“What is this a negative of? \u00a0Asked Frank’s 10 year old granddaughter Hannah while working on a book they were co-authoring and holding up a 4 x 5 glass negative to the light. This innocent question led to untold hours of searching through Frank’s (that’s me) vast collection of glass negatives from c. 1900. By now you are probably wondering what the negative was of that led to all this research and ultimately to this blog and soon to a complete website. The following is a brief story of many chance happenings that followed Hannah’s question which itself was chance. We were looking at negatives of street scenes of Worcester and searching for just the right ones to add to our book (which is now published, “Worcester Through Time”, and available at bookstores and Amazon.com). Sorry for the plug, let me get back to the story. This negative was not a building but a portrait image and by chance it was misplaced in a box of street scene negatives. It was an image of Celia Perkins an African American woman who was born into slavery in 1858 in South Carolina and much later, with her husband Richard, moved to Worcester, Massachusetts. Fascinating isn’t it? That information was not on the negative but\u00a0discovered\u00a0through much research. Back to the story. A few weeks later I picked up the negative that was put aside and began to wonder if more images like this existed in my portraits section of negatives. It should be noted here that I had these portrait glass negatives for a number of years and they kind of took a back seat in the research because without identification they would become a research dead end. As the search through the collection began numbers were discovered on many of the of the images. The numbers which were as small as 1\/16th of an inch high, were scratched into the bottom or side of the emulsion side of the glass negative. Hannah’s young eyes were invaluable in reading many of these which were difficult to determine even with a jeweler’s loupe. So how did I know it was Celia Perkins?……..Hang on as the intriguing story continues. The portrait collection is all from one photographer and by a stroke of luck many years ago I had a random conversation with the person I purchased the negatives from earlier. \u00a0He asked if I was interested in the photographer’s log book that that he had recently found.\u00a0 The log book is\u00a0a journal\u00a0\u00a0full of numbers along with descriptions and identifications. \u00a0I had found gold! \u00a0All of these negatives are from 1890’s to 1918 so a log book is rare. There it was a very tiny # 76 at the bottom right of Hannah’s questioned negative. The log book indicated it was Celia Perkins! \u00a0In case you are wondering where all the other information came from, keep reading. After a couple weeks of searching there were about 30 portraits of African Americans living in Worcester connected to the log book. At this time, by complete chance, I was speaking with a Director of the Antiquarian Society about the history of Charlton Historical Society and at the end of the conversation he asked about other projects I was working on. In mentioning these images he said he knew individuals who may have a strong interest in them and gave me names to contact. I sent an email to Dr. Janette Thomas Greenwood who has spent many years researching and writing books about the migration of former slaves to the North and specifically to Worcester, Massachusetts. Her last book, a wonderful historical read, “First Fruits of Freedom” (one more plug) was the result of years of research. We didn’t connect right away and I thought maybe what I had was not as important and unique as I thought it was. I sent a second email as a last chance and Janette answered right away (she had been preparing for a one semester\u00a0sabbatical from Clark University). By this time I had uncovered nearly 100 images through countless hours of holding them to the light and then scanning to be certain. The collection now is about complete and is nearly 200 images. When Janette visited to examine them she started to see names and images of individuals she had researched but did not know pictures existed. You often hear the following: “the rest is history” but in this case it fits so well. Janette and I have become partners on a quest to tell the story of the individuals and families who migrated to Worcester in their search for equality. Many of the descendants and friends\u00a0of these individuals are alive today and we have spoken with several. We believe this is a series of stories within the larger story that will be exciting and historically important to tell. \u00a0Soon we will add some photographs including #76 of Celia Perkins….Please check back to our blog! Feel free to comment or ask questions.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"