Tag: Marion Post Wolcott

Vintage landscape: gourds and cans

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Gourd and Can birdhouses, via Library of Congress“Typical birdhouses, gourds and tin cans in Coffee County, Alabama,” April 1939, by Marion Post Wolcott, via Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division.

Hanging clusters of gourd birdhouses for the purpose of attracting purple martins is an Alabama folk tradition, according to the blog Appalachian History.

Choctaw and Chickasaw gardeners began the practice.  The purple* martins would eat damaging insects and mosquitoes and drive away crows and blackbirds from the corn.  

Farmers of European and African origins later adopted the custom, particularly as the birds also protect chickens by scaring away hawks.

The gourds should be hung in groups of 10 or more, according to the National Wildlife Federation’s blog.  They should also swing from crossbars and wires on poles at least two-stories high.

*They are actually dark blue and black, or pale grey.

Vintage landscape: sunflowers

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Miss. house surrounded by sunflowers, via LoC“An old house almost hidden by sunflowers, Rodney, Mississippi,” July 1940, by Marion Post Wolcott on Kodachrome color film, via Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division on flickr.

I like the little birdhouse on the very tall pole.

Rodney was once a prosperous port on the banks of the Mississippi — until a large sand bar appeared  in the 1870s and changed the course of the river. The city was left two miles from the water.

By 1933, there were fewer than 100 people living there.  Today, it is considered a ghost town.

The Sunday porch: Capels, West Virginia

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The Sunday porch/enclos*ure: miner's house in Capels, W.V.,1938, by Marion Post Wolcott, via Library of Congress“Plants and flowers in oil cans on back porch of [coal] miner’s house. Capels, West Virginia,” September 1938, by Marion Post Wolcott, via Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division.*

Capels is an unincorporated community located in McDowell County, the southernmost county in West Virginia.

The homes shown here were “coal camp” houses, owned by Central Pocahontas Coal Co.

The Sunday porch/enclos*ure: detail, miner's house in Capels, W.V.,1938, by Marion Post Wolcott, via Library of CongressAbove, detail from previous photo:  perhaps the beginning of a winter garden on a windowsill.

Wolcott took a large series of photos of coal miners and their families in West Virginia.  I think the house on the right below may be the same as the one above.

The Sunday porch/enclos*ure: miner's house in Capels, W.V.,1938, by Marion Post Wolcott, via Library of Congress“Wives of coal miners talking over the fence.”

“The women in this photo [above] are dressed up, perhaps for their walk to the company store and back,” according to an online photo exhibit about West Virginia coal miners. “Miners’ wives often led difficult lives and relied on each other for support.”

The Sunday porch/enclos*ure: miner's house in Capels, W.V.,1938, by Marion Post Wolcott, via Library of Congress“Better homes in coal mining town.”

The Sunday porch/enclos*ure: detail, miner's house in Capels, W.V.,1938, by Marion Post Wolcott, via Library of CongressAbove, detail from previous photo: impressive vines on this porch.  Note the house beyond and how it is built out from the hillside.

The Sunday porch/enclos*ure: miner's house in Capels, W.V.,1938, by Marion Post Wolcott, via Library of Congress“Home of Negro families.”  I count about 70 steps.

The Sunday porch/enclos*ure: detail, miner's house in Capels, W.V.,1938, by Marion Post Wolcott, via Library of CongressAbove, detail from previous photo: African-Americans moved to the county to work in the mines, as the coal industry grew at the turn of the 20th. century.**

Immigrants also came from Greece, Italy, Poland, Russia, and Hungary.

McDowell County once set records for coal production in the state and country, but since the decline of the industry in the 1980s, it has lost thousands of jobs and has the highest poverty rate in the state.  The mine in Capels (by then owned by Semet-Solvay) closed in the 1980s.

Photos of Capels in 2005 are here. There are photos of McDowell County in 2012 here (and more vintage pictures here).

A number of Wolcott’s West Virginia photographs can be found in the book  New Deal Photographs of West Virginia, 1934-1943.

*All photos here were taken in Capels, September 1938, by Marion Post Wolcott, via Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division.  The captions in quotation marks are from the Library’s online catalogue and were probably written by Wolcott.

** “McDowell, which had no slave population and no free blacks after emancipation, became the state’s center of African-American population in the industrial era,” according to The West Virginia Encyclopedia. “McDowell County blacks established a power base within the state and local Republican Party. . . . A fourth of the population was black in 1950.”

Happy Fourth of July

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1939 Fourth of July on St. Helena Island, S.C., by Marion Post Wolcott, Library of CongressI found these early color slides of a 1939 community Fourth of July picnic on St. Helena Island, South Carolina, by Marion Post Wolcott.*

1939 Fourth of July on St. Helena Island, S.C., by Marion Post Wolcott, Library of CongressThey’re rather shadowy, but still lovely — like old oil paintings.

1939 Fourth of July on St. Helena Island, S.C., by Marion Post Wolcott, Library of CongressTo scroll through larger pictures, click on ‘Continue reading’ below and then on any thumbnail in the gallery. I lightened the images here a little, but those in the gallery are the original versions.

1939 Fourth of July on St. Helena Island, S.C., by Marion Post Wolcott, Library of CongressSt. Helena Island is one of the Sea Islands and a center of African-American Gullah culture and language.

1939 Fourth of July on St. Helena Island, S.C., by Marion Post Wolcott, Library of CongressHere in Rwanda, the American Embassy held its Independence Day reception last night. This is because the 4th is Rwandan Liberation Day — when Kigali was liberated in 1994, and the genocide was effectively ended. July 1 is Rwanda’s Independence Day, celebrating the end of Belgian colonialism in 1962.

1939 Fourth of July on St. Helena Island, S.C., by Marion Post Wolcott, Library of Congress

*via Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division

Continue reading “Happy Fourth of July” →

Vintage landscape: supper in the grove

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“Table in picnic grove set for St. Thomas church supper near Bardstown, Kentucky,” August 1940, by Marion Post Wolcott via the Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division.