From the Press of Atlantic City, December 12, 2004 ..... Research brings life to A.C portraitsBy By JOHN BRAND, Staff Writer, (609-272-7275 or JBrand@pressofac.com)Genealogist Walter McClister thinks he has discovered who is in nine drawings found in the crawl space of a Michigan Avenue home in Atlantic City.Some time around 1893, 19-year-old Jeremiah Pettijohn may have looked across Delaware farmland at sunset, then at his calloused hands and thought there was an easier way to fill his pockets.The City By The Sea. A place called Atlantic City - where hotels hired blacks to work jobs that white people thought were menial. Once Pettijohn arrived in 1893, his life changed. No longer tilling soil, Pettijohn got work first as an operator runner, then as a hotel bellman. He married Anna Graham in 1906, buried her in the mid-1920s and married again. Every so often, he returned to Delaware, perhaps to give his family a few bucks. He apparently made enough money to dress in fine fashion, live on the north side of town and have family members’ faces drawn onto linen canvases. And this is when the story gets interesting. Those drawings, nine in total, somehow ended up buried in the sandy crawl space of a Michigan Avenue house until four months ago. That’s when fate brought Ralph Hunter III, a museum director, face-to-face with a century-old black family. In August, the charcoal portraits were shrouded in mystery. But today, genealogist Walter McClister is scouring public records - property deeds, death certificates, obituaries - to determine just who are the people in the portraits. But he is not certain. Genealogy is one of those endeavors that each time you turn over a piece of paper, you find more questions than answers, McClister says. But the clues suggest these portraits are of Pettijohn, one of his wives, her relatives and a little girl believed to be either Pettijohn’s daughter from another marriage or a stepdaughter, he added. Based on his research, McClister thinks the little girl with the braids is Liola Pettijohn. She looks like a mix of black and an American Indian. Liola became a career schoolteacher in Atlantic City before returning to Delaware. She married late in life, and McClister believes her lineage traces to the Davis family of Delaware. She died in 1973 at 80 years old. “It’s really intriguing,” said McClister, who began the research after reading about the portraits in The Press of Atlantic City “It’s like solving a puzzle.” Hunter, director of the African American Heritage Museum, calls the portraits his greatest discovery. In more than 30 years of collecting black artifacts, Hunter has never found any two pieces in the same place. But in August, an acquaintance suggested he check out the Michigan Avenue home because its tenants were moving away. “Now we know where they’re buried,” Hunter said. “We’ve been to the (Atlantic City) cemetery. We photographed (Pettijohn’s) tombstone. It’s quite incredible.” The tale is even more striking because it is vintage Atlantic City Blacks flocked to the resort at the turn of the century, looking for jobs. They made money, raised families, attended churches and social clubs. They also helped build the town, which today is one of the most popular all-purpose resorts in the nation with a rich, unique and sometimes notorious history The museum recently paid $1,000 to restore each portrait, which were wet, faded, cracked and damaged by time. It is looking for five more $1,000 donations to help cover the costs of the restoration. Pettijohn eventually died at 70 years old in Atlantic City on April 15, 1946, having once owned the house at 704 Michigan Ave., where the portraits were found, McClister said. Although McClister’s research seems to paint the picture that Pettijohn lived a comfortable middle-class life, the fact that he died from cirrhosis of the liver suggests he struggled through periods of despair. “He was a drinker. He was a partier,” McClister said. “And by the 1920s, liquor was against the law.” Or, perhaps the vices available in Atlantic City changed the simple farm boy with big dreams into ... something else. To e-mail John Brand at The Press: JBrand@pressofac.com ON DISPLAY‘Portraits of The People’ will be displayed at the African American Heritage Museum in Newtonville from Jan. 2 to Jan. 30. In February, the exhibit will go to the Atlantic City Arts Center in honor of Black History Month. Museum Director Ralph Hunter Ill is also scheduling other bookings for March, April and May.Anyone interested in making a donation to help the museum cover the costs of restoring the portraits can call Hunter at (609) 704-7262. [Photo] Ralph Hunter has eight portraits on display at the African American Heritage Museum in Newtonville, Atlantic County. In February, the exhibit will move to the Atlantic CIty Arts Center as part of Black History Month.
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