William Ramsey Hemphill, James Calvin Hemphill, Robert Reid Hemphill, and other family and friends, circa 1861-1910s
- Containers:
- Box 44
- Extent:
- 77 photographs (3 folders)
- Scope and content:
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These three folders are a mixed group taken from one original folder. There are a few portraits of William Ramsey Hemphill (father of John Lind, James Calvin, Robert Reid, Isabelle Mary, and Margaret Elizabeth), as well as a small portrait of his brother, John Harrison "Champ" Hemphill (d. 1862), a Confederate congressman and Texas Chief Justice. There are many portraits and snapshots of the extended Hemphill family and their homes in South Carolina, as well as many unidentified portraits of acquaintances, businessmen, and friends. There are two late 19th century tintypes, possibly Mary Greene as a child, and possibly Robert Reid Hemphill with three children. Included are some World War I-era photographs related to Robert Reid's son William Lind Hemphill, and portraits of his son Robert Grier Hemphill and daughter Mary Isabella (or Isabelle Mary, known as "Belle") Hemphill Greene, and her daughter Mary Greene.
There are two photographs, taken circa 1880s, of people of color, one of an elderly woman with the caption "Aunt Patsy," and one of two elderly Black men in front of a house; and one photograph of what seems to be houses for enslaved people. Of interest also is an unusual sequence of snapshots of a street-paving project showing African American workers, taken around the late 19th century in Richmond, Virginia next to the Blanton House (visible in the picture and still standing in 2023); they bear unusual typed verses on the backs, several signed "Webster Damyankee." One reads, "The first lesson of life is how to behave, on Shafer Street they begin to pave."
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