Rediscovering an American Community of Color

William Bullard, Portrait of the Thomas A. and Margaret Dillon Family, about 1903, courtesy of Frank Morrill, Clark University and the Worcester Art Museum

William Bullard, Portrait of the Thomas A. and Margaret Dillon Family, about 1903, courtesy of Frank Morrill, Clark University and the Worcester Art Museum

A little over a hundred years ago, a white photographer named William Bullard took hundreds of pictures of people in central Massachusetts. Among these were more than 230 portraits of people of color who lived within easy walking distance of my home. I had no idea this community existed until early 2018, when I saw Rediscovering an American Community of Color: The Photographs of William Bullard at the Worcester Art Museum.

The Beaver Brook neighborhood became a new home when the Ku Klux Klan and white backlash, combined with a national depression and the end of Reconstruction, destroyed the lives that former enslaved people had been making for themselves in the South. They came north to start again, and some came to Worcester, “a city with a deep abolitionist tradition and influential white residents sympathetic to their plight.”*

William Bullard, William Bullard’s Camera Reflected in a Mirror, about 1911 (detail), courtesy of Frank Morrill, Clark University and the Worcester Art Museum

William Bullard, William Bullard’s Camera Reflected in a Mirror, about 1911 (detail), courtesy of Frank Morrill, Clark University and the Worcester Art Museum

The collection’s existence is a rare and wonderful confluence of circumstances. Somehow, the glass negatives survived for over a century and ended in the hands of Frank J. Morrill, a retired history teacher and collector, who was also a devoted Worcester historian. Somehow, the photographer’s logbook also survived, and stayed with the photographs. Because of this, it became possible to identify the people in the photographs. This in turn made it possible for the Clark University students who researched the photographs to contact many of photo subjects’ descendants, one of whom I met during one of my visits to the exhibition.

A little more about the photos, from the website gallery. Image at top: “Virginia-born coachman Thomas A. Dillon and his wife, Margaret, a domestic servant and native of Newton, Massachusetts, pose in the parlor of their home at 38 Tufts Street with children Thomas, Margaret, and Mary. A poster on the wall commemorates President Theodore Roosevelt’s visit to the Worcester Agricultural Fair in 1902.” (The website gallery of images includes another photograph of Mr. Dillon.) Image at bottom: “James J. Johnson, of Nipmuc, Narragansett, and African American descent, and Jennie Bradley Johnson, a migrant from Charleston, South Carolina, pose with their daughters Jennie and May. James worked as a coachman and belonged to the King David Masonic Lodge. He died soon after this portrait was taken. Jennie later worked as a laundress.”

William Bullard, Portrait of James J. and Jennie Bradley Johnson Family, 1900, courtesy of Frank Morrill, Clark University and the Worcester Art Museum

William Bullard, Portrait of James J. and Jennie Bradley Johnson Family, 1900, courtesy of Frank Morrill, Clark University and the Worcester Art Museum

But in this case it’s probably best to let the pictures do the talking, and there are a great many to study. Most appear on the Bullard website, where you’ll find a gallery of the photos, a page about the collection and the photographer, a map of the neighborhood in 1911, essays connected to the images, and a chance to add information and/or comment on individual photos.

This Maureen Taylor podcast is loaded with fascinating insights into the photographs’ history, the photographer, the collector, the researchers, the project, and more. This article offers a sampling of large scale photographs from the collection. And here are scenes from the 2018 exhibition at the Worcester Art Museum.

**quote from the beautiful exhibition catalog

Cruikshank's Prints in "Ten Things I Hate About the Duke": Jealousy

“Jealousy” by George Cruikshank, 1 November 1825, courtesy Lewis Walpole Library.

Once again, I recommend you click on the link, in order to zoom in on the image and enjoy the details. Apparently, the letter signed “Anonymous,” under the gentleman’s hand, suggests that his lady is untrue, and several images suggest that her lover is an officer. At least two of the imps wear cuckold’s horns, one pointing to the lady who’s climbing down the rope ladder to run off with an officer, while the night watchman . . . watches the proceedings. The other is offering green spectacles, suggesting that Our Hero see more clearly? Or view through the lens of jealousy?

The wigged men in black are apparently lawyers, probably suggesting a “criminal conversation” or crim con case. A pistol is introducing itself, as a weapon for a duel (the outcome of that is suggested on the mantel), murder, or suicide, while hanging is another option (aided by another imp). The two books on the floor are Byron’s Don Juan, the long poem about the famous lover (well worth reading, it’s witty and brilliant) and the Cuckoo Song Book (another cuckold reference). The painting on the right portrays Othello smothering Desdemona. The one above the gentleman’s head appears to be titled “Horn Fair,” another cuckold warning.

If we search online, we find some slightly different interpretations of the details in Cruikshank’s prints. Do you see anything I’ve missed? Or would you interpret some of the details differently?

The fascinating Baron de Bérenger

Yes, the Baron de Bérenger did exist.

A few years ago, while in London, I had the privilege of visiting the Kensington Central Library and exploring its archives under the guidance of Dave Walker, Local Studies Librarian. It was Dave who introduced me to the Baron de Bérenger, via the baron’s gun. Until then, I’d never heard of the man, but upon learning he had a flamboyant character, with a shade of fraud around the fringes, I became deeply interested. No, let us say, obsessively interested, and you do need to be obsessive about him, because he’s deuced elusive. Biographies do not abound. What we get are what Wikipedia calls stubs.

However, I quickly found a remarkable book he wrote, Helps and Hints How to Protect Life and Property with Instructions in Rifle and Pistol Shooting, &c. by Lt. Col. Baron de Bérenger.

The last part of the book is a description of his new Stadium, which, basically, is a venue for putting the author’s philosophy into action:

“Since it was to their national games that the Greeks and Romans owed alike superiority in muscular exertion and skill, and that mental loftiness, that noble daring, which changing, out of the arena, to patriotic self-devotion, furnished so many glorious examples,—it is obvious that the means thus employed by them claim our serious consideration, and are worthy of our adoption. Even, however, in our own times, it is to the fascinations of the field sports, and the arduous exertions of military duty, that we may ascribe an extraordinary development of our powers,—a great improvement of the symmetry and agility of the manly frame, and increased ability to endure exposure and fatigue.”

In 1830, de Bérenger bought Chelsea Farm, where he created “a spacious arena, and also distinct plots of ground, (the whole tastefully and expensively decorated, and provided with necessary implements, &c.) are purposely devoted to exercises, games, and pastimes, which, whilst under scientific instruction they ensure the acquirement of skilful activity and presence of mind, at the same time most powerfully tend in youthful practitioners to develope, and in those advanced in years to invigorate, the muscular powers, and undeniably to promote health in both, by stimulating digestion, causing serene repose, and averting numberless maladies resulting from irregularity in the secretions and other functions; for all of these, energetic exercises, relaxation from study, and cheerful pursuits, can alone preserve or best restore.” [The spelling is de Bérenger’s.]

George Cruikshank, Artificial Pigeon Shooting, at the Stadium, Chelsea ca 1834 © Victoria and Albert Museum, London, Bequest of Mrs. Eliza Cruikshank

This is the Stadium where Cassandra demonstrates the art of nearly killing a fellow with an umbrella. As adept as he was, the baron saw only limited use for an umbrella in self-defense. However, there was abundant material elsewhere on this topic. Though my sources came from much later in the century, it was easy enough to imagine someone as clever and determined as Cassandra Pomfret developing her own methods.

The Stadium became a pleasure garden, Cremorne Gardens, which is mainly where one encounters brief mentions of de Bérenger. But that developed at a later time than my historical setting, and is another, far less elusive subject altogether.

The Bartitsu Society offers a compact bio of de Bérenger.

There’s a short video on YouTube.

Here’s his petition, in relation to the fraud with which he was charged. I have to say, I love his writing. His personality comes through so vividly!