This is the No. 105 painting in my 365/2010 series.
Title:"ONE OF ABERDEEN, MISSISSIPPI'S UNIDENTIFIED"
Size: 11X14
Medium: water color on 100% rag paper.
In 1982-83, Miss Peacock, Long time historian and Liberian of the Aberdeen Library helped me do a lot of research for the paintings I did for the McDonald's store there in Aberdeen. We had done a lot of work together when I worked for the Aberdeen Examiner in the late 60's early 70's. I wrote several feature articles about the historic homes and businesses while working at the Examiner. But, this time it was different, I gained her trust and she took me to her "ATTIC" in the library. She showed me things that she said she would like my help in identifying. These were pictures of mostly homes and landscapes. She said she had documentation and materials that these places existed once in Aberdeen. She had not been able to find them or any remains of the places. I spent several days comparing and looking closely at the architecture elements of these places in the photos and the houses in Aberdeen, but they still remain unidentified. I'm going to include in this series about 3 of them painted the way i think they might have looked during their heyday.
This is the first one, and what I observed about it...The photo lead me to believe that is very near the river on the east side of Aberdeen. The background suggests that. The only feature in Aberdeen anywhere like anything in the photo is a bay window that looks very much like the one in the photo and it is located on a small house behind the Plant house, which is across from the library. It is not exactly like the photo but it could have been remodeled. Could this house have been the house that once stood directly across from the present day hospital. Or the house that stood just one block south of there on the same side of the street? Documentation does show that two large houses were once there.
I'm wondering, because of the "river" in the background, if this house could have been on the east side of the river facing east away from Aberdeen..
Dear Arni, your work that once hung in the MacDonald's Restaurant is of great value. Many have since been identified.
ReplyDeleteThis one is of the Reuben O. Reynolds home that stood on the northeast corner of James and Marshall streets in North Aberdeen, roughly across from the old Shell Home and the Momie Terrell Atchinson Home. Col. Reynolds married a Young from Waverly. Their son, Reuben Young Reynolds married Nell Fowler, and died at a young age. Several other family members also died of tuberculosis, and the house was abandoned. It became the stop off place for tramps and hoboes, and finally burned in c1926.
Jerry Anderson Harlow