Emily Spencer Hayden photograph collection

Emily Harrison Spencer Hayden (1869-1949) was a photographer who lived in and around Baltimore. She was born near Randallstown at her family's farm, called “The Martin's Nest.” Her parents were Edward Spencer (1834-1883) and A.C. Bradford “Braddie” Harrison Spencer (1841-1882). Edward was a writer and dramatist who wrote at times for the Baltimore Bulletin and the Sun, and whose best known play was “Kit, the Arkansas Traveler.” He also collaborated with J. Thomas Scharf on his historical works on Baltimore City. Braddie Spencer was born in Talbot County, and the couple married in 1861. The Spencer family had 4 children, Emily, Katherine, Robert, and Webster Lindsley. Sometime before 1880 they moved to Baltimore City so that Edward would be closer to his literary colleagues and for access to formal education for the children.

With the deaths of both Braddie and Edward Spencer in the early 1880s, care of the younger Spencer children was left to a woman named Eliza Benson (1836-1921), known as “Mammy.” An African American woman, a freed slave, Benson had worked for the Harrison and Spencer families for many years when the parents died, and would live with Emily Spencer Hayden after Emily married and had children. A family friend, Mr. John McCoy supported the children financially, and the oldest Spencer boy was old enough to work. At the time of Edward Spencer's death, the family resided at 294 North Stricker Street in Baltimore, Maryland.

Emily Spencer graduated Western High School as valedictorian in 1878, and worked as a first grade teacher in the Baltimore Public Schools for a time. In her spare time, she was a painter, reader, skater, and singer in the Ascension Episcopal Church choir. She met Charles S. Hayden (born 1870, Baltimore), possibly at the Shakespeare Club which both attended. After Charles’ graduation from law school and acceptance to the bar, the two married on September 1, 1893. They moved to Mosher Street, and their first child, Ruth, was born in 1895. In around 1901, the family moved to Windermere Ave. in Waverly, where two more children were born: Catherine Spencer Hayden in 1902 and Anna (Nan) Bradford Hayden in 1905. Emily became friends with her neighbor, the poet Lizette Woodworth Reese, who often spent time at “Nancy’s Fancy” with the family.

When Emily began making photographs in the 1890s, her husband gave her a camera. She was already an accomplished artist who especially enjoyed making watercolors of Maryland scenes. In 1906, the family moved to a home called “Nancy's Fancy” on nine or ten acres in Catonsville near Mt. de Sales Academy. This land and house, along with family and friends, were the focus of Emily's photographic work for the next 40 years. The thirteen room house was built in 1732 by the Davis family. The house was torn down in 1970 to build the Christian Temple Church. Emily transformed an upstairs bathroom into a dark room, and did all of her own developing and printing, working with a large format camera. She submitted her work to publications and exhibitions in the United States and abroad.