Miss Johnston and Her Camera Have Travelled
50,000 Miles on Trail of Old Colonial Homes

By Ross Well

"She is saving Virginia for Virginians and the World."

It is a woman's mission achieved; a woman's vision of an erst-while glory that must be salvaged from ruthless Progress and Neglect; a woman's love of a fine heritage carelessly spurned, that those words eulogize.

Frances Benjamin Johnston is the woman, and the all-seeing lens of her camera is the medium through which an imperishable record of the finest legacy bequeathed by our Colonial ancestors--their homes--is being snatched in the eleventh hour and saved for posterity.

Fifty thousand miles across, around and back again over the highway and by-ways (mostly by-ways) of Virginia has Miss Johnston traveled, racing against the inexorable march of progress and the challenging eraser of fire, to photograph humble log cabin, pretentious mansion or weather-beaten and decaying "home" before they become just memories. Types of buildings, details of architecture both inside and out, beauties of paneling, of the simple lines, of the effect achieved with humble clay, of the magic of fan lights, of dormers and eaves, all yield a full measure of their romance to the artistry of this woman who sees in them a treasure to be carefully preserved that future generations may be inspired and revere the loftiness of Colonial idealism.

Negatives Start Library for University of Virginia

Backed financially by repeated grants from the Carnegie Corporation of New York, Miss Johnston is again afield in the Mother State adding to the hundreds of pictorial records she has made. Millers on rushing mountain streams, educators emerging briefly from the cloisters of their research sanctums, farmers from the furrows in their fields, prosaic real estate men and her fellow-travelers on the open road are guide posts to those fast disappearing monuments she trails.

Twelve hundred records in the School of Architecture at the University of Virginia, an invaluable collection to student and public alike, is her direct contribution so far to the Old Dominion.

The Pictorial Archives of the Fine Arts Department of the Library of Congress in Washington, D. C. owes its existence to Miss Johnston. She founded it with her collection of negatives taken in Fredericksburg, of which more later, and now the department has as many as a thousand negatives a year in contributions and many promised in future bequests.

Richmonders and visitors are to have a chance to view some of Miss Johnston's work at first hand next spring when the new art museum sponsors an exhibition of several of her outstanding pictures of old Virginia homes, according to Lieutenant Colt, the curator. The exhibition is scheduled for March, and it is expected that Miss Johnston will attend the showing.

She Brings Picturesque Career to Her Mission

High spots have been the usual, rather than the unusual, in Miss Johnston's life. Years before "staff photographers" were heard of in the press of the country Miss Johnston was a pioneer in press photography.

A news syndicate assigned her to intercept Admiral Dewey in the Mediterranean Sea, and her resultant pictures are the only ones in existence of the signing of the peace protocol with Spain. Armed with a note from Theodore Roosevelt which read:

"Miss Johnston is a lady whom I can vouch for. She does good work and any promise she makes she will keep."

Miss Johnston met Dewey at Naples and made the photographs aboard the Olympia with which everyone at that time was familiar.

Again, in 1911, it was her camera that clicked and gave the world the last photograph made of President McKinley before he was assassinated.

In 1900 she was the only woman delegate at the International Congress of Photography where she read a paper on "Woman Photographers in America." Her series of pictures of Washington public schools and their work was awarded a gold medal at the Congress. She was a member of the jury of liberal arts at the St. Louis Exposition and was awarded the Palmes Academiques by the French government at that time.

Miss Johnston holds dear among her memories those days when she was a student in Julien's studio in Paris. She recalls the day later on when a friend who worked for a newspaper persuaded her to try some news illustrating with a camera, an episode which clinched her interest in photography and which led her to study photography in the laboratories of the Smithsonian Institution by special permission. Later still she was a pioneer in the field of color photography, experimenting with the Lumieres. Her love of color work led her to photograph gardens all over the world and she became famous for that type of picture.

Radiates Enthusiasm That Belies Her Years

From the historical events just recounted in which Miss Johnston has played a part, the reader has undoubtedly gathered that Miss Johnston is no longer eligible to be counted in the flapper class, indeed, that her flapper years were spent in decades in which the coining of such a term was not even to be prophesied. But as she bustled down the corridor, negotiated a tricky staircase with unfaltering stride and settled herself in the proffered chair it was easy to understand that she lives the very spirit of her maxim of life--"Just keep after what you want long enough and you'll be sure to find someone who will give it to you."--and when she launches into an explanation of her work, she radiates an enthusiasm that seems to belie the printed date in a 20 line biography in "Who's Who."

That musty tome of the 1910-1911 edition reveals that Frances Benjamin Johnston was born in Grafton, W. Va., on January 15, 1864, more than a year before Appomattox, which means that within a few weeks now she will be celebrating her seventy-second birthday anniversary. It is hard to reconcile this fact when one listens to her account of her latest expedition after a shot at the time-vanquished abode hidden in a bushy fastness in a Southside Virginia county.

"We had been given the tip of this old house that was fast falling apart by a ferry man, who said his son farmed part of the old estate. His description of the place excited my curiosity and I was keen to look at it through the ground glass of my camera so we decided to try and follow his directions, although he warned us that the road was rough and difficult--but 'passable.' " Miss Johnston travels by machine with a Negro chauffeur whom she credits with being her "right hand man," and a continual source of inspiration by his naive remarks on the paths over which his employer leads him.

"The road wound in and out of farm lands and finally the listed landmarks began to appear and we left the secondary highway we had been following for a lane. The farther we progressed on it the rougher it became and the less resemblance it retained to any sort of road. Then finally it disappeared although under the waters of a meandering stream. The future of our journey looked dubious indeed, and we even retraced our ride to the ferry landing, waiting for the return of our original guide, who assured us that we had been on the right road all the time, but who wasn't much assistance in suggesting how to get across that stream. But back we went determined to get across and find that house. At the water's edge this time, we decided a roadway had to be built for our personal use, and without more ado we began collecting small limbs, whole trees, branches and brush, anything that would give us traction across and up the steep and slippery-looking opposite bank. We made it, and was I rewarded? I got pictures of one of the finest old homes I've ever trained my camera on."

And this is just a typical day in the life of this 72-year-old woman.

Intrigued by Beauties of Old Houses

"It was during my travels after gardens that I noticed the fine old houses which figured so importantly in colonial history and which are falling to wrack and ruin unhonored and unsung. They are the houses of pioneers and I longed to make a record of them, not only for the history such records would preserve, but for the architectural beauties and details of a period which, until I got started, had been studied mostly from English records. These houses are of the Jacobean period and are prevalent throughout Virginia where the very first settlers came.

I stored away in my memory such names as Conjuror's Neck, Bathurst, Huntly Hall, Ben Lomand, Tyford Hall and Rural Plains, certain that some day I would be able, somehow, to fulfill my resolve which was beginning to have the definite sound of a 'call.'

"Since the way has been provided, I have found scores of Virginians of all walks of life eager to co-operate once they understood my objective, and my degree of success in this work has been due in large measure to this helpfulness apparent on every hand. I take this opportunity to express my great appreciation to everyone who has helped in no matter how small a way to make possible the fulfillment of this ambition of mine."

Found First Backer in Fredericksburg

Preaching the need for the service she was so peculiarly fitted to render everywhere she went, it was in 1930 that Miss Johnston found her first listener in Mrs. Daniel B. Devore of Fredericksburg, Va. Doing some other work in the city, the camera artist expanded upon her pet hobby to Mrs. Devore who became interested in having a photographic record made of her home town's historic sites. The Fredericksburg woman financed Miss Johnston in the making of a pictorial record of the oldest houses left in the Spotsylvania County city. The job finished, Miss Johnston had 200 negatives.

Prints of these were exhibited in the Library of Congress at an opportune moment it proved for Miss Johnston, Dr. Leicester B. Holland had just assumed the Carnegie Chair for the Fine Arts Department. So impressed was he with this pictorial record that when Miss Johnston expressed a wish to leave the negatives for the library as they were too valuable to be wasted, an idea was born and put into practical being. The Pictorial Archives began.

The effect of that exhibit and its immediate result were far reaching. Because of the historical and architectural value of this record the Carnegie Corporation presented Miss Johnston with a monetary grant to complete a record of old Virginia houses. A second and a third grant have been made, and still Miss Johnston is scouting the Virginia countryside hoping that not a single old time home will escape her lens.

"I never know what surprise is in store for me just around the next bend of the road. It might be another 'Kittewan,' " she adds with a smile. " 'Kittewan' was built about 1735 in Charles City County, and is the only one I have found in all my travels with original Jacobean porch intact. It was a real thrill when I discovered that place.

"Its simple lines are valuable to modern designers and it has an astonishingly handsome interior. Paneling such as I found there is seldom found in the original in this country and is invaluable to designers and architects for study."

Miss Johnston possesses a rare sense of humor which she admits helps over many of the rougher spots in her long trails.

"But once it deserted me," she admits, but there's a twinkle in her eye that says she enjoys this particular story even though it's one on her.

"A newspaper called my hotel one day and asked if one of its women reporters might talk with me. I assented, and in due time the young lady arrived. I have never counted that interview as being especially good. It started out all right, in the usual course such meetings take. The young lady made copious notes and then I produced several portfolios of my pictures.

"I assumed of course that my interviewer had some idea of my work, or that she had some reference clippings before she started which would make her at least conversant with my objectives. Imagine then my chagrin when after going industriously through a score or more of my pictures, my young caller exclaimed:

" 'Oh, Miss Johnston, these pictures are marvelous! Who does your photography?' "