Photograph Collection

Pioneer America Society Images Collection

Photograph Collection, Print Collection

C1: 255
1938–1984 (bulk 1968–1982)
2,271 prints and negatives, 306 35mm slides, 2 cassette tapes

The Pioneer America Society was a nonprofit organization that sought to document, preserve and analyze rural America’s cultural landscape. It was founded by Henry H. Douglas (1903–1987) in 1967. The postwar period contained some of the first large-scale endeavors to protect historic locations and artifacts from industrialization. In a 1972 Pioneer America newsletter article, organization members articulated that people would only find interest in the preservation of history after “information about these structures, their geographic surroundings, and the way of life they supported becomes available.” The Society used photographs, written documents and internal newsletters to accumulate educational information on the history of America.

C1:255 Pioneer America Society Images Collection

The Pioneer America Society Images Collection contains the prints, negatives, slides and cassettes that were previously part of the Pioneer America Society Records Collection (Accession 40235). The records collection, located in the Archives, contains information in the form of brochures, postcards, maps, newspapers and more.

Within the Pioneer America Society Images Collection, prints, negatives and slides are organized by location. The collection primarily focuses on farm buildings and the exteriors of homes. Other items focus on schools, churches, railroad stations and streets. The collection also holds two cassette tapes covering steam train journeys in 1971 and 1973. The photos of homes present how the architectural designs of each era were interpreted by everyday people, and those of … Read the rest

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Carleton D. Stanley Travel Slide Collection

Photograph Collection

C1:204
1950s–1977, bulk 1960s

4,752 35mm slides, 3 5″ x 7″ prints, 4 travel notebooks

Paris

The Carleton D. Stanley Travel Slide Collection was found in a dumpster at a house being renovated in Chester, Virginia, by a man named Waverly Bailey. He donated the collection to us to preserve. The majority of the slides feature sites from Stanley’s international travels across Europe, North America, and Asia, but some feature family, homes, flowers, and canned food.

Grand Canyon

His trips were arranged by Thru the Lens Tours, Inc., of Hollywood, California. According to the July 1981 issue of Popular Photography, “Thru the Lens Tours…has been sponsoring instructional photographic adventures to Latin America, Europe, Africa, Asia, the South Pacific, and the Orient” since 1952 (p. 42). Based on the number of Thru the Lens tours Stanley attended, we can assume that photography was an important hobby to him. We also know Stanley gave presentations about his travels, because a flyer in one of the boxes advertises his slides from Mexico. The notebooks document the places he photographed and sometimes the camera settings he used. The collection contains a handful of photographs of Stanley himself, who appears to be in his fifties or sixties. He often appears with a woman featured throughout the slides who we assume is his wife.

From the slide box labeled “Our Homes” taken in 1973, we know that Carleton D. Stanley … Read the rest

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The Nichols Collection of Virginia Courthouses

Photograph Collection

C1:179
1965-1970
643 35mm slides, 45 postcards, 98 prints, assorted booklets/pamphlets/travel brochures/maps, 1 travel notebook

Southampton County Courthouse

27 March 1968

Charlotte Shaver Nichols (1911-1999) of Arlington and her assistant Pansy Wiltshire (1905-1998) set out to photograph all 96 Virginia courthouses between 1966 and 1970 in anticipation of publishing a book. According to a write up in the Byron Weston Record, Vol. 45, No. 3, the original collection contained 360 slides of courthouses.

Charlotte, or Lottie as she was known to her family, was born in Prince William in 1911 and lived in Fauquier as a child. She graduated from Oakton High in Fairfax and then lived in Alexandria as a young woman. She married a physician, Harold Nichols, and they lived in an apartment building in south Arlington overlooking Four Mile Run, just north of the City of Alexandria.

Pansy Wiltshire was a friend of Charlotte’s who lived in Arlington and worked for the federal government at the Federal Communications Commission. She accompanied Charlotte on many of the courthouse trips and can be seen in a few candid shots, along with Ms. Nichols, in the courthouse series.

After Lottie died in 1999, one of her sisters, Dorothy Shaver Harrington Yancey, received her courthouse project collection, as well as her slides. Dorothy willed the collection to the Virginia Bar Association where they declined the gift and returned part of the collection to the estate, which … Read the rest

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Jeanne Hunton Witt Cabell Family Scrapbooks

Ephemera Collection, Photograph Collection

C1: 199
c. 1920s–1950s
Four scrapbooks containing an assortment of photographs, letters, ephemera, telegrams, enclosure cards, stationary, and newspaper clippings.

The Cabell Family Scrapbook Collection was organized and arranged primarily by Jeanne Hunton Witt Cabell. The four scrapbooks detail Cabell’s debutante ball, marriage to lawyer Robert Gamble Cabell, hobbies, and the early education of her son, John C. Cabell.

C1:199

A graduate of Episcopal High School, Jeanne Hunton Witt Cabell (1907–1976) was deeply involved in Richmond’s arts and culture scene as society editor of the Richmond Times-Dispatch in the late 1920s. Cabell was the daughter of Judge Samuel Brown Witt, of Richmond’s Hustings Court, and Mariana Foster Witt. Her earliest items include clippings from the society pages of the Times-Dispatch, dance cards, telegrams and written correspondence, and enclosure cards from floral arrangements.

The later portions of the collection focus on Cabell’s sculpting hobby and interest in the work of Baroness Suzanne Silvercruys, a prominent sculptor and political activist. Clippings from her husband’s roles as president of the Country Club of Virginia and president of the Board of Collegiate School are included. Cabell also created a scrapbook for her son, John C. Cabell, which includes his birth, first drawings, and items from the early years of his education at St. Christopher’s School. A fourth scrapbook, which appears to have been created by John C. Cabell himself, includes football and baseball ephemera from the 1954–1955 academic year.… Read the rest

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Leveque Photograph Collection of Virginia Courthouses

Photograph Collection

 C1:178
1962–1980s, bulk 1960–1970
337 35mm slides, 42 x 2 slides, and 61 prints

C1:178 Alleghany County Courthouse

In 1962, Rhode Island native Roland Leveque moved to Virginia and began photographing the courthouses of Virginia. Within the same year, Roland Leveque passed away and his son, George Philip Leveque, decided to carry on the project. Over a period of almost thirty years, George Leveque photographed every courthouse in Virginia. This collection has all but six of his images. He also photographed historic sites, locomotives, and ships.

George Leveque (1929 – 2012) worked as a budget analyst for the City of Richmond and later for the Commonwealth of Virginia. He took up photography as a hobby and set out to finish the project his father started. His wife described Leveque as a “collector of all things,” and said that he particularly loved history. This was a passion project for Leveque, and he never intended to display the images or lecture. The courthouse images feature the facades and in some instances the sides of the buildings. The historic sites he photographed included places like Monticello and Colonial Williamsburg.

Arrangement and access:
The slides are arranged alphabetically in slide boxes. The subjects are also in slide boxes separated by topic. 131 slides of courthouses, 120 slides of historic sites, 20 slides of locomotives, 43 slides of ships, 27 unidentified slides, and 61 photographs of historic sites. Missing counties: … Read the rest

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