By LAURA BROOKHART / Community Columnist

“The fact is, this dress may or may not have ever been worn as a wedding dress,” Ken Penhale told me, pointing to the slightly faded brown calico dress with lace on each cuff now on display at the Helena Museum.

“It’s a romanticized idea to say that it was Helen Lee’s wedding dress, but it is certainly something special for us to be able to have on view. I had hoped to be able to present it on a mannequin, but it is far too fragile for that,” he added.

Dating from the 1860s, the dress survived kept in a lidded-wicker basket in the Lee Family, passed down for five generations.

Nearby is the basket that contains the handwritten note signed by Lillie Lee Miller Leonard that documents: “This dress was made by my mother, Ann Lee Miller, for her mother, Nancy Wharton Lee (Mrs. Needham Lee) and was worn by her in the early sixties.”

Other Lee family antiquities are displayed nearby. A Black Glass pickle dish – circa 1875, appears clear on viewing—the color appears when a light is shown through it.

This was a prized possession of Mary “Mamie” Lee Gillam, daughter of H.R. Lee.

A 19th-Century Milk Glass Vase and Vanity Tray that belonged to Pearl Lee, granddaughter of Henry R. Lee, are also in the showcase.

Two large albums of family photos were recently given to the museum by Dawn Nunnally Cole. The story-telling and character quality of these leads me to believe that someone in her family was a dedicated photographer.

Both albums have black and white captures of structures in Helena not previously documented in photos.

“For example,” Penhale said, “the old County Garage that was next door to the Nunnally home, and the Johnson home that stood across the street from the Nunnally home where the Post Office is now.”

Penhale has framed and displayed an enlargement of Dawn’s father, Luther Nunnally Jr., and his sister Eunice Nunnally taken during the winter with snow on the ground. It shows the homes on Main Street that were destroyed in the 1933 tornado and is significant because we have no other photos of these structures.