Love and Marriage in Madison County

This issue explores how wedding customs in Madison County changed over the years and specifically looks at the weddings of numerous Madison County residents where wedding garments are part of the MCHS collections. Among the weddings profiled is that of an African-American couple, Cora Whittington and Herman Aitch, whose daughter Alma became a well-respected school teacher at Lincoln School. The story of Anna Dake and Cyrus Love includes their 1897 wedding and the early history of the Dake family in Madison County. The wedding of Sandra Nichols and Wayne Byron in 1957 was the first wedding at St. Luke’s United Methodist Church in Maryville. The Malloy family has four generations of wedding dresses in the museum collections dating from 1893-1994 and include everything from Victorian to mini-dresses which accurately reflect the times when the dresses were worn.