The Visual Story of An American Family

Never-before-published photos from the 19th through the 21st century. The story of a middle-class family from Kentucky. 

I am the caretaker of a rather large collection of vintage photographs from both sides of my family — images that date to sometime around the 1860s and run to the present day. My role as keeper of these mementos from decades and centuries past came about rather naturally. It wasn't a decision that someone made. It happened because, over time, people died and some family members weren't that interested, so the boxes and albums fell to me. I've been trying to figure out how to preserve and honor these documents from days past.

I've already written a bit about my family history in my memoir, Prepare for Departure: Notes on a Single Mother, a Misfit Son, Inevitable Mortality and the Enduring Allure of Frequent Flyer Miles. But how do you make the most of a rich trove of old family photos?

To start, I've donated a large portion of the Chesnut-Clayton family collection to the University of Louisville Photographic Archives, which houses over two million photographs and associated records and manuscripts, including local history photographs and an excellent museum collection of fine prints. Use of the Photographic Archives research room and exhibitions gallery is free and open to the public, and so I'm hoping that our images will serve some use for researchers who are interested in urban and rural middle-class family life in the 19th and 20th centuries, as well as the history of Kentucky.

Among the most noteworthy images from the Chesnut-Clayton collection, from a historical perspective:

• Photos from the now-vanished town of Birmingham, Kentucky, which was completely submerged in the mid 20^th century to create Kentucky Lake.
• Photos from Logan College, a college for women that operated from 1872 to 1931 in Russellville, Kentucky.
• Photos of family life in Louisville’s West End from the 1920s to the 1950s, including church, school and street photos.
• Photos of the 1937 and 1945 floods in Louisville.
• Staged tourist photos of my family members at Dawson Springs, which thanks to its “medicinal waters” was a popular tourist destination in western Kentucky from the late 1800s until the 1930s.

I've also put together a book called Dogtown Road, which provides a sample of some of my favorite photos from various generations.  

Sorting through, cataloguing and sharing this vintage family photography collection is a work in progress. I'm still trying to determine the best way to share these images in a way that they will be entertaining and also useful to others. I aim to add more images over time to this page, and I'd love to hear from you if you have ideas about presenting images in a way that tells a story. 

This section is a work in progress. Please let me know if you're interested in seeing more!