The Richard Borden Chapter, Colonial Dames XVII Century is celebrating Colonial Heritage Month with a Colonial Heritage Display at the Tyler Public Library throughout the month of October. Antique lace bonnets, aprons and collars from the 1600s, colonial toys, vintage purses, eyeglasses, sewing kits, colonial tools, handmade bricks, the colonial flag and sheet music, writing instruments, educational tools and items of heraldry are just a few of the pieces showcased in the exhibit.
Examples of antique hand made lace from the 1600s on display include Flemish, Honiton, Bobbin Lace, Milanses lace and white Tambour handwork, all from the private lace collection of Richard Borden Chapter member Madeline Alworth. Various toys representative of the Colonial Period including the "Tabletop Ninepins", "Peg Top", "Spindle" and “Wooden Top” are also featured along with "Wooden Paper Dolls" or “Peg Dolls". These dolls, usually hand carved out of wood, were a favorite Colonial past time. Various Colonial period teaching tools, including samplers, bark used as paper by early colonial children, a quill pen and a recipe for ink, are also on exhibit. Vintage purses, jewelry, antique sewing kits and a handmade lace tablecloth from the collection of Richard Borden Chapter member Billye Nolan are displayed. Also showcased is a heraldry display featuring the Colonial Dame XVII Century Heraldry Book with Arms along with Heraldry Certificates belonging to Chapter members Paula Warren and Anna Lee.
The exhibit also features a framed drawing of the home of prominent colonial minister Reverend John Lathrop, a 1605 graduate of Cambridge University, founder of Barnstable, Mass. in 1639 and ancestor of Richard Borden Chapter member Anna Lee. Lathrop’s Barnstable home, now the Sturgis Library, is the oldest library in the United States. A photo of his Bishop’s Bible, printed in 1605 and brought to the colonies from England aboard the Griffin in 1634, is also featured. The Bible is on permanent display at the Sturgis Library. Reverend Lathrop’s famous descendants include Presidents George W. Bush, George Herbert Walker Bush, Franklin Delano Roosevelt and Ulysses S. Grant, as well as Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, Gov. Mitt Romney, Sen. Adlai Stevenson III, poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Dr. Benjamin Spock, financier J. P. Morgan, Congressman David Daniel Marriott, John Foster Dulles, Eli Whitney, actress Dina Merrill and Vice Presidential hopeful Sarah Palin among others.
Founded in 1915 in Washington D.C., the National Society Colonial Dames XVII Century is composed of 13,000 members in 46 state societies and one international society in Canada. Members are the lineal descendants of an ancestor who lived and rendered civil or military service prior to 1701 in one of the original colonies in the geographical area of the present United States of America. Members aid in preservation of records and historic sites, conduct historical colonial research and youth education and commemorate the work of the founders of the Republic. In addition members maintain a library specializing in 17th century American colonial data and Heraldry.