The Objects of Family History: Eliza Bennett's Straw Wedding Bonnet

ABSTRACT Family historians can provide a crucial foundation for the analysis of historical objects held in museums. They contributed in significant ways to an object-based study I conducted on colonial textile culture in mid-nineteenth century Aotearoa New Zealand. Here, I use the example of a straw bonnet worn in 1863 by a first-generation bride from an English migrant family to the settlement of Te Whanganui-a-Tara/Wellington. It was handed down several generations before being donated to a regional museum in the 1970s. Who made it, how it was worn, and why it was kept, were by that time unknown fragments of family knowledge. Despite this, my analysis of the straw bonnet as a colonial object was enriched by family historians who were able to put a private, distributed family archive in conversation with related records held in the public domain. Fascinating manuscript material, self-published family histories, additional clothing and textile items, and priceless collections of glass plate negatives were brought to my attention. Through this case study, I suggest that the work of family historians is hidden in plain sight within academic and museological research practices.