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Archive: April 2015 (3 Posts)

Smiling woman dressed in outdoor winter clothes holds a large, old-style camera

A Tale of Two Houses and the U.S. Civil War

Posted by: Kristi Finefield

In these photographs, we see two houses, both set in rural Virginia, in the mid-nineteenth century. These were the homes, a few years apart, of a retired officer of the Virginia militia named Wilmer McLean and his family. At first glance, the houses and these facts are unremarkable. But the history these walls witnessed, and …

Smiling woman dressed in outdoor winter clothes holds a large, old-style camera

“What’s the Story?”: Solving Mystery Photos

Posted by: Kristi Finefield

We asked “What’s the Story?” – and the answers came rolling in! Two months ago, we added twenty photographic puzzlers from the Harris & Ewing collection to the Library’s Flickr account with the (we hoped) tantalizing headline of “Mystery Photos – What’s the Story?” The corresponding glass negatives for these photos came to us without …