Ancarrow Wildflower Collection
Now showing on the Cabell Screen through summer are selected pieces from the Ancarrow Wildflower Digital Archive, one of the many digital collections found on Scholars Compass.
Newton Ancarrow was a noted environmentalist whose work focused on the James River in the area of Richmond, Virginia. Photographing wildflowers was one of his many interests, and from 1968 to 1971 he documented more than 400 species of wildflowers along the banks of the James. He created a slideshow that he gave to garden clubs, women’s groups and other civic organizations.
While looking for illegal sewage dumping into the river, Ancarrow began to photograph wildflowers all along the area, eventually amassing a collection of roughly 35,000 slides. In his own words, he “attempted to locate, identify, photograph, and document the flowers and flower like plants on the Richmond James.” The area studied consisted of the pre-annexation City boundries [sic] up and down the river (i.e. the ACL Tressel [sic] upstream and Deepwater Terminal downstream), the Kanawha Canal on the north bank, and the Southern Railway on the south bank” (Catalogue of Flowers).
In the late 1960s and early ’70s, he became a popular conservation speaker, talking about river pollution as well as his wildflower images. In 1982, Ancarrow served on the Advisory Board to the Lewis Ginter Botanical Garden Board of Directors. After his death, Ancarrow’s family donated his wildflower slide collection to the Ginter.
Categories Community, Digital Collections