The dress had seen better days. Literally. From what I could see – I wasn’t about to touch it – it was stained and torn but still gave notice that it was fashionable in its day. On top of it, someone had placed what looked like a magazine picture of a girl wearing a dress like it.
Two handwritten notes accompanied the dress and they were equally interesting. One declared the dress in the photo as being like the one owned by a great-grandmother, along with a bit of history about her:
“This is like my great grandmothers plantation dress of Alabama. Her name was Nix. Owned a large number of slaves Civil War years or before – Sad – as me here great grand children (with an arrow pointing to the magazine picture).”
It wasn’t clear if this was one of the great-grands or an anonymous picture torn from a magazine.
The dress was in a wooden square box that had been repaired with tape around the edges, with the British lion and unicorn crest in the center of the top. It was waiting to be sold recently at auction.
There was another note attached by cellophane tape on the top:
“Portrait on wall of Marie Nix Mitchell. Painted by Claire McChesney at the National Arts Club in Gramercy Park. The dress is damaged – Civil War Time.
Aug. 2001
This is great granthmothers plantation dress. Her married name ‘Nix’. She was a Hightower from Sylacuga Alabama who married Grandfather Thomas D. Mitchell of Gainsville – Texas. Her other portrait hangs in Mills College – Oakland – California.”
With so much history in this box, I was obviously curious about Marie Nix Mitchell, and wondered how much more I could find out about her. So I Googled.
I could find nothing about her, her life or her Civil War years, but did find out a little about the other information in the notes.
The town is Sylacauga (pronounced Sy-la-cau-ga), and it was part of the Coosa River Valley settled by the Creek Indians and the Shawnee Indians before they were forced to give up their land and sent out west in the infamous “Trail of Tears” for resettlement. Slavery became an institution in Alabama in the early 19th century, and the state seceded from the Union in 1861 to maintain it.
The town’s name is a combination of two Native American words: Chalaka-ge, or “the place of the Chalaka Tribe.” The town is located southeast of Birmingham.
It is notable for several reasons:
Called “The Marble City,” it sits on the largest and hardest formation of marble in the world. It is prized for its pure white color. The marble was used in construction of the U.S. Supreme Court building, the Washington Monument and the Lincoln Memorial.
Italian sculptor Giuseppe Moretti used Sylacauga marble in his sculptures, and the Isabel Anderson Comer Museum and Art Center in the town has sample of his works on display.
The first known instance of a meteorite hitting a person occurred in the town in 1954 when it struck Ann Hodges, 34, as she took a nap on her sofa on a November afternoon. An 8.5-pound black rock fell from the sky, tore through her roof, bounced off a console radio, and struck her hand and thigh, leaving a big bruise. The rock was turned over to the Air Force, which deemed it a meteorite and not anything sinister in those Cold War times, and it was returned to her.
When Hodges and her husband could not find anyone to pay big bucks for it (they had turned down an offer from the Smithsonian), they eventually donated it to the Alabama Museum of Natural History.
One person who did benefit from the hullabaloo was an African American farmer who found a smaller meteorite in the road, later realized what it was and with the help of his postman – the only person he trusted – found a lawyer to help him sell it. The rock was sold to a buyer who donated it to the Smithsonian. The farmer got enough money from the sale to buy a used car and a new house.
Here’s what I learned about other information in the notes:
I found several plantations in the Sylacauga area but I wasn’t sure if any of those belonged to the Nix or Hightower families. Those names did not match any of them, which appeared to be the larger ones.
The makeup of the town, according to the 2010 census, is 69 percent white, 29 percent African American, almost 1 percent Hispanic or Latino, and less than 1 percent Native American and Asian American. It has more than 12,000 people.
The artist who painted Nix’s portrait at the National Arts Club was more familiarly known as Clara Taggert McChesney. She was born in Brownville, CA, in 1860, and her family moved to Oakland, CA, when she was young. Her father was principal of the local high school. McChesney spent most of her time in New York, studying both there and in Paris. Her medium was watercolor and oil. She died in London in 1928. She was a member of the National Arts Club, which was founded in New York in 1898 and admitted women from the beginning, according to its website.
Mills College was founded in 1852 as a women’s college to give them the same opportunities as men.
The Comer museum is looking for artifacts. If authenticated, this would fit right in simulated log cabin on its lower level, alongside the other 1800 dresses, doll house, Confederate uniform and old photos from the town’s past. The dress sold at auction for $30.
