An unappreciated vision in the stacks
by Jack Neely
Giving a talk over at Ramsey's a couple of weeks ago, I mentioned that I got a lot of ideas for these columns at the McClung Collection. Afterward, one elderly gentleman thought I'd said I got ideas from "my coin collection," and he wanted to hear more about how that works.
I thought it may be worth my time to explain the place to those who don't go up there every day. Formally the "Calvin M. McClung Historical Collection," it's a specialized library of local history and genealogy, located in several rooms of the third floor of the soon-to-expand Custom House at the corner of Market and Clinch. It's a cool sanctuary from the modern world. I've recently been accused of loitering up there, just to stay off the hot streets.
You can't deny it's an interesting place to loiter. The main reading room is an old, vaulted federal courtroom. Adjoining it is a small, darkened room, where there are about a dozen hand-cranked microfilm-reading machines. It's not unusual for most of them to be in use, each with someone sitting quietly with a head in the machine, quietly poring over a bright image.
The patrons are scholars, community historians, people trying to prove there's someone worthwhile in their family trees, and sometimes a random reporter or two. It's pretty quiet up there most of the time, and most of the patrons, many of whom are retired, like it that way. Branch libraries are noisier than they used to be, but people still whisper at McClung.
There was an uncustomary stir in the room this summer, when an elderly visitor was scrolling through some Jacksonian-era deed books for Smith County, Tennessee. All the deeds on the roll are in blotted ink, in a quill-pen scrawl. Every page looks roughly like the Declaration of Independence. I can only imagine this particular researcher's consternation when she came across one section of the microfilm, page 32 in volume P.
What she found there was a striking black-and-white photograph. That in itself would have been startling enough, because photography was rare during the era of those deeds. It more surprising, though, because it was a photograph of a conspicuously endowed woman standing on a beach, leaning, uncomfortably it seems to me, against a large piece of driftwood. It's the sort of pose you never see anyone make for any practical purpose: she's looking to the side, with her arm stretched behind her head. She has her right leg raised, her knee pointing out to sea.
She wears makeup and a brunette hairdo that you'd tend to associate with the first term of the Truman administration, if not with Bess herself. And she's completely naked.
Below the picture is a note, in less- careful handwriting than that of the Smith County deeds. Dated "3rd Mar. 1828," it reads "Luke. Iffen you don't quit chasing Injun wimmen + Bear huntin, I'm gwine run offen wif DAVY CROCKETT... Jest LOOK At Whut youins will Bee Missing. LUV, Nancy Lou."
The photo, and note, appears right on top of a scrupulously inked Indenture of some sort, repeated without the photo on the next panel. The person who did the copying obviously added the photo deliberately, then made another copy of the legal document, in case anyone might need to read it. Librarians wonder if an archivist happened across the photo tucked into the Smith County ledgers and dutifully copied it on the possibility that it might be historic.
It could have been historic, I suppose. If her note said she was running off with Thomas Dewey or Estes Kefauver, it might well have been a historic document. But as it is, I contend that it's a forgery. Her eyeliner's all wrong for 1828.
No one knows when this particular roll of microfilm was made. There are miles and miles of microfilm at McClung: thousands of rolls of it in dozens of metal drawers. People are scrolling through them in these old machines almost all the time, but any particular roll might not get looked at very closely in any given decade.
It was a rare find. I've been researching through rolls of microfilm at McClung for over 10 years, but have never encountered photographs of nude women. I would have taken such an encounter as a lucky sign.
But it sounds like this particular patron didn't feel especially lucky about it. The startled lady was reportedly upset about the discovery, convinced the librarians at McClung had patched it into her micro-film to play a trick on her. She didn't appreciate it one bit.
I believe the fine people at McClung are innocent, but identifying the forger is a tougher problem. The miscreant left only a few clues. The photo is pretty obviously '40s, maybe early '50s. (Some believe it to be Jane Russell herself.) So we know that the misdemeanor either happened during that period, or was perpetrated by someone with a demonstrated interest in pre-Hefner pornography. We also know that the perpetrator was someone who had at least a passing acquaintance with Tennessee history: Both Davy Crockett and a large number of Indian women were indeed still thriving in Tennessee in 1828—though they'd all be gone, suffering very different fates, within a decade. Of course, there's the possibility that we may have a pretty vivid photograph of the perpetrator, whose name may well be Nancy Lou.
Sadly, the librarians were obliged to report the irregularity to the state archives, who prudently replaced it with a less-artistic copy of the Smith County microfilm.
August 22, 2002 * Vol. 12, No. 34
© 2002 Metro Pulse
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