Rediscovering an American Community of Color

William Bullard, Portrait of the Thomas A. and Margaret Dillon Family, about 1903, courtesy of Frank Morrill, Clark University and the Worcester Art Museum

A little over a hundred years ago, a white photographer named William Bullard took hundreds of pictures of people in central Massachusetts. Among these were more than 230 portraits of people of color who lived within easy walking distance of my home. I had no idea this community existed until early 2018, when I saw Rediscovering an American Community of Color: The Photographs of William Bullard at the Worcester Art Museum.

The Beaver Brook neighborhood became a new home when the Ku Klux Klan and white backlash, combined with a national depression and the end of Reconstruction, destroyed the lives that former enslaved people had been making for themselves in the South. They came north to start again, and some came to Worcester, “a city with a deep abolitionist tradition and influential white residents sympathetic to their plight.”*

William Bullard, William Bullard’s Camera Reflected in a Mirror, about 1911 (detail), courtesy of Frank Morrill, Clark University and the Worcester Art Museum

The collection’s existence is a rare and wonderful confluence of circumstances. Somehow, the glass negatives survived for over a century and ended in the hands of Frank J. Morrill, a retired history teacher and collector, who was also a devoted Worcester historian. Somehow, the photographer’s logbook also survived, and stayed with the photographs. Because of this, it became possible to identify the people in the photographs. This in turn made it possible for the Clark University students who researched the photographs to contact many of photo subjects’ descendants, one of whom I met during one of my visits to the exhibition.

A little more about the photos, from the website gallery. Image at top: “Virginia-born coachman Thomas A. Dillon and his wife, Margaret, a domestic servant and native of Newton, Massachusetts, pose in the parlor of their home at 38 Tufts Street with children Thomas, Margaret, and Mary. A poster on the wall commemorates President Theodore Roosevelt’s visit to the Worcester Agricultural Fair in 1902.” (The website gallery of images includes another photograph of Mr. Dillon.) Image at bottom: “James J. Johnson, of Nipmuc, Narragansett, and African American descent, and Jennie Bradley Johnson, a migrant from Charleston, South Carolina, pose with their daughters Jennie and May. James worked as a coachman and belonged to the King David Masonic Lodge. He died soon after this portrait was taken. Jennie later worked as a laundress.”

William Bullard, Portrait of James J. and Jennie Bradley Johnson Family, 1900, courtesy of Frank Morrill, Clark University and the Worcester Art Museum

But in this case it’s probably best to let the pictures do the talking, and there are a great many to study. Most appear on the Bullard website, where you’ll find a gallery of the photos, a page about the collection and the photographer, a map of the neighborhood in 1911, essays connected to the images, and a chance to add information and/or comment on individual photos.

This Maureen Taylor podcast is loaded with fascinating insights into the photographs’ history, the photographer, the collector, the researchers, the project, and more. This article offers a sampling of large scale photographs from the collection. And here are scenes from the 2018 exhibition at the Worcester Art Museum.

**quote from the beautiful exhibition catalog

A remnant of Northumberland House

The hero of Silk is for Seduction requiring a domicile in Town, I looked around early 19th century London for a little something suitable for a duke.  I'd already moved characters from previous books into St. James's Square, so that was getting crowded.  Where, then?  Berkeley Square?  Nope.  I'd already stuck a family there.  Somewhere overlooking one of the parks? Nice, but none of the houses seemed to suit my hero

Eventually, my real estate search led me to the Strand, a much less fashionable neighborhood.  Once upon a time, (the time of Susan's historical novels, for instance) all the great noble palaces lined the Strand.  By 1835, the area had gone into trade.  But Northumberland House, home of the Duke of Northumberland, remained. 

So I stole—borrowed it, called it Clevedon House, made some architectural and decorative adjustments, and gave it to my hero.

Over at Two Nerdy History Girls, you'll find a post with lots of links to historical information about this fascinating holdover.  It occupies several pages in Christopher Simon Sykes's wonderful Private Palaces:  Life in the Great London Houses.  In London today all that remains is the street named after it, Northumberland Avenue, a doorway carefully preserved in the Victoria and Albert Museum, and a miniature of the room the doorway belonged to, the Glass Drawing Room. 

Photos courtesy me.

Spring portraits

One never knows how or when inspiration will strike, but visiting museums usually brings on some kind of creative fit.  Here are a few that promise a visual feast, and perhaps inspiration for a character or two:

If you happen to be in Western Massachusetts this month, you may want to stop by one of my favorite art museums, the Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute, in Williamstown.

It’s a beautiful museum in a beautiful setting, whose permanent collection I never get tired of looking at.  But their exhibitions are quite fine, too.  Until 27 March, they’re showing Eye to Eye: European Portraits 1450-1850.  You can read a review in the Wall Street Journal.

A little further east, the Worcester Art Museum has organized an exhibition of portrait miniatures. 

Dandies runs through May 2011.  Then it’s on to the women—French women, to be exact. 

Leisure, Pleasure, and the Birth of the Modern French Woman runs 14 May-11 September.

Illustration: Portrait miniature of Lt-Col. Stephen Peacocke painted by George Chinnery around late 1779/1800, courtesy Wikimedia Commons.