Valentine’s Day is the holiday for February although most students prefer President’s Day as it gets them a day out of school. More important is the fact that the whole month is set aside to celebrate Black History.
We start off this month’s featured photos from our postcard collection. All four of these were sent to Miss Cora Parks at 422 Fourth Street. Three of these were postmarked in 1914 and 1915. All four are textured with embossing.
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Greenfield’s history includes a long line of Black history intertwined through it. The Greenfield area was very active in the Underground Railroad during the years leading up to the Civil War. Augustus West was a black man who lived just north of Greenfield and is celebrated with the historic marker in the Greenfield Cemetery. The Patterson family and their manufacturing of buggies, autos and busses are well known and celebrated with a historic marker in front of the Southern Hills Community Bank. Less well known are Rachel Stafford and George Braxton.
The next photos were shared with us by two ladies born and raised in Greenfield, Connie Ford and Joyce Dennis.
Connie Ford was a genealogist and a member of the historical society. She passed away in 2019. She shared several photos with us for our book Greenfield in Arcadia Publishing’s Images of America Series in 2012. Here are two of the photos she shared.
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William Henry “Bill” Byrd holds a squirrel in front of a house at 902 Carford Pike. Byrd’s grandmother, Bessie E. Payne Byrd, was a deaf woman who loved animals and seemed to attract them.
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George W. Byrd shown with a farm horse.
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Joyce Dennis is also a member of the society and a genealogist. She has given programs and shared her knowledge with the society. She shared some interesting family photos that the society scanned for our archives. Here are several of them.
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John Rufus Cannon, born 1893, died 1938 and served as a soldier in World War 1.
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John Rufus Cannon looks very distinguished in this photograph taken by Price Photographers of Greenfield. We have many vintage photographs of children in our files. See the January Scrapbook pages for more.
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Here is a photograph of a class of students probably taken outside Old Central, the school that sat where the present-day Greenfield Middle School is. Charles Frederick Cannon is the fifth student and Claudius Cannon is the sixth student in the front row. Notice the lunch boxes lined up in front of the students.
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You may also enjoy reading these articles about Rachel Stafford,
Charles Richard Patterson, and
Frederick Douglas Patterson.
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RETURN to the Photo Scrapbook Choices
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