Cora Owens Hume (1848-1939)

Cora Owens Hume (1848-1939) dressed in deep mourning following the death of her second husband in 1881. The tightly cinched waist, large bustle, and tablier, or apron style, overskirt on her dress are unique to the fashions of the 1880s. Cora was from a pro-Confederate, slave-owning family that moved from Columbus, Kentucky, to Louisville after the Civil War began. Cora married her first husband Edward J. Pope, an ex-Confederate, in 1869. Their infant son died later that year and Edward succumbed to tuberculosis in 1871. Cora was a widow at the age of 23. She married her second husband, William Garvin Hume (b. 1845), in 1874. They had three children between the ages of one and six when William died from tuberculosis in 1881, at the age of 35.

The Filson Historical Society Photograph Collection

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