Shands-Norton Family Photograph Collection, ca. 1860s-2010s
Held by The Filson Historical Society
Creator: Shands and Norton families
Title: Shands-Norton Family Photographs
Rights: For information regarding literary and copyright interest for these photographs, contact the Collections Department.
Size of Collection: 1 cubic ft.
Location Number: 023PC3
Scope and Content Note
A collection of miscellaneous formats of photographs related to the Shands and Norton families and their ancestors from Washington, D.C., Hopewell, Virginia, and Louisville, Kentucky. Materials primarily relate to Alfred Rives Shands, Jr., Elizabeth Prewitt Shands, and their son Alfred Rives Shands, III, an Episcopal priest, film producer, author, art collector, and philanthropist who lived in Louisville.
Folders 1-2 contain photographs of Aurelius Rives Shands and Agnes Eppes Shands, and their children Richard E. Shands, Alfred R. Shands, Jr., George K. Shands, and Agnes Horner Shands, with military studio portraits of the Shands boys.
Folder 3 contains photographs of Eppes family members and various ancestors of Agnes Eppes Shands, including Dr. Richard Eppes, Mary Van Deisen Eppes, and John Welsh (grandfather of Elizabeth Horner Eppes). Of note are photographs of Appomattox Manor in Virginia, two African Americans identified as Sam and Paulina, noted as being “born before the Civil War,” Elise Eppes’s wedding in 1955, and a group photo of the Eppes family in front of Malvern Hill House in Virginia in 1887.
Folders 4-6 includes photographs of Dr. Alfred Rives Shands, Jr., including his childhood, as a student at the University of Virginia, in the Reserve Officers’ Training Corps (ROTC), and as the Chief of Surgery for the Air Force. Also included are Dr. Shands’s wife Elizabeth “Polly” Prewitt Shands, their wedding, family vacations and photographs, and their home in Durham, North Carolina.
Folder 7 is a grouping of photographs of Dr. Alfred R. Shands, Jr., and others that have been removed from an album compiled by the family.
Folders 8-9 contain photographs of members of the Prewitt, Estill, and Sheffer families, including Julia Prewitt Taylor, David Prewitt, Elizabeth Estill Johnson, Hallie Sheffer Estill, Lizzie Sheffer Prewitt, Martha Estill Prewitt, Katherine Prewitt Winn, the ancestors of Elizabeth Prewitt Shands, and copy-print photographs of the family and descendants of Robert and Martha Chandler Prewitt. Also included are photographs of Dunreath, the Sheffer/Prewitt family home on the Fayette/Clark County line.
Folder 10 contains photographs of Jessie Dew Ball duPont, who was friends with Elizabeth Prewitt Shands and married to Alfred I duPont. Included are photographs of Jessie Dew Ball duPont and Elizabeth Shands fishing and hanging out with friends at Cuttyhunk Island in Massachusetts.
Folders 11-14 contain photographs of Alfred Rives Shands, III, from childhood to his young adult life and his career as an Episcopal priest. Folder 12 includes photographs of Al Shands’s graduation ceremony, Al on Deacon’s Day, as a young priest, with his family, and at various unknown ceremonies or events. Folder 13 includes photographs of Al with his wife, Mary Ballard Norton Shands, their wedding day, on trips, together at Churchill Downs, and other miscellaneous group shots with friends and family.
Folder 15 is a group of photographs of Al Shands, III, that have been removed from an album compiled by the family.
Folders 16-18 contain family photographs from the Morton and Norton families, including Kentucky Representative Thruston Ballard Morton, Rogers Clark Ballard Morton, Margaret Muldoon Norton, Dorothy Norton Clay, Jane Lewis Morton Norton, and other unidentified Morton family members. Folder 18 also includes photographs of George Washington Norton, III.
Folder 19 contains various miscellaneous photographs of identified and unidentified persons.
Folder 20 is a grouping of miscellaneous family photos that have been removed from an album that was compiled by the family.
Items removed from collection:
One oversized group photograph of the Journal Board dinner at the Savoy Hotel in London, England, which includes Dr. Alfred Shands, Jr., June 28, 1952 [GRI-64].
Related collections:
Rev. Alfred Rives Shands, III, papers, 1832-2021 [Mss. A S528a]
Thruston and Rogers Morton Photograph Collection [023PC32]
Biographical Note
Alfred R. Shands, Jr., was born to Dr. Aurelius Shands and Agnes Eppes Shands in Washington, D.C., in January 1899. Following in his father’s footsteps, Dr. Shands received his medical degree from the University of Virginia in 1922, where he also ran track. He trained in medicine at Johns Hopkins University’s School of Medicine, where he met his future wife Elizabeth “Polly” Prewitt, who worked there as a graduate nurse. The couple moved to Durham, North Carolina, where Dr. Shands worked as an associate professor of surgery at Duke University School of Medicine. Dr. Shands was a pioneer in the field of orthopedic surgery. While serving at Duke University School of Medicine, he founded the orthopedic department and developed the first orthopedic training program for residents. In his last two years at Duke University, he wrote the Handbook of Orthopedic Surgery.
The family later moved to Wilmington, Delaware, where Dr. Shands was Medical Director of the Nemours Foundation for Crippled Children and was instrumental in the founding of its first health care institution, the Alfred I. duPont Institute, which specialized in the treatment of children with disabilities. Dr. Shands was also the Surgeon in Chief from 1940 until his retirement in 1969, except for a four-year period in which he was the chief of the surgical branch of the Air Surgeon’s Office during World War II. He extended his time in service, serving on the Armed Forces Medical Policy and Advisory Councils from 1951 to 1954. Dr. Shands received the Legion of Merit in 1945.
Dr. Shands and Elizabeth had one son, the Reverend Alfred “Al” Rives Shands, III. Al grew up in the family’s house on the Nemours Estate, now called the “Shands House.” In 1946, Al graduated from Woodberry Forest School in Virginia. He received a BA in English Literature from Princeton and a master’s in divinity from Virginia Theological Seminary, where he was ordained as an Episcopal priest in 1955. Throughout his life, Al preached at churches in Washington, D.C., Michigan, and Louisville. In 1967, he met and married Mary Ballard Norton in Washington, D.C. They moved to Mary’s hometown of Louisville in 1970 and remained active in the Louisville cultural and philanthropic communities until their deaths.
Mary Norton was born to Jane Lewis Morton (sister of Thruston B. Morton and Rogers Clark Ballard Morton), an acclaimed painter and philanthropist, and George Washington Norton, III, who founded the radio franchise WAVE in Louisville. In 1964, after Mary’s father and brother, George IV, died in the same year in separate car accidents, she and her mother took over the running of WAVE. It operated under the name Orion Broadcasting and had stations in cities other than Louisville as well; the franchise was sold in the late 1980s. Mary Shands had three children by her first marriage to Woodford H. Dulaney: Jane, Robin, and Margaret. She and Al married after her divorce from Dulaney. Mary created Foxhollow, a health and wellness spa, which her daughter and granddaughter later converted into Foxhollow Farm. She also helped establish what is now the Kentucky Museum of Arts and Crafts (KMAC).
In 1969, Al started Alfred Shands Productions, Inc., a documentary production company. By 1983, he produced approximately thirty-five films, one of which, “Whose Child is This?”, earned him a Peabody award. He published three books: The Liturgical Movement and the Local Church (1959), Border Crossings (2000), and Rounding the Circle (2013); he was also one of the creators of the revised Book of Common Prayer (1979), now universally used in the Episcopal Church. In 1982, Al founded St. Clement’s Episcopal Church, also known as “House Church,” which met in congregants’ homes as a mission of the Episcopal Diocese of Kentucky. At the same time, he was the vicar of St. John’s Episcopal Church in Harbor Springs, Michigan, where he and Mary had a summer home.
Al and Mary made substantial contributions to cultural and charitable institutions throughout their lives. Al was a board member of the Speed Art Museum, sat on the advisory board of the Peggy Guggenheim Museum in Venice, was a member of New York’s Whitney National Committee, and sat on the Museum of Modern Art’s International Council. He and Mary were serious art collectors. Their home, known as “Great Meadows,” was specially designed by Mary’s cousin, architect David Morton, to house their art collection. In 2010, Al received the Kentucky Governor Awards in the Arts Milner Award for outstanding philanthropic contributions to the arts. He left his art collection to the Speed Art Museum upon his death. He also left behind the Great Meadows Foundation, a grant-giving foundation that supports artists.
Folder List
Folder 1: Aurelius and Agnes Eppes Shands, 1886-1950
Folder 2: Shands family and ancestors, ca. 1860-1940s
Folder 3: Eppes family and ancestors, 1887-1956
Folder 4: Alfred Rives Shands, Jr., 1899-1970s
Folder 5: Elizabeth Prewitt Shands, ca. 1920-1991
Folder 6: Alfed R. Shands, Jr. and Elizabeth Prewitt Shands, 1925-1950s
Folder 7: Alfred R. Shands, Jr., and others, ca. 1930s-1940s (removed from an album)
Folder 8: Prewitt and Estill ancestors, ca. 1900s
Folder 9: Sheffer and Prewitt family and ancestors, 1864-1959
Folder 10: Jessie Dew Ball duPont, 1955-1960
Folder 11: Alfred Rives Shands, III, 1929-1960s
Folder 12: Alfred Rives Shands, III, 1940s-2000s
Folder 13: Alfred Rives Shands, III, and Mary Norton Shands, ca. 1960s-2000s
Folder 14: Mary Norton Shands, 1934-2000s
Folder 15: Alfred Rives Shands, III, ca. 2000-2010s (removed from an album)
Folder 16: Norton family, ca. 1930s-1960s
Folder 17: Morton family, 1911-1960s
Folder 18: Jane Lewis Morton Norton, ca. 1920s-1950s
Folder 19: Miscellaneous identified and unidentified people, ca. 1900-1950s
Folder 20: Miscellaneous Shands family photographs, 1926-1970s (removed from an album)
Subject Headings
Appomattox Manor (Hopewell, Va.)
Churchill Downs (Louisville, Ky: Racetrack).
Deacons.
Du Pont, Jessie Ball, 1884-1970.
Episcopal Church.
Morton family.
Morton, Rogers Clark Ballard, 1914-1979.
Morton, Thruston Ballard, 1907-1982.
Norton family.
Norton, George Washington, III, 1902-1964.
Norton, Jane Morton, 1908-1988.
Priests.
Prewitt family.
Shands family.
Shands, Alfred Rives, III, 1928-2021.
Shands, Alfred Rives, Jr., 1899-1981.
Shands, Aurelius Rives, 1860-1941.
Shands, Elizabeth Prewitt, 1898-1993.
Shands, Mary Norton, 1930-2009.
Sheffer family.
Theology.
Travel.
Weddings.
