Photographic Collections
The Florida Photographic Collection visually documents the people, places and events that have contributed to Florida’s history and development from the earliest photograph in 1845 to the present.
Historical photographs humanize history, provide visual aid to researchers in understanding how people lived in the past and allow us to connect to the people of history.
While early photographs tended to be more formally posed, they nonetheless lend a view into the lives of those who lived before us.
The following photographic collections offer visual documentation of the lives of Black individuals and Black communities in 19th-to-early-20th century Florida. One collection holds a hand-tinted daguerreotype of an enslaved woman named Mollie.
- Monticello Photographic Collection, 1870-1890s (M84-41)
- This collection consists of daguerreotypes, ambrotypes, tintypes and albumen prints of people in Monticello, Florida, primarily members of the Partridge family.
- One notable image is an 1850s hand-colored daguerreotype of Mollie, an African woman kidnapped by transatlantic slave traders and sold into chattel slavery to John and Eliza Partridge in South Carolina.
- The Partridge family moved from South Carolina to Jefferson County, Florida around 1835. John served as minister of the Union Church and owned several hundred acres of land, recording 22 enslaved Black persons in the 1840 federal census and 13 in 1850.
- The daguerreotype photograph of Mollie has been digitized and is available on Florida Memory.
- Alvan S. Harper Photographic Collection, 1884-1910 (M87-30)
- This collection consists of the surviving glass negatives of noted portrait photographer Alvan S. Harper of Tallahassee, Florida.
- Especially noteworthy are Harper's portraits of middle-class Black people, providing a glimpse into the lives of emergent middle-class Freedmen shortly after the era of Reconstruction.
- Images from the Harper Collection are digitized and available on Florida Memory.
- Richard Aloysius Twine, Lincolnville, Saint Augustine Photographic Collection, 1922-1927 (M91-15)
- This collection contains black-and-white images that reflect the social and cultural environment of the Lincolnville community in the 1920s.
- Images depict individuals and groups on both public and private occasions, including marriage ceremonies, funerals, school graduations and cultural and community events including an Emancipation Day parade.
- Many of the individuals have been identified, including Twine, his family members and community members Mildred Parsons, Mason Larkins, John Norton and Raymond Kelton.
- While images in this collection are from the 1920s (several decades after the Reconstruction Era), they depict a thriving Black enclave in north Florida similar to Beloved’s “124 Bluestone Road” in Cincinnati.
- These images have been digitized and are available on Florida Memory.
- Richard Gilbert Ohmes, Jefferson and Leon County Photographic Collection, circa 1960-1964 (N2016-4)
- This collection contains over 300 black-and-white images documenting the Black experience in rural Leon and Jefferson counties, taken by amateur photographer Dick Ohmes. Ohmes, who was white, sought to represent living conditions, agriculture and residents of the area.
- Some photographs are adhered to album pages along with related typed drafts that appear to be intended for a publication.
- The collection also includes handwritten notes and a few drawings and sketches based on the photographs. There is little documentation directly identifying subjects of the photographs, though subjects include the Norton family and the Hughes family of Jefferson County.
- Images show Black communities in Jefferson and Leon County at the beginning of the Civil Rights Movement and show that living conditions for many Black families in the rural south had not changed much since Reconstruction.
- These images have been digitized and are available on Florida Memory.
