People, circa 1898-1940s

Extent:

25 items

Scope and content:

The earliest photograph in the collection is housed in this series; taken in 1898, it shows a group of young women belonging to the Trinity Church Sunday School class. After another early image of prominent citizen Julian Shakespeare Carr reviewing Confederate veterans in front of the Carrolina Hotel, circa 1903, the rest of the photographs date chiefly from the 1920s through the 1940s, and show Durham citizens in both casual and posed settings.

Subjects range widely, and include: children playing in an early playground field across from two tobacco warehouses; the dark interior of a bank with customer and tellers; two scenes from a Trinity College reunion; a large musical band advertising a minstrel show, a group of World War I veterans; and portraits of Bennehan Cameron as an elderly man, John Ruffin Green (one of Durham's earliest tobacco entrepreneurs), the Rosenstein family (early Durham optometrists), and several men affiliated with the Durham Police Department. Some are photographs of portraits. Only a few individuals are unidentified.

Two of the photographs are film or television stills: one was labeled as a scene from the 1925 movie "Durham's Hero," filmed in the city (there are several contact prints from this same movie), and one is from an unidentified set featuring a scene in a Mexican-style cantina from about the early 1940s.

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