My Great-Grandmother's Wedding Dress - Rose Gross Ryan

As mentioned in the previous post, I attended the Celebration of Life for a James Hugh Ryan this past weekend.  In the process, I got to meet several second cousins I'd never met.  One of these was Pam Biederman.  I'd been told by Pam's mother that Pam had part of the wedding dress of our g-grandmother, Rose Gross Ryan, framed and hanging in her living room.  Pam said she had been given the dress by her grandfather, Ray Ryan, with the promise that she would wear it in her own wedding.  In an email Pam said, "I never married so I did the best next thing and framed it. The dress is in my family/living room and I enjoy it every day."

I'm one of those lucky family historians who actually was left INFORMATION by my ancestors.  My grandmother, Virginia Ryan, left records stating that James Hugh and Rose Gross were married in a "mission" church in Ottenheim, Kentucky.  I wrote to the church and they sent me this record.

Based on this information, I'd tried to discover why the Ryan/Gross families were living in Kentucky -- a fect not supported by any of my research.  It was only in the past year, thanks to Matt Biederman, that I discovered that they only got married in Kentucky, but did not live there.  He sent me a copy of the dispensation James and Rose got from their parish to get married before their banns had been published three times.

Pam kindly agreed to send me pictures of the framed wedding dress.  I don't know what the top looked like, but I can't believe the detail in the skirt portion.  I tried to enlarge part of the embroidery so that you can have an appreciation of the handiwork involved in the dress.

Click to see detail

What talent!  This dress gives me a better understanding of how my ancestors were able to support themselves through embroidery.  Thanks, Pam, for sharing.

Ryan "Cousin Bait"

I was reading the post of a fellow family history blogger, and she said that the primary role of her blog is "cousin bait."  I thought that was such an interesting expression, but in the end, that is one of the primary purposes of my blog.  As a result of it, many of my extended family including 3rd and 4th cousins have found me because of something posted here.

A couple of weeks ago, I was contacted by Pat Biederman.  She is the daughter of Ray Ryan, brother of my grandfather, Roy.  I wrote about Ray in an earlier post.  Pat was interested in my post about James Nicholas Ryan, the oldest child of James Hugh Ryan and Rose Gross.  Jim, as he was known, was Pat's uncle, although he was dead by the time Pat was born.  Jim tragically died of diphtheria at the age of 22.  His loss had a tremendous impact on the family.

Pat told me of her personal interest in Jim's history and how her father passed on certain artifacts of Jim's that had been in the possession of his sister, Rose.  Included was a map outlining the ports of call and the distances traveled by the USS Virginia and the other ships in the fleet as they traveled around the world.  She also had a beautiful embroidered picture that had been given to the fleet by the Japanese in remembrance of their visit to Japan.

Pat's son, Matt, is the current caretaker of these very special artifacts. Matt and I have since emailed and shared information and I am hoping to set something up in the near future so that we can all compare notes and the pieces of the puzzle that we each possess. Pictured below are closeups of the embroidered artwork that Matt forwarded to me.

The information I have in my possession includes Jim Ryan's service record that I ordered from the National Archives. The next several posts will focus on separating the fact from the fiction about Jim's life and death that occurred far too early.