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Date: 20 May 1920
Daily Local News; courtesy of Chester County Historical Society
In the early morning of Sunday, May 16, 1920 at ‘Rhydlyn’, Berwyn, the country seat of Mr. and Mrs. James G. Francis, Miss Lucy A. Sampson passed away, after a very brief illness with pneumonia. She was born in Lowell, Mass., but came to Berwyn but a little girl [incorrect]. She was the daughter of Albert and Leora B. Sampson. Her father, whose skilled touch is evident in the granite facings of the Masonic Temple, Philadelphia Saving Fund Society, the Record and other buildings of whose erection he was superintendent, died in 1890. Her mother, a lady of rare grace and sweetness, died eighteen years later. Miss Lucy was a descendent of the “Mayflower” company, was related to John Alden and Myles Standish, and was also of Revolutionary ancestry.
In 1898 she took up professionally the art of photography, and soon became one of the most familiar of Berwyn figures as she moved around the village with her camera. She acquired a most extensive collection of picturesque rural and sylvan scenes, historic buildings, the interiors of stately homes along the Main Line, and group and individual portraits. Prints from some of her, literally, thousands of negatives have gone across the sea; many have adorned books and magazines.
She was a long time member of the Great Valley Baptist Church, devoted to its local interests, serving as organist, and concerned to her last conscious moments with its benevolences. Her death was a shock to her many friends, who took a final look at her face on the evening of the 18th; on the following morning a private funeral service was held in charge of her pastor, the Rev. Joseph Evans Sagebeer, Ph. D. and interment was made in Woodland Cemetery, Philadelphia.
By her death the original family group is now limited to her sisters Mrs. Sarah R. Francis and Miss I. Fannie Sampson.
References
Lucy Sampson, Berwyn Photographer by Mike Bertram & Tim Lander, TEHS Quarterly, vol. 48, #2 (June 2011) |