You still have time to see a very special dress exhibited at the Melrose mansion. Natchez National Historical Park offers visitors a brief window of opportunity each year to see an antebellum Parisian silk gown adorned with delicate pink ribbons and hand-appliquéd lace.

Mary Elizabeth, the daughter of John and Mary Louisa McMurran, was a young lady of the planter class in 1848 when her family moved into their newly constructed Melrose home located in what was then the outskirts of Natchez. Eight years later, on Jan. 24, 1856, Mary Elizabeth married Farar B. Conner, a neighbor from Linden, in the Melrose drawing room. Tradition holds that the beautiful pink and ivory gown now on exhibit was part of Mary Elizabeth’s wedding trousseau, the clothing and linens a bride assembles for her marriage.

As the 150-plus-year-old silk dress is quite fragile, the park displays it for only a few weeks out of the year during the Natchez Spring Pilgrimage. But this gown has a long history associated with Spring Pilgrimage, and a history appropriate to be told in March, Women’s History Month. Seventy years ago, Natchez ladies would delve into their family attics for authentic antebellum clothing to wear while receiving in the homes. During early Pilgrimages, Mary Elizabeth’s great-niece, Mrs. Eliza Conner Martin, wore this exquisite gown to greet visitors at her home, Clovernook.

Eventually the dress came into the posession of local preservationists the late Dr. Thomas Gandy and his wife Joan. They loaned the dress to the Mississippi Department of Archives and History in Jackson for an exhibit about the Natchez Spring Pilgrimage and eventually donated the dress to the National Park Service after Melrose became the first unit of Natchez National Historical Park. The dress underwent extensive conservation at the National Park Service conservation laboratories in West Virgina.

For most of the year, the dress is stored in acid-free materials in a secure and climate-controlled museum storage facility. Fragile silk and other textiles should not be exposed to strong light or rapid changes in temperature and humidity, and should be protected from insects and rodents. Most of us have something handed down from generation to generation; if you have questions about the care and storage of your own family heirlooms, please do not hesitate to contact the curatorial staff at Natchez National Historical Park.

The dress will remain on display in Mary Elizabeth’s upstairs bedroom at Melrose until April 11. Guided tours of Melrose are offered on the hour daily from 10 a.m. until 4 p.m. Regular tour prices apply. For more information please call Melrose at 601-446-5790. An exhibit with photos of the dress is displayed at the Natchez Visitor Reception Center and may be viewed at no cost daily from 9 a.m. to 4:30 a.m. and Sundays from 9 a.m. to 3:30 p.m. For more information about the park you may visit the Web site at www.nps.gov/natc.

Cheryl Munyer is the curator of the Natchez National Historical Park.