John Pendygraft

Wet plate photography was invented in the 1850s. Images are made on tin or glass on site, using a portable darkroom. The process is slow, difficult, temperamental and inefficient, especially compared to how quickly and easily we make photos today. By slowing down, making images becomes collaborative. It embraces human connectivity and seeks surprises. We need those spaces today more than ever.

My current work focuses specifically on streets named “Main Street.” I approach people on a Main Street and ask if they would like to work together to create a wet plate photo. Along the way, they are invited to share their origin stories. Every participant receives a wet plate image that they helped create. Hopefully, they leave the experience feeling like their origin stories have been heard, respected, recorded and acknowledged. Afterwards, I make an archival platinum palladium print, bring it to them and offer to continue telling stories together.

Click here for an interactive map of Pennsylvania Main Streets

For 34 of its 283 years, Susan Borders has been the heart and soul of the nation’s second oldest library. She keeps 50 cents on the front desk for a particularly large and intimidating regular they’ve nicknamed “Gruff” (after illustrations in the children’s book The Gruffalo). She knows Gruff uses the two quarters to buy one banana at the local hospital just up the street. She knows a nearby homeless shelter closes between 9:00 a.m. and 4:00 p.m., and makes sure the library is a welcoming place, rain, shine or snow. “I meet people who other people might be afraid of. The community needs us and we need the community.” She takes a call about late fines, “Just bring the books in and we’ll waive the fees. I just want you to keep reading.” The caller got off easy. Normally, she makes people tell her a story before she waives their late fees.

She fumbles with a flustered dad and a grumpy toddler trying to make a letter-size print from an email attachment on an iPhone. “Just try to send it and we’ll see if the size is right. First one is on me.”

“The history of this place isn’t about dates. This is a living library. It is about 280-something years of days with people.”

And with ghosts. Ask any of the librarians. Books fall. Smells hover from nowhere. Stairs creek. Each librarian has stories.

In 1982, Borders was nine months pregnant with her first child, working at K-Mart, and looking for a house she could afford. She found a twin on Poplar Street in Darby for $25,000 and jumped on it. 

It was a different Darby back then. “The block was one, big, unrelated family,” she remembers. In grade school, her daughter and two neighborhood friends started dressing identically and introducing themselves as triplets. She could watch all the kids walk to school together and back from her front porch. 

When she first brought her two-year-old daughter to the Darby Library, there were no scheduled story times. She asked then-library president William Frasch if she could organize one. Children lit up around her. Frash recognized how Borders brought the library to life and hired her part time. 

In 1992, he asked her if she balanced her check book regularly. When she said yes, he paid for her to go to community college for accounting and put her in charge of the books. 

In 1994, the head librarian resigned and Frasch offered the job to Borders, on two-year probation. In that time, she would have to earn her associates degree and librarian certificate. She aced her classes and won hearts in the community. For the 275h anniversary of the library she dedicated herself to writing a book that compiled the library’s history.

When her daughter was 16, crack pipes began littering their peaceful neighborhood. There was little the police could do, so she eventually moved her family. “The whole block has turned over. I think there is just one family still there that we know.”

The Darby Free Library, located at 1001 Main Street, is the oldest library in the country in continuous operation. The library was established in 1743 by twenty-nine Darby Quakers. It was modeled after Benjamin Franklin's Library Company, which formed in 1731. The Darby Library claimed the title “oldest library in continuous operation” when Franklin’s Library Company closed for repairs after a fire. The librarians who work there claim it is haunted.

Harold Finigan is untroubled by the sweat saturating his shirt or the record-breaking summer heat. He paces an open lot at 1000 Main Street with a cell phone to his ear, walking first towards the historic library, on the southwest side of the lot, and then towards the historic Darby Friends Meeting house on the north side. 

Finigan is supervising renovations on both. He is solidly against all forms of personal vanity and guides his days through time-honored Quaker principles: simplicity, peace, integrity, community, equality and stewardship. 

In him, Darby’s history, and the ways it created the America we know today, is very much alive.

He traces his own Quaker values to 1682 - one year after King Charles II granted William Penn a charter for the land that would become Pennsylvania. That year, the Darby Quaker meeting was established along the Great Minquas Path by John Blunston as a foundation for Penn’s “holy experiment” - a country unified by a commitment to freedom of religion, equality and democratic government.

Darby is Finnigan’s hometown. He loves its history obsessively, particularly its commitment to abolition and human equality. He remembers being a young boy walking past century-old greenhouses that were once crowded with mulberry trees. His father was a well-known businessman in Darby who made sure his son knew that the greenhouses were part of a Quaker abolitionist movement, and that the town was once surrounded by acres upon acres of mulberry orchards.

Finigan explains that many early abolitionist Quakers would not wear cotton, the economic foundation of the slave economy in their time. The mulberry trees hosted worms that produced silk for clothing mills built along Darby Creek, which runs along Main Street. The mills produced silk as a thriving, exportable alternative to cotton.

In an act that would one day haunt Darby, hills along Main Street were lowered to allow horse drawn carts to pull trading barges up the creek to those factories. Then, for generations, people dumped dirt in the creek to dispose of it. As towns around the creek became paved, less water was absorbed by surrounding soil. Increased runoff filled the creek with more sediment. When Finnigan was a boy, Main Street was cobblestone and the creek was deep enough to swim in. Today it runs shallow.

That changed landscape altered Darby forever in 1999, when Hurricane Floyd flood waters decimated homes and businesses along the waterway.

Harold Finnigan

Jan and John Haigis, who jokingly describe themselves as “vaguely Victorian,” pose in front of their home at 1006 Main St. The home was once owned by Passmore Williamson, who, along with “Father of the Underground Railroad” William Still, was jailed in 1855 for helping Jane Johnson and her two sons escape slavery.

Early on in any conversation with the couple, you will very likely hear about at least one of their two quirky obsessions. They will either sing a duet of one of the hundreds of songs they have written together (“I can always make a harmony,” Jan explains. “I don’t know what key he is going to be in, but we never stop singing.”) or they will dive into the minutiae of Darby history.

Their shared love of Darby history began in 1985 when John rode his bicycle past the Blue Bell Inn, a crumbling tavern at the very end of Main Street. He didn’t know that it was once frequented by George Washington, housed troops during the American Revolution, or was the site of an epic battle in 1777 led by Lord Cornwallis and 2,500 soldiers. But he was curious.

The couple learned the Blue Bell was on a list to be destroyed and approached the city

about saving the inn. “The city council told us ‘it would cost money to tear it down, so let’s see what they can do,’” John explains. They leased it to the couple for $1 a year.

A small grant allowed Jan and John to replace doors and windows and find a caretaker. The couple created Friends of the Blue Bell. The group of new friends became a kind of family.

They leased the inn from 1985 until 1999 and did what they could. Then Hurricane Floyd hit and flooded the interior.

Today, the city maintains the exterior and the Haigises curate a website to preserve Darby history.

As Bernard Freeman, assistant foreman for Darby Borough Public Works, rides his lawnmower across the now-vacant lot at 870 Main Street, he remembers when it was Woolworth. He points to the corner of the lot where the cafeteria counter used to be. There were balloons on the ceiling. You pulled them down, and the price you paid for your ice cream sundae was written on a piece of paper. 

“Main Street back then was bustling. We had jewelry stores, hardware stores, shoe stores. You didn’t have to go to the mall for nothing. Christmas time? You did all your shopping here. Everything was right here in Darby. You could get everything you needed. Everything. Man, it was bustling. But now? People don’t do the small towns anymore. At least, not here.”

There were parades down Main Street. There was a huge Christmas Parade, a Memorial Day Parade with a tank kids could climb on, a parade to open Little League season, and a parade for the high school homecoming football game.

“Last parade I can remember must have been fifteen, twenty years ago?”

Freeman has five children. They were born in 1987, 1999, 2001, 2004 and 2006. Only the child born in 1987 had the opportunity to play Little League, PAL football or was able to join a swim club. Local organizations dried up in the 90s.

“We didn’t have the volunteers and parent participation. Recreation wise, we didn’t have anything anymore.”

And then Floyd hit. The storm took one life, impacted 330 homes and 59 businesses. Many of the businesses never reopened. Scores of properties were purchased by the government, who relocated families and leveled homes. 

Freeman was hired by the city as part of the cleanup. The job, which he still holds today, hit home. “I have aunts, uncles, sisters, cousins, all kinds of family here. 10th Street is named after my uncle, Marine Lt. General Ronald S. Coleman.”

This is his hometown, come what may. “If you can make it here you can make it anywhere. Darby makes you tough. It’s a no-nonsense type of town.”

James Vani, 71, who is also with Darby Borough Public Works, fled Liberia’s civil war with his wife in 2002. They joined his parents in Florida. “My wife went to nursing school. She graduated and everything, but she couldn’t find a job. She tried to find a job in Florida, but she couldn’t because of our accent. Maybe I’m talking to you and you can’t understand me? Even myself, I have some problems with people from the South. The way they speak is a little but different, Vani explains,  “A friend of my wife was here [in Darby] and she said ‘Come over here. You will be able to find a job because there are a lot of Africans here.’”

There are. According to Data USA, 20 percent of Darby Township is foreign born, and 79 percent of that population comes from Africa. If you drive down Darby Main Street a short distance to the Philadelphia city line, the road turns into Africatown. The organization website touts the area as, “the premier destination for the global African Diaspora, celebrating arts, culture, and business.”

As soon as Vani’s wife got a job, she called her husband to join her. “So, I came here and got a job, too. Everywhere I go, if I got a job, I’m happy. I'm lucky. I have a job in Darby and I live in Darby. Thanks be to God.”

“Almost nobody from my generation is going to be able to buy a house,” laments Machi Hall, 17. His family moved to Darby two years ago from West Philly because “the crime here is lower and the houses are cheaper.” Hall worries about AI replacing jobs, a future that might soon spin out of human control, and the possibility that current conflicts will escalate into a global war. He dreams of a career in 3D film animation, but what if AI takes those jobs? He has also made plans to enroll in a four-year electrical contractor apprenticeship program, with an eye to joining a union. “I won’t get rich, but it will put food on the table,” he says. Buying a home feels out of reach, so he dreams of one day buying some land and building a house himself. As he wrestles with an uncertain future, Hall grounds himself in faith. “My last word? To all my people who have been oppressed in this country…keep the Bible’s laws, statutes and commandments. You will be saved.”

In 1990, Artan Sulollari was serving in the Albanian army. One day, they brought him in for questioning. At the time, he had no idea that one of his brothers had fled the communist country. 

“They beat me up very good, to tell them what I knew. I didn’t know anything. There was a couple guys in the room asking me stupid questions. Where is your brother? I said he was working, because he was working in the mines at the time. I didn’t know anything. From the beating and stuff, I lost a little bit of hearing. When people talk, I have to make sure I understand them well…It was a crazy life there. The communism was the worst communism. They would say ‘this guy does propaganda, this guy is a spy.’ They wound arrest you. They'd beat you. They put you in jail. They'd take your family. They’d incarcerate you far, far away. That happened to a lot of people in my village. In 1990, most of them were coming back. They were very healthy people, but when they came back, you don’t even know them.”

The Sulollari family was granted political asylum in the early 1990s. Today, Tony and his brother run Main Street Pizza in Darby and care for their aging parents, who live just a few houses down from the restaurant. 

“Have you ever seen the movie The Outlaw Josey Wales? Clint Eastwood says to the Apache chief ‘I’ve come to live with you, because the government will follow you. I’ve come to live with you or fight with you. To die is easy. To live is hard. Because life is hard, and death is easy.’ That’s how it is.”

Paul Feldman was born September 18, 1947, one day before his father opened Benett’s men’s wear store on Main Street. “I remember as a kid my dad giving me a check to deposit in the bank on Friday night. I had to walk in the streets because the sidewalks were so crowded,” he remembers. “You know how many stores there were in Darby that were run by a father and a son? I am the only one that is still around. Everyone else closed. There were 177 businesses along Main Street in the 70s. Now, really, you have mostly churches and beauty shops.”

Feldman looks around, “This place is starting to fall apart. I am, too.”

William  Hall, 73, works a couple days a week at the store. He remembers coming in as a young boy.

“Kids, when I came up, were ignorant. You better not wear the same clothes twice a week. They would tease you like you stole something from them. My mother used to do a day’s work for $6.00 a day. So, I used to collect cans and bottles to take them back for the refund. I would bring my money here and put my clothes on layaway. Heavens to Betsy I didn't know I'd be working here today.”

The store still offers layaway to its customers.

To this day, Hall dresses with personal flair. His look is always cleaned and pressed. “My clothes cleaning bill is higher than my insurance,” he laughs. 

Two years ago, Hall felt lightheaded and dizzy. He went to the doctor. The diagnosis was bad. Throat cancer. I didn't know it. I thought I was having a stroke. And when they did the blood work, up jumps Johnny C. Stage four. The chemo didn’t bother me, but the radiation, that got me. Underneath my feet, by my toes, I couldn’t feel anything. I have pretty good balance, but I didn’t feel my feet, none of it. But it came back, a little bit. That’s why you see me on my comfort stool.”

During his cancer treatment, he turned to coworkers at Benett’s for advice and support. He motions to store manager Bud Teaford, 55.

“This guy here, every time I went to the doctor I came to him. He would enlighten me, because my education is shallow, but I thirst for knowledge. I wasn’t afraid to ask him, ‘What does this mean?’ As a man, that’s hard to do, as a grown man, but there’s nothing I wouldn’t tell him.”

Hall believes his life was spared by the power of shared faith, close community and daily love.

“Suppose my heart was sheltered. Do you think God would have looked out for me?”

He brings his unsheltered heart to work every day.

“When I come in, I won’t say to him, ‘Hi.’ I say ‘Bud I love you.’ Everyday.”

“I love you too,” Bud answers.

“If you don’t have love, you don’t get no love. You get that mental aggravation.”

Bud laughs, “We get plenty of that here, too.”

For 133 rodeos, John Kelly Poorman was Avis T-Bone McGroin. The clown makeup was not his first, or last, mask.

For 15 years, Poorman ran “Kelly Crew,” a crack team that organized the arena and kept everything on track in the early years of the International Gay Rodeo Association circuit. “Now gay rodeo is 50 years old, but back then it was just starting, and people were desperate for it. There were people in the rodeo who said no photographs because they were hiding who they were,” he explains.

His journey began in an abusive home on Main Street in Boalsburg, Pa. His life brought him full circle.

“I grew up thinking I was the only gay person in the world. I lived in Boalsburg. There were no gay people that I knew of,” Poorman remembers. “I have always been fearful of putting myself out there, because I might get hurt, in real ways…That’s why people have multiple personalities. It is a survival mechanism. I know people by the way they talk to me. All the rodeo people call me Kelly. In my church, since my dad’s name was John, they called me Little Jackie. For my books I am J. Kelly Poorman. I tell people ‘In three states I’m Trixie.’ So, depending on who's talking to me and how they talk to me, I know what persona I need to be in front of them. I still use my masks all the time, I’ve just become aware of them.”

When “Little Jackie” was 17 years old, he heard God sigh, and his life changed.

He was in the back row of the choir at St. John’s church on a warm Sunday in May, 1965. A whispered message telegraphed through the choir that it was too hot to wear the church robes. Poorman thought to himself that, compared to the suffering Jesus endured, why worry about such a slight discomfort?

“I heard a sigh, the kind of sigh that says, ‘you’ve finally got it.’ It was coming from my left, but there was no one seated to my left. Just an open window. I looked outside and that’s when I felt the presence of God for the first time.”

When he told the pastor about the moment, the reverend asked, “During what part of my sermon did that happen?” When Poorman the sermon has nothing to do with it, the pastor replied, “Then it probably wasn’t God.”

“He went on to say that the devil had many ways of trying to get my soul. I didn’t know what to think. I figured if the devil could reach inside a church and get my soul, what kind of chance did I have out in the street? How could God let that happen? I had it rough enough being queer. I took a step back from the church and a bigger step from God.”

Poorman’s family grew up at St. John’s. His mother was brought to the church when she was just one year old. She prayed there for a better marriage when her husband beat her. She kicked him out when he started beating the kids. The congregation stood by her in the early 1960s when she became one of the first women in the small town to be a single parent.

Poorman couldn’t wait to get out of Boalsburg. He left the family home on Main Street, joined the Army and served eight years. He lived in California for 25 years. For seven years he was married to a women (“I desperately wanted to be straight,” he says). He worked the rodeo, and traveled the country as a portrait photographer. When he was 45 years old, he started writing books and short stories based on his experiences. His first novel, Roman and Jules, is about unrequited love on the gay rodeo circuit.

Then, in 1998, he planned a three-week visit to see his mother back in Boalsburg. One morning while he was in town, she suffered congestive heart failure and a torn rotator cuff. That day, Poorman’s life changed again. He became a caregiver back in the childhood home on Main Street that he thought he had left for good.

He settled back into the St. John’s church community with the understanding that being gay wasn't a problem.

One day he was told the congregation was not comfortable with him being a mentor for an all-boys confirmation class.

He wrote a play based on his struggles for acceptance as an openly gay Christian, “All the Little Children: An Inclusionary Tale.”

In the play, a congregation faces an all-or-nothing moment: Accept that being gay and a good Christian are not incompatible or lose a faithful and lifelong member for good.

The play was performed by area churches and on a national level at the General Synod of the United Church of Christ in Grand Rapids, MN.

Today Poorman is a leader in his congregation and carries keys to the St. John’s chapel.

No more masks.

Click here to link to the series homepage.

A miracle cure. A sick boy. A reason to hope.

An autistic child melts down. A police officer makes a decision. A family suffers the consequences.