[Vernacular Photograph Album Featuring Views in and Around Lake Charles, Lake Arthur, and Jennings, Louisiana, Taken by a Local Woman at the Turn of the 20th Century]

[Various locations in Louisiana, 1903. About very good.. Twelve leaves, illustrated with twenty silver gelatin photographs. Contemporary gray cloth photograph album, string-tied, front cover stamped in gilt, "The Kodak Book." Noticeable soiling and rubbing to boards, edges worn. Two photographs detached, mild wear to a few pictures, but overall nice condition. A charming collection of vernacular images of southern Louisiana in the first few years of the 20th century, taken by local resident May Hill Wilkinson. Wilkinson has signed the inside front cover in pencil, "Mrs. C A Wilkinson May Hill Lake Charles and Jennings." Additionally, manuscript notes on the inside front cover, a couple of slips inside the album, and on the verso of one of the loose photographs also indicate Wilkinson's authorship of the pictures, per her daughter Lyllis (who indicates the pictures were taken before she was born in Jennings in 1904). Wilkinson's photographs mostly depict scenes on the waters of Lake Charles and Lake Arthur, but also include a handful of scenes in the wooded areas around Jennings. A particularly striking photograph captures an oil field fire in Evangeline, Louisiana, according to a later note from Lyllis opposite the photo; Evangeline is only six miles from Jennings, and was the site of the first oil strike in Louisiana in September 1901. Wilkinson's photograph captures a billowing cloud of smoke at left, with men and oil derricks visible to the right. This is likely one of the earliest vernacular photographs of the Evangeline Oil Field, which would bring untold riches to the people of Jennings. A nice mixture of images from a time and place rarely seen in vernacular photographs.