Elizabeth Porter Thompson wedding dress, 1872.
Brick Store Museum Collection, 1936.1041

This is the two-piece wedding dress of Elizabeth Porter Thompson, who married H. H. Burbank on June 11, 1872, in Kennebunk, Maine. Elizabeth was born in Kennebunk in 1840, the daughter of Captain Nathaniel Lord Thompson (1811-1889) and his first wife Jane Stone Lord (1816-1851). From the measurements of the dress, Elizabeth was probably around 5’ 5” tall with a 22” waistline. The train of this dress is three feet long.

Elizabeth's good friend, Mary A. Maling, was also married in 1872, to Augustus E. Stevens. Their wedding dresses, both in the Brick Store Museum collection, were made from the same blue-gray silk taffeta material.

Prior to the twentieth century, women wore many different colored wedding gowns. Many have attributed Queen Victoria’s choice of color for her wedding gown–white–as the beginning of the tradition that continues today.

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