The book had just been lying around Jeanne Marie Gadient’s house unnoticed and nearly forgotten for a few weeks.
It was a large-format picture book—sometimes referred to as a coffee table book—with photos of landscapes, mountains and natural wonders.
The book had come her way one day when neighbors with shelves and shelves and shelves of books, enough to start a used book store, invited her to take something home from their vast collection to read or look at.
A book lover herself, she said she didn’t really need another, but she randomly selected the large-format photo book because she thought it would look good on her coffee table.
It also reminded her of something that local nature photographer Chuck Summers and former minister at First Christian Church might have published, and that was appealing to her.
She remembers thinking that the next time she needed a few minutes of relaxation she’d sit down, put up her feet and look at the beautiful scenes.
Except, when she finally did open the forgotten book, she couldn’t sit still at all because of what she found tucked inside it.
It was a vintage black-and-white photograph, approximately 8 by 10 inches, with about 40 schoolchildren posing for the photographer.
The children are dressed in formal attire, the boys in black tie and the girls in long dresses and hats. Some of the young ladies are carrying large floral bouquets. One boy at the front of the group is dressed as a clergyman, and “the couple” elevated at center stage on some steps are attired as a bride and groom.
And “within two seconds” of seeing this surprise bit of forgotten history that was tucked inside the book, something was very familiar.
There, on the front row, wearing a short dress and carrying a basket, was her own mother, standing between the groom and the clergyman as one of two flower girls.
Jeanne Marie knew it was her mother right away because she has a framed photo of her at about the same age.
She couldn’t wait to show her what she’d found.
Henderson native Martha Ann Pruitt Otey, now 96, recalls that the photo is of first- and second-graders at Center Street School participating in a Tom Thumb Wedding in the mid-1930s.
According to sources on the web, including a 2014 story that aired on National Public Radio, Tom Thumb Weddings became a fad more than a century ago.
The event is a mock marriage with children as the participants. A little boy puts on a tuxedo and a little girl dons a bridal gown. They walk down the aisle together and exchange “vows.” And the event can be a way to raise money for a good cause, to teach young people about formal fashion and wedding etiquette or just for celebration’s sake.
The roots of the Tom Thumb Wedding go back to the marriage of a real-life couple one of whom was the ultra-diminutive 19th-century actor Charles Stratton, whose stage name was Gen. Tom Thumb. Under the management of sideshow impresario P.T. Barnum, Stratton became a national celebrity and a wealthy man.
When he married equally super-tiny Lavinia Warren in New York in 1863, the little couple received wedding presents from wealthy Americans, including a miniature horse-drawn carriage fashioned by Tiffany & Co. Barnum sold tickets to the wedding reception and the newlyweds were invited to the White House by President Abraham Lincoln.
When Martha Ann saw the old photo of her grade school’s Tom Thumb Wedding, the memory took her down memory lane.
She noted that she didn’t look happy in the photo because she had wanted to “be a bridesmaid and wear a hat.”
But the appearance of the old photo certainly was uplifting for her, Jeanne Marie said.
“Mother was over the moon, she was just touched. She couldn’t believe the photo existed,” she said, noting that her mother still knows the names of many in the photo and wanted to telephone a couple of them to report the discovery. “She got a tear or two in her eyes.”
