Victorian Hair Wreath - a little creepy by today's standards!

Discover Giles County Historical Society article from the Virginian Leader, March 17, 2010

There are a number of items in the Giles County Historical Society’s Museum that really capture people’s curiosity. One such object is the Victorian hair wreath made from hair of the Hughes sisters of Wabash. Though a little creepy by today’s standards, making wreaths and jewelry of hair was quite common for middle- and upper-class women in the mid- to late-1800s.

Women typically had a container called a hair receiver on their dressing tables that they would fill with hair collected when they brushed their hair. The hair could then be wound around wires to form various types of flowers. Hair colors and flower textures created variety in the completed “fancy work.” The wreaths were usually made in a horseshoe shape with the most recently made flowers placed in the center at the bottom of the wreath and moved upward as new flowers were made. As hair wreaths were often made from the hair of deceased family members, it makes sense that the most recently deceased would be at the center of the wreath.

Rather than being a mourning wreath, it appears that the Hughes sisters made this wreath from their own exceptionally long hair - in the Historical Society’s collections is a photograph of Minnie Hughes with hair described as 4 feet 8 inches long. Minnie Hughes later married Dr. Frank Anderson, Wabash’s doctor and keeper of the community’s telephone switchboard. The Anderson’s granddaughter, Ernestine Boothe, donated the hair wreath to the Historical Society.

Behind the Scenes at the Museum

Discover Giles County Historical Society article from the Virginian Leader, March 10, 2010

One of our goals at the Giles County Historical Society is to manage our collections like a 21st century museum. The impressive exhibits that you see when you visit larger museums like the Smithsonian or museums in Roanoke or Richmond are only half of the story. Behind the scenes, their collections not currently on display are all carefully stored in archival boxes on archival shelving in climate-controlled spaces. They have large staffs who are responsible for creating exhibits, maintaining collection records, accepting donations, and keeping all artifacts in the best possible condition.

At the Giles County Historical Society, as in many museums in smaller communities, we have several part-time employees and volunteers trying to manage the collections in a similar manner, but on a much smaller scale with a much smaller budget. Collections management has been an ongoing project for the Historical Society. We’ve been the recipient of grants from the Community Foundation of the New River Valley, National Endowment for the Humanities, and the American Association of Museums to purchase collections management software and hire consultants to help us understand how to improve our processes.

The first phase of our collections management project has been to organize over 10 years of collections paperwork and match the paperwork with the corresponding objects in the collection. Each object is then photographed and information about the objects entered into the computer. As we work through this process we will also be applying for grants for additional archival storage, updating our collections management policies and forms used for donations, and creating new exhibits. The collections management project is ongoing and likely will not be complete for several years. Remember, the next time you visit the Giles County Historical Society, that there is a lot going on behind the scenes!