C Archives - Multiple Exposure

Carleton D. Stanley Travel Slide Collection

C1:204
1950s–1977, bulk 1960s

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

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.

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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Collection of Colonial Governor Portraits by William Ludwell Sheppard (1833–1912)

Paintings Collection

State Art Collection
1877
3 paintings. Oil on canvas. Dimensions: De La Warr – canvas 29 ¼ x 25 ½ in.; frame 36 x 32 in. Dunmore – canvas 29 ¼ x 25 ½ in; frame: 36 x 32 in. Effingham – canvas 30 x 24 7/8 in.; frame 39 ½ x 34 ½ in.

On June 2, 1877, the Daily Dispatch reported that “W.L. Sheppard, Esq., artist of this city, will sail from New York for Europe on the 12th, and will be absent in France one or two years.” It was not unusual for 19th-century American artists to take extended tours through Europe to study with masters or visit museums to refine their craft. However, Sheppard, a Richmonder perhaps best known for his Civil War sketches and depictions of postwar southern life, had an additional reason for his trip. The Commonwealth of Virginia had commissioned him to paint portraits of three of Virginia’s colonial governors: Thomas West, third baron De La Warr; Francis Howard, fifth baron Howard of Effingham; and John Murray, fourth earl of Dunmore.

William Ludwell Sheppard (1833–1912) started as a clerk in a Richmond merchant firm, but quickly realized that his true interest and talent lay in art. While he was initially a self-taught painter, he went to New York in the 1850s to work and study. On his first trip to Europe, in 1860, he visited museums … 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.

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

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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Wolf Pitt Copper Mine Photograph Album

Photograph Collection

C1: 133
1899–1901
1 album, 10 x 7 inches; 43 images

This album bears a handwritten inscription by Charles T. Cobb, dated March 1935: “The photographs in this album are of my deceased father and his Wolf Pitt Copper Mines, which he once owned and operated at Virgilina, Virginia, in the early 1900s, during the time we lived in the South. He sold the mine holdings in 1907 to the owners of the Blue Wing Copper Mines Co. for a very large amount.”

In addition to its photo-documentation of Virginia copper-mining practices of the turn of the century, this album contains rare visual information about Virgilina itself in its “boom days”—a busy little town of mining and moonshining, muddy roads and newly built hotels, houses and storefronts in a rugged landscape stripped of trees. Included are photos of the Jones Distillery, where corn whisky was manufactured (“by U.S. permit,” the handwritten caption assures us), local mining bosses William Battershill and George B. Cobb, and even the Hungarian “Count Carachristy” [sic], an expert in coal distillation.

Provenance:
Donation, 1997

C1:133 Wolf Pitt Copper Mine Photograph Album

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C

Carleton D. Stanley Travel Slide Collection

Paris

Grand Canyon

Collection of Colonial Governor Portraits by William Ludwell Sheppard (1833–1912)

Jeanne Hunton Witt Cabell Family Scrapbooks

C1:199

Leveque Photograph Collection of Virginia Courthouses

C1:178 Alleghany County Courthouse

Wolf Pitt Copper Mine Photograph Album

C1:133 Wolf Pitt Copper Mine Photograph Album

C1:133 Wolf Pitt Copper Mine Photograph Album