Goodman, Anna Gragg.

[Collection of School and Family Photographs].

Columbus, Mississippi and Macon, Georgia: [1880s]-1910s. 35 loose photographs in a range of sizes, most of which are by professional photographers with 19 on cardboard mounts. Generally good to very good: a few photos with chips and/or significant creasing.

This is a great collection of photos documenting a Southern African American family whose matriarch spent her life as an educator. The collection centers around Anna Goodman Gragg who was born in Dublin, Georgia in 1875 and married William Goodman in 1895. Her obituary in a 1942 issue of the Macon News described her as “one of the oldest and best known teachers of this section of middle Georgia.” That obituary further stated that she “served as teacher in many of the public schools of Bibb county, principal among them being the Turpin Street School, M.M. Burdell, Green Street and L.H. Williams.”

There are a total of 13 group shots showing students, five of which are mounted and measure 5” x 7” or larger, the rest are real photo postcards. The best of them shows Anna in the window of a schoolhouse with her charges in front of the school holding a sign reading “2d and 3d Grades, Turpin Street.” Anna's children are identified on several of the RPPCs and one of them is captioned with “2nd, 3rd, 4th East Macon School.”

Other photographs include mounted portraits of unidentified friends and family as well as a formal mounted portrait of Anna, her husband and three children. There are two formal mounted portraits of Anna herself. One of those is inscribed by Anna, “I was baptized Thursday, April 13, 1894. This picture was taken Mar. 12, 1894.” There's also an RPPC portrait of Anna's husband, William, and two mounted portraits of one of her sons as an infant. Good. Item #9262

Price: $1,675.00