It’s Independence Day!

The University of North Carolina’s digital photograph archive includes an album that once belonged to Elizabeth Tannahill Bain of Chapel Hill, North Carolina. Most of the photographs in the album are casual and depict a happy, peaceful, beautiful, and ordinary life in a small town.

A note in the album states that Elizabeth lived from 1893-1967 and gives her former address, as 407 East Rosemary Street (later the Delta Upsilon Fraternity House). Elizabeth’s father was a professor of Greek and Latin at the University of North Carolina, so we can probably assume the family had a comfortable life. They weren’t rich, but they were probably well off. Elizabeth served as department secretary to the Department of Romance Languages at the university.

Other than this fragment, all I know about Elizabeth Tannahill Bain I learned from looking at the album she left behind. In some of the pictures, people are named but unsurprisingly she doesn’t explain anyone’s relationship to herself. We don’t know if the people are neighbors, friends, or family members.

This picture says “Mrs. Durham and Elizabeth [Durham].”

These pictures were under the heading Portraits of Young People:

A group picture, but names are not specified.

Maybe this was the view from the front porch?

Billy Steele. A boyfriend, perhaps? He looks quite a bit older in the photograph on the left.

Burt, Theo, and Wort are in the photo on the left. “Wort” is Elizabeth’s brother, Charles Wortley. John Huke is in middle picture. The picture on the right looks like it was taken at a game or a race. These pictures are from 1915.
I wish men still dressed up like this.

Mr. and Mrs. Thornton, Summer School 1917. Elizabeth doesn’t identify them further, but she must have been involved with summer school too. There are several pictures of summer school labeled different years.
But only one with this delightful couple.

Elizabeth’s friends and family joined up after the United States was plunged into the Great War. The pictures on this page are from September 1917.

The picture on the left shows Elizabeth with Henry Johnson. The handwritten note beneath it says, “Henry Johnson killed on daylight patrol, at 10 o’clock on the morning the Armistice was signed at 12 noon.”
I wonder who Henry Johnson was to Elizabeth.

The other identifying notes say, “Wort in camp” (top); “Phil Woolcott” (man standing – bottom pictures). In the next column, a grinning soldier perched on the front step in front of a flag is labeled “Keysie.” Beneath that is another picture of Wort with more soldiers. On the right side of the page, an older man is walking on a dirt path with a cane. Beneath him is the name “Mr. Leonard.”

A group portrait on the front steps of the family home. Easter, 1920.

A couple of pictures of a “Mardi Gras Ball” costume party in 1923.

This group photo is labeled, left to right: Group portrait: Clara, Peekie, (Gerald) Mac McCarthy, Me, Elizabeth Durham, Mother, and Short Change.  How did Short Change get that nickname? I love it!

Elizabeth is sitting almost in the middle of the photo. She looks like someone you’d want to be friends with.

 

This undated photo is labeled “Dirt road, on/near UNC campus?”
I love turns in the road. They’re evocative of an idea that the people in these pictures are still with us, just out of sight.

These photographs pull at my heart. I feel like I could project myself into these old pictures and disappear into their world.

By the way, do you say Fourth of July or Independence Day?