The Sunday porch: Louisburg, North Carolina


“A Peggy Wright Farm,” Louisburg, North Carolina, 1938, by Frances Benjamin Johnston, via Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division.

Detail of above photo.

All three Johnston photos of this house are captioned “A Peggy Wright Farm,” so Peggy may have been a woman who owned several properties. (The other two pictures are here and here.)

The Library’s online catalogue notes say that the building dates from 1780 and that this is the place “where Peggy was killed by lightning.”

Point Pleasant, W.Va.

“A [river] pilot’s wheel stuck in the backyard of a retired pilot’s home,” Point Pleasant, West Virginia, May 1943, by Arthur S. Siegelvia Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division.

Point Pleasant lies at the confluence of the Ohio and Kanawha Rivers. Siegel was working along the rivers on assignment for the U.S. Office of War Information. He photographed the U.S. Coast Guard patrol, steam and tow boats, and industrial plants, particularly the Marietta Manufacturing Company, which was constructing LT boats for the army.

The Sunday porch: East Hampton, N.Y.

Home of E.E. McCall, East Hampton, New York, between ca. 1910 and ca. 1915, by Bain News Service, via Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division.

The house was a split level. You can see the two-story side here.

Edward Everett McCall was a Justice of the Supreme Court of New York. He also ran unsuccessfully for mayor of New York City as the Tammany candidate. He died in 1924, and his seaside house burned down three years later.

The winter garden: flower show

flower-show-bain-collect-library-of-congress
Flower Show, location unknown, between ca. 1915 and ca. 1920, Bain News Servicevia Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division.

Click on the image to enlarge it.

Life in gardens: Knoxville, Tennessee

dodson-front-yard-knoxville-tn-1899-library-of-congress“Home of C.C. Dodson, Knoxville,” Tennessee, ca. 1899, via African American Photographs Assembled for 1900 Paris Exposition collection, Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division.

Dodson was a jeweler who owned a shop on West Vine Avenue in 1899. ‘Exuberant’ is the word I would use for his family’s front yard.

The photos collected by W.E.B. Du Bois for the 1900 Paris international exhibition particularly featured middle-class African Americans and their homes and institutions. “The photographs of affluent young African American men and women challenged the scientific ‘evidence’ and popular racist caricatures of the day that ridiculed and sought to diminish African American social and economic success,” according to the Library of Congress’s online catalogue.

In 2003, the Library of Congress published a book of 150 of the images, entitled A Small Nation of People.  You can listen to a good NPR interview with its co-author, historian Deborah Willis, here.