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The Admiral William Mead photograph album contains approximately 250 photographs related to the family and career of U.S. Navy Rear Admiral William Whitman Mead.

The Admiral William Mead photograph album contains approximately 250 photographs related to the family and career of U.S. Navy Rear Admiral William Whitman Mead.

The album (35.5 x 29 cm) has pebbled covers with partial leather bindings and "Photographs" stamped on the front cover and contains around 250 photographs of various sizes and formats, including collodion, gelatin silver, platinum, silver platinum and albumen prints, cyanotypes, and snapshots. The spine and edges show considerable wear. The photographs chronicle three periods in Admiral Mead's naval career: his time as lighthouse inspector in the Great Lakes, and his assignments as commandant of the Newport, Rhode Island naval base and Portsmouth Naval Shipyard in Kittery, Maine. Additionally, there is at least one photograph towards the front of the album from the Lomaland School in San Diego as well as a series of others mostly located towards the back of the album that were taken in an unidentified tropical location (possibly Florida).

Some of the album’s captions, primarily in beginning and the lighthouse section, appear to have been first added when it was originally assembled and many are partially erased. The majority of captions, however, were contributed at a later date by Admiral Mead’s niece, Annie Adelia Mead Ferguson. Annie appears to have come into possession of the album at some point and added her own annotations identifying people and places she recognized in the photographs. She also added a handwritten note to the inside of the album’s front cover in 1970 indicating that the album had once “belonged to William Whitman Mead” before explaining that she captioned certain images herself and speculating on which of her children might want to inherit the album. It is unclear who originally took many of the photographs, though there are indications that Annie's mother Unadilla Gazlay Mead may have contributed some material. One photograph on pg. 32 shows Unadilla and her husband Omar C. Mead, Admiral Mead’s brother, posing together on a dock in either Portsmouth or Newport while the former can be seen holding a camera in her hands, while on pg. 44 there is a self-portrait taken in a mirror of a woman with a camera that appears to be Unadilla.

The album provides extensive documentation of lighthouses along the shores of Lakes Superior and Huron in the mid-1890s, as well as views from Great Lakes locations such as Duluth, Copper Harbor, and the locks at Sault Ste. Marie. Specific lighthouses represented include Seul Choix Light, Old Mackinac Point Lighthouse, Sand Island Lighthouse, Huron Island Lighthouse, Isle Royale Light, an abandoned lighthouse on Isle Royale, a pair of unidentified lighthouses possibly located in the Keweenaw Peninsula, Windmill Point, a lighthouse in St. Clair Flats, Gull Rock, Stannard’s Rock, Rock Harbor Light, and other unidentified structures. Images related to Admiral Mead’s time at the Newport naval base include portraits of Mead both in and out of uniform, portraits of family members such as Julia Mead, a collotype postcard of Trinity Church, and various buildings and street scenes. Images related to Admiral Mead’s time at Portsmouth Naval Shipyard include views of the Commandant’s house, “The Admiral’s Yacht,” and portraits of various individuals including John W. Yerkes, Elizabeth O. Yerkes, Amelia R. Yerkes, Annie Meade Matthews, Omar C. Mead, and Annie Adelia Meade as a young child. Of particular interest are a number of candid shots of locations and participants in the Portsmouth peace talks that ended the Russo-Japanese War in 1905 (including several photographs of three unidentified Japanese men described as “servants” in one caption) that are present on pgs. 30, 36, 37, and 39. While most of the ships that appear in the album are unidentified, identified vessels include the passenger steamer North Land on pg. 16 and the lighthouse tender Marigold on pg. 23. Other individuals identified by caption include Robert A. Watts (Admiral Mead’s brother-in-law) and Margaret A. Watts (Admiral Mead’s mother-in-law). Also present are three outdoor portraits of unidentified African American men and women on pg. 21 captioned “Those good ole’ days!!” and “Same good ole days!” as well as a cyanotype of an unidentified African American girl on pg. 48.

The Parrish family photograph album contains 110 photographs assembled by the Parrish family of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, including images of family and friends, political figures, celebrities, and popular illustrations as well as photographs related to Union efforts to educate freed slaves during the Civil War in the Port Royal Experiment.

The album (15.5 x 24 cm) has embossed brown leather covers and two metal clasps. 63 loose photographs are stored in Mylar sleeves and many appear to have been separated from the album over time. In some cases, it is possible to match loose images with a specific page slot through pairing inscriptions on the photograph with annotations present in the album. However, many loose images do not contain any identifying information, so it is unclear where some may have been located within the album or if they were ever associated with the album in the first place. It is possible that a small portion of the loose images were never originally included in the album since there are more photographs present in the collection than there are available photo slots in the album. At least two portraits from the 1890s do not appear to have belonged to the original family collection.

Compilation of the album may have first begun in the 1860s, but it was most likely completed during in the 1870s with photographs that the Parrish family had acquired over time. Sarah H. Parrish, née Wilson (1836-1892), the wife of Joseph Parrish’s grandson John Cox Parrish (1836-1921), may have been one of the primary creators of the album. She and John had a daughter named Caroline L. Parrish (1863-1915), who may be the “Carrie” whose name is written on the back of some of the photographs. Overall, there appear to be three different styles of handwriting present in the album. Captions for several of the album’s portraits were made in pencil in a flowing cursive while other names appear in a more juvenile-looking cursive hand, and a distinctive third hand also appears sporadically. The two cursive hands may well have been Sarah’s and Carrie’s as mother and daughter worked on the album together in the mid to late-1870s, with an occasional contribution (the third hand) possibly made by one of Carrie’s three younger brothers. One other detail supports this hypothesis: a portrait labelled “Fred” with “Mrs. Parrish, with love of Fred” inscribed on the verso. The individual photographed here was most likely Sarah’s cousin, Frederick Cleveland Homes (1844-1915). Additionally, the portrait on the page next to Fred’s portrait is of a young child identified as “Charlie Homes,” and it is likely that this is Fred’s son Charles Ives Homes (1872-1939).

Parrish family members are well represented in this album, while other unidentified family members may also be portrayed in some of the loose photographs without captions. Likely family friends or acquaintances of the Parrishes whose portraits are present include George and Catherine Truman, James and Lucretia Mott, the Rev. Richard Newton, and Phillip Brooks, all of whom were active in the same abolitionist organizations as the Parrishes. The album also contains many images of admired religious, political, and cultural figures, including Quaker heroes George Fox and Elizabeth Fry; Civil War leaders Abraham Lincoln and Ulysses Grant; George and Martha Washington; social reformers Dorothea Dix and Anna E. Dickinson; actor Edwin Booth; and Queen Victoria and Prince Albert. A number of these images are photographic reproductions of painted, engraved, or lithographic portraits. Also present are four hand-colored photographs of Dutch women in traditional dress as well as photographic reproductions of popular sentimental genre scenes such as “The Unconvanience of Single Life.”

Of particular note are a series of photographs related to the Port Royal Experiment, an ambitious effort to provide education for freed slaves following the capture of islands off the coast of South Carolina by Union troops in 1861. Relief committees in the North raised money and sent volunteers to set up schools and other institutions. Among the most successful was the Penn School, established by Laura Matilda Towne with support from the Philadelphia Freedmen’s organization in which the Parrish family was actively involved. People and places are identified with ink captions on the photographs themselves in a hand that differs from other inscriptions in the album. Towne may possibly have compiled these images herself and sent them to supporters back home. This series of photographs includes seven images of Beaufort, South Carolina, (four of which were produced by Sam A. Cooley, photographer to the Tenth Army Corps) captioned “Beaufort Soldiers’ Chapel and Reading Room,” “Path to the river of Smith’s Plantation,” “Beaufort House / Where we Stopped, showing the Beaufort Hotel and nextdoor office of the Adams Express Company,” “Soldiers’ Graves,” “Gen. Saxton’s Headquarters,” “Father French’s House,” and “Our House.” Three cartes de visite produced by Hubbard & Mix show instructors Towne, Ellen Murray, and Harriet Murray respectively posing with freed black children. The photograph with Ellen Murray bears inscriptions identifying her students as “Peg Aiken” and “Little Gracie Chapin (one of Miss Murray’s brightest pupils).” A fourth Hubbard & Mix image captioned “I’m a freeman” shows an African-American man dressed in clothing made from rags and includes an album page inscription that reads: “Young Roslin says, ‘Now I’m free, I go to bed/ when I please I’se gits up/ when I please. In olden times/ I’se help gits de breakfast/ but no’se time to eats it myself/ Ha-ha-I’se happy boy now.” Also present are three cartes de visite produced by photographers based in Nashville, Tennessee, including one portrait by T. M. Schleier of an African-American woman with two children (one of whom has a much lighter complexion than the other) with the recto caption “Lights & Shadows of Southern Life” and verso caption “Aunt Martha and children/ Slaves/ Nashville, Tenn.,” as well as two other images by Morse’s Gallery of the Cumberland that show the same young African-American boy looking sad “Before the Proclamation” and then grinning broadly “After the Proclamation.”