Nancy's Fancy, undated

Hayden especially liked to take pictures of her daughters, female friends and family and their children. The collection includes a large number of portraits of her youngest daughter, Anna “Nan” Bradford Hayden, which document her growth from baby to young adulthood. Some of these photographs feature props, such as her teddy bear and a Brownie camera. Another often photographed subject is her family’s maid and former slave, Eliza “Mammy” Benson. The portraits depict Benson in domestic settings, such as the kitchen or with children. Her friend, Sue Collins, also appears frequently in Hayden’s work, and she did a series of poet Lizette Woodworth Reese, in a garden. She also took many photographs of her home, Nancy’s Fancy, its gardens, and orchard, as well as the animals which the family kept. Her portraits were often taken in the house or gardens surrounding the property. She also took a series of photographs featuring students from Goucher College in which they perform a dance or play of “Cupid and Psyche.” A note on back of one of the photographs states that the women’s performance stopped traffic on Edmondson Avenue. The students were probably part of a group called the “Dickens Club.”

The modern photographs in the collection appear to have been taken by the donors of the collection, either Hayden’s daughter, Anna “Nan” Bradford Hayden Agle, or her nephew, Philip H. Wanzer. They show the family homes as they looked in 1984. The glass plate negatives were donated by Wanzer and reference images of those negatives are included in the collection in Series VIII.