52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks - Week #20 theme, Textiles.

May I introduce you to our Gt Aunt Mamie (Mary Lucinda McGill). Notice her beautiful blouse. She may have made it herself, as well as those of her sisters , since she was shown to be a dressmaker in 1900 Census. The McGill family had traveled by covered wagon from Iowa to the newly opening land in Oklahoma in 1889.  By 1910, she had left her rural home in Edmond Oklahoma, to live in the big town of Oklahoma City and work at the five story, marble-floored  Mellon Department Store as a milliner.  

We have found an advertisement from the Mellon Store which states:

Just received from the most authoritative producers of millinery styles, a shipment of hats in the new vogues for early  fall street and afternoon wear.

The new styles are strikingly beautiful and diversity is shown in models, large shapes and small shapes. The Watteau or ageless model  is a very novel one, having a flat round crown and an unusually shaped mushroom brim. Other styles find their inspiration from the ages of Louis XV.

Velvets, hatters' plush silk, and felt are the foundations, with folds, aigrettes, paradise feathers and other plumage as trimmings.

We now have very smart styles at prices ranging from $5.00 - $15.00.

The Mellon Company

Oklahoma City, Oklahoma

I believe that Mamie was hired to reproduce those new styles  for the ladies of the city.  In later years she was a milliner at John A. Brown's department store, also in downtown Oklahoma City. She never married and lived in a boarding house where we would visit her.  She dressed stylishly, similar to Chanel styles, in linen dresses or suits, with strings of beads. She dyed her hair auburn all her life. 

These pictures are from a trip she made to California to visit a sister and some cousins.  You can see her ivory linen traveling dress with hat, shoes, hose and gloves to match, even though she and her niece, Evana, were up close and personal with an ostrich.  The second photo was made at the beach during that visit... about 1930.  This family scene carries out the theme of Textiles because of the variety of clothing. (Aunt Mamie is in black with sun glasses.) Makes me grin to see all this bunch dressed up  At The Beach !!!