When a museum becomes human

In my home office, I keep two large black and white photos taken in 1905. This was 40 years after the end of slavery in the United States.

One is of my maternal grandmother, Arie Lee Lewis Thomas. She is four years old, standing next to a table, wearing a frilly white dress, stockings, and lace-up black boots.

Her thick black hair is styled in a fashionable schoolgirl's bouffant. An only child, she will fulfil all the ambitions her parents had saved for her brother Lonnie, who died before he turned one.

College, work as a nurse and a teacher, marriage and four children, taxpayer, pillar of the church.

I only knew her as an old woman and I was barely out of diapers then.

The other photo is of her father, my great-grandfather, Matthew Lewis. He wears a suit, vest and tie, and he stares firmly at the camera. He was said to be a tough old soul - a landowner, business owner and railroad employee who didn't laugh easily.

Matthew Lewis died in 1955, years before my parents met, got married and had me.