A glimpse of the past
Jun. 22—The passion project of special education teacher Kate Kelley from Massachusetts has helped save a piece of local history by delivering an early 20th century photo album back to its rightful home at Saint Bernard Abbey.
If a picture truly is worth a thousand words, Kelley has now collected well over a dictionary's worth since she launched The Photo Angel Project which looks to connect family members with lost or forgotten photographs. Kelley said the project began nearly two years ago when she was looking through a box of old family photos and discovered several pictures of unknown family friends.
"There were some old friends of the family, war buddies, neighbors, just people we weren't related to. We got to talking and thought it would be awesome if we could track down their relatives because now we're a couple of generations removed. These people meant something to my grandparents but now they're long gone, but we wanted to get them back to where they belong," she said.
Kelley entered the names on the back of several of the photos into the ancestry.com database where she located a descendent of one of the subjects living in Tennessee. She sent the photos to both him and his cousin in California. The thrill of reconnecting people with their family history "triggered a memory" she had of finding a box of old photographs in an antique store several years prior and she quickly made a trip to the closest second hand shop to look for photos with any kind of identifying labels to offer a starting point for her investigation.
Kelley's The Photo Angel Facebook page has caught the attention of The Boston Globe and NBC's The Today Show. A boom in the group's membership quickly followed the media attention. Soon Kelley would not be alone in her search for photographs, but began receiving messages from followers with their own contributions to her archives.
One of those contributions came from Germantown, Tenn. resident Gina Owens who noticed a photo album included in a large pile of curbside trash. Familiar with the project, Owens sent the album to Kelley, who shared its contents on social media. Several of the photos were documented as being taken in Jackson, Tenn., but a number featured the students and faculty of Saint Bernard College from 1909-1910.
Kelley mostly tries to locate individual family members, like when she was able to send a photo of Confederate Colonel Charles Christian Wertenbaker — found in a Florida Goodwill — to his descendant Franklin Graham, the son of Billy Graham. When individual connections aren't able to be made, she instead looks to museums of institutions who might appreciate her finds.
Such was the case with the St. Bernard album. Archivist for St. Bernard and Sacred Heart, Mary Hovater reached out to Kelley and arranged for the photos to be sent to the school's archives. Hovater said she received the photos on Tuesday, June 20, and almost immediately began examining them with Abbot Marcus Voss.
Featuring students engaged in football and baseball games, enjoying an outing to a nearby waterfall, or participating in more rambunctious activities such as lounging on a rooftop, the photos provide a glimpse into the lives of some of the school's earliest alumni from when the campus was an all-male college. Hovater said Abbot Voss particularly enjoyed revisiting his own memories by recognizing a number of buildings from his own time as a student.
While a number of the campus's facilities have been destroyed or lost to time — Director of Marketing Joyce Nix identified images of a chapel as a building that was once connected to the current administration office — Hovater said Abbot Voss noticed at least one image which has stood the test of time.
She singled out an image bearing the label "Senior Study Hall" which features several rows of desks beneath an array of exposed hanging lights. "He [Abbot Voss] said 'You know those desks? We still use some those desks. I'm serious, we still have some of those,'"
Hovater was even able to give context to an obscure photograph labeled "church picnic" within the Sacred Heart archives. She said little was known about the photo, which features a family standing on a cliff side.
"We weren't sure about anything about it and the woman who had the picture has died. When we were looking through those photographs I noticed that same little bluff/cliff area was in there. So, know we know the picture was taken at St. Bernard. I was so excited, I was just jumping up and down," Hovater said.
Kelley believes giving people the opportunity to make these types of discoveries is her calling in life and only deepens her desire to continue her work.
"It just brings me so joy and I've met the coolest people and have had the most exciting conversations. I never know what's around the next corner or where this project is going to take me. I think that's what makes it so exciting," Kelley said.
To follow or contribute to The Photo Angel project visit the group's Facebook page or website at thephotoangel.net.
