This week’s #FridayFind is… a BOO-tiful wedding?

Written By Dmitri Schmidt

For Neil Parker and Mabel Beakley October 31st, 1927 wasn’t just a spooky holiday, but a romantic one too!

According to the Smithsonian Magazine, Halloween is a tradition tracing its lineage back thousands to years to northwestern Europe, but it wasn’t brought to the US until the 18th and 19th centuries with the arrival of Irish and Scottish immigrants. While our modern idea of Halloween and trick-or-treating didn’t become popular until the 1950s, the holiday was already in full swing by the late 1920s when the Parker couple married.

Their marriage record can’t tell us anything about whether or not they spent their wedding night being pranked by their teenage neighbors, but it’s certainly not out of the realm of possibility!

Happy early Halloween everyone, whether October 31st is just a spooky holiday for you or a romantic one too! Don’t forget to share your thoughts and send an email to emma@backlog-archivists.com!

Dmitri Schmidt

Dmitri plays a pivotal role in coordinating Backlog’s outreach efforts. They curate our weekly #FridayFinds and #ArchivalTips social media posts, shedding light on items discovered in our genealogy work and providing tips and tricks to approaching problems in the archives.

Dmitri holds a Bachelor of Arts in Anthropology and German Studies from Saint Louis University. During their university years, they dedicated over 1000 hours to interning and volunteering at local St. Louis institutions, including the St. Louis Science Center and the St. Louis University Museum of Art. As the Collections Intern at the Science Center, Dmitri assisted in developing and installing the "Into the Vault" exhibit.

Before joining Backlog, Dmitri served as a Fulbright Grantee, teaching English as a second language in former East Germany. From guiding 11th graders in analyzing pop albums as poetry to discussing the significance of the civil rights movement with 8th graders, they covered a broad spectrum of subjects. While reveling in connecting with students and injecting fun into grammar lessons, Dmitri's deep passion for all things archival eventually drew them back home.

Today, Dmitri works as a Herbarium Assistant at the Missouri Botanical Garden, helping digitize the millions of preserved plant specimens. After being scanned and transcribed, these images aid scholars around the globe in furthering botanical research. Dmitri also serves as the archivist for the Kirkwood Historical Society. They are currently overseeing the “Journeys into Kirkwood’s History” project, which aims to digitize documents related to Kirkwood’s early Black settlements.

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