“Caladium. Back of store.” Probably Friars Point, Mississippi, ca. 1920, by Milton McFarland Painter Sr., via Mississippi Department of Archives and History Commons on flickr (cropped slightly by me).
Milton McFarland Painter Sr. was a self-taught photographer from Coahoma County, Mississippi. He took at least 1,073 photos of his community and his vacation travels from about 1912 to the 1920s.
Myrtle Bank terrace, Natchez, Mississippi, ca. 1900, from the Stewart Photograph Collection,* via Mississippi Department of Archives and History Commons on flickr (both photos).
The two houses shown here are about two blocks from each other, both on N. Pearl Street.
The neighborhood evidently had good water pressure. Both houses still stand.
In ancient Greece, the first hoses (for fire fighting) were made from ox intestines. In the late 17th century, Jan van der Heiden and his son sewed leather into long tubes for Amsterdam’s fire department. Then, in 1821 Boston, James Boyd invented a rubber-lined, cotton-webbed hose. By the 1870s, the first rubber and cotton fiber hoses for gardeners appeared on the market.
In 1895, a garden hose was the subject of what is believed to be the first comedy film, L’Arroseur Arrosé, by Louis Lumière. You can see it here.
*By brothers Robert Livingston Stewart and William Percy Stewart of Natchez, Mississippi, from ca. 1890 to ca. 1905.
Homes on North Commerce Street, Natchez, Mississippi, ca. 1900, by Robert Livingston or William Percy Stewart, via Mississippi Department of Archives and History.
The Stewart brothers were local amateur photographers. A search on Google Maps shows that these houses still stand, but without the elaborately turned post columns of the house on the right.
Hotel de Montross (or Montross Hotel), Biloxi, Mississippi, ca. 1900, via Cooper Postcard Collection, Mississippi Department of Archives and History Commons on flickr.
Because of its waterfront location, Beloxi has been a summer resort town since the first half of the 1800s. The Hotel de Montross — facing the Mississippi Sound — was one of its oldest hotels. Today, it is long gone, with a Hard Rock Hotel and Casino located on approximately the same spot.
(There’s another picture of the hotel’s grounds here.)
Mary Heldon, between 1900 and 1920, Friars Point, Mississippi, by Milton McFarland Painter, Sr., via Mississippi Department of Archives and History.* Mary was also pictured in this garden photo by Painter.
I had not thought of violets late,
The wild, shy kind that spring beneath your feet
In wistful April days. . .— Alice Moore Dunbar-Nelson, from “Sonnet“
*Photo cropped slightly by me.
enclos*ure 