Roundhay Garden Scene, 1888

Did you know the earliest surviving motion picture takes place in a garden?  No, nor did I!




All of 2.11 seconds long (when viewed at modern frame-rates), the brief garden promenade was shot by French inventor Louis Le Prince in 1888, using a single lens camera and George Eastman's paper film, several years before competing inventors such as Thomas Edison ( 1891) and Auguste and Louis Lumière (1892) produced their own moving pictures.

It features Louis' son Adolphe as well his parents-in-law Joseph and Sarah Whitley, whose home Oakwood Grange in Roundhay (Leeds), Yorkshire was the site of the historic scene.

Regrettably,  its brevity allows little insight into the landscape where it was filmed, and Oakwood Grange was demolished in 1972 to make way for a housing estate.  So sad to have lasted so long into the modern era before it was felled...I am doing some research on an eighteenth century gardener and was disappointed to find that his home had lasted until the 1960s, only to fall victim to urban re-development before anyone knew to care who had inhabited it.

Updates on Bellwood Hall, Upson County, Georgia

Southern historians are a nice group of people...I've been the recipient of several updates and new information on Bellwood, the Georgia plantation I discussed some time ago in a series of posts (see the swept yard, the gazebo, the house and its axis, the wilderness),

First, from Mary Alnutt, who lives nearby, came information on the house's demise and this photo (near the house's location but uncertainly connected to it).  The Hall was destroyed by fire sometime in the late 1800s according to Loula Kendall Rogers, daughter of the physician who built Bellwood, who wrote in a volume of poetry she published:  "Just at the close of our fall term at Gordon Institute, as twilight shades enshrouded the earth, there came the sad tidings that Bellwood, the beautiful home of my childhood, was destroyed by fire."  

Mary let me know that the little house in front of Bellwood, which I speculated may have been slave quarters, was actually Dr. Kendall's medical office.

David Paterson sent this 1858 photograph of the house, which as he noted, is in contrast to the idealized portrait at the top of the post, and which was also painted by Loula of her beloved home.  It is inscribed on the back:  ""Bellwood Upson Co. Ga. The old Kendall Home.  A true type of the old Southern Plantation house.  The fence was only put up until a new one was built, and the carriage drive improved, like the pastel picture." [added underneath in the shakier handwriting of old age:] "This Picture was taken when I was a child. Loula Kendall. 1850."

David asked if I knew anything about the 'Christmas tree' looking racks in the front yard near the house, and I confess I don't.  Any ideas from you native Southerners? (click on the photo for an enlarged view...you can just see the Kendalls standing on the front porch)

Mary Nowell, who recently presented extensive research on Loula Kendall Rogers to the Upson County Historical Society, also got in touch with Bellwood's part in the Civil War: "Wilson’s Raiders came to...the Kendall home, Bellwood Hall, for 3 days.  Loula was there along with her mother, Louisa and grandmother, Winifred Lane Rogers.  They hid their supplies, horses and mules.  The raiders found it all and they took it all.  One of the raiders pointed a pistol at Loula’s chest and demanded even more."

Loula gave him her jewelry, but asked that they preserve the Hall, where she remembered her childhood as 'one long summertime'. It survived the war, as did Loula's legacy:  21,000 items of family and local history are now in the Special Collections Department at Emory University.