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Editor's Introduction: In our effort to expand HJM's focus to include artistic and material culture, we have initiated a new "Photo Essay" feature. Here we offer selections from a photography exhibit on display at Memorial Hall Museum in Deerfield. Because HJM is now available in several online academic databases, reproducing this exhibit in our pages makes it available to a much wider authence and preserves it for future generations of readers and researchers. Suzanne L. Flynt is curator of Memorial Hall Museum, Pocumtuck Valley Memorial Association, Deerfield, Massachusetts.
Frances Stebbins Allen (1854-1941) and her sister, Mary Electa Allen (1858-1941), were among the foremost women photographers at the turn of the twentieth century. Frances and Mary Allen's home and inspiration were in the Connecticut River Valley town of Deerfield. The Allen sisters were provided opportunities to advance academically, socially, and artistically at Deerfield Academy and, beginning in the fall of 1874, at the State Normal School teacher's college in Westfield, Massachusetts (now Westfield State College). The sisters amiably shared a room, classes, and friends. After the first day of school, Frances wrote to her mother: "I think there is a splendid set of teachers. Anybody can see that they are smart, and good too, by just looking at them."1 Frances and Mary's subsequent letters home brim with enthusiasm about all aspects of school life. In a letter to her brother, Edmund, Frances encouraged him to visit, although the school's strict boarding rules made her uncertain "whether they would dare have a wolf come among the lambs here."2 Tuition was free to the State Normal School pupils who agreed to teach in the state's public schools following commencement and, in June 1 876, Frances and Mary Allen graduated from the State Normal School.
Frances spent the next ten years, from 1876 to 1886, teaching, but due to poor health, Mary's teaching career was sporadic. When they were in their thirties, however hearing loss forced both to give up their chosen careers. Frances became profoundly deaf, and Mary could only partially...