Leonard - Photo Album of Hannah (Rich) Peters

Mother Leonard's jewels, dress, and coiffure suggest money. Her hair is arranged in a center-parted, smoothed-back style of the mid-1860s, and is covered with a snood, a net cap over the back of her coiffure. She wears earrings with large stones, a matching broach at her throat, two rings on her left-hand ring finger, one a wedding ring, and the second a ring with a large stone.

There is also a plain band on her right-hand ring finger and - surprisingly - dirt under the index fingernail of her right hand. (Imagine people seeing 150 years from today that you hadn’t washed your hands!) At Mother Leonard's waist is a watch chain, without obvious evidence of a watch. Her belt is moiré fabric, edged in some heavy fabric or a ribbon like grosgrain, but it isn’t possible to tell if her buttons and belt buckle are metal, ivory, or mother-of pearl.

Her dress is probably made of silk; it certainly has a regular pattern of raised dots, resembling today’s dotted Swiss. The bodice is high-waisted and tightly fitted with numerous darts; the jet beads at her shoulders and on her sleeves are expensive embellishments. Real jet is fossilized coal, light in weight and warm to the touch, and it can be polished to a high shine.

At some time over the last 150 years, faceted black glass became a substitute for organic jet; it's not clear if Mother Leonard's dress is the older fossilized jet or glass jet. Glass jet takes a higher polish and is cold to the touch. Its disadvantage is that it is much heavier, so that a silk dress richly decorated with glass jet can shred from the weight of the beads.

Additional Links

Next Photo - (Boy) Leonard

Index of Hannah's Photo Album

Early Bovina Families and Their Descendants
-----An outside link to Delaware County, NY - Genealogy & History Site

United Presbyterian Church at South Kortright Parsonage
-----An outside link to Delaware County, NY - Genealogy & History Site

Albany Institute of History and Art (Outside Link)

Godey’s Ladies Book for September 1855 (Outside Link)