Apr 07, 2022 - Sale 2600

Sale 2600 - Lot 278

Price Realized: $ 750
?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 400 - $ 600
(WEST--NEW MEXICO.) Photographs of two United Brethren mission schools in the upper Rio Grande Valley. 27 photographs: 5 of them 5 x 7 inches on original plain mounts, and the others smaller (about 2 x 3 inches) and unmounted, all captioned on verso, though students are not named; generally minor wear. Velarde and Santa Cruz, NM, circa 1916-1925
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Additional Details

In 1910, United Brethren missionaries founded a mission school in remote Velarde, NM, between Santa Fé and Taos. An additional campus was launched in 1915, several miles down river in the town of Santa Cruz, NM, which became known as the McCurdy Mission School. These photographs depict the buildings, staff, and students at both schools. They were apparently collected by Mary Esther Brawner (1893-1977), an Illinois native who taught at the Velarde school as a missionary from 1916 to 1925. The large-format photographs bear several generations of captions, but the captions written in blue ink match Brawner's period of service, and beneath some of them a later owner has written "Miss Bronner."

The school was the subject of Robert H. Terry's 1984 book "Light in the Valley: The McCurdy Mission Story" (copy included with the lot), which discussed Miss Brawner at length. The book has only two pre-1920 photographs, not duplicated here. The school survives today as the McCurdy Charter School in Espanola, NM.