Florence and Grace

Portrait of two African American women identified as sisters, Florence Ann Bell and Grace E. Bell. Photographed circa 1908 by Joseph J Pennell in Junction City, Kansas. Pennell Photography Collection/Kansas Collection, Kenneth Spencer Research Library, University of Kansas

The two women are sisters Florence Ann Bell and Grace E. Bell. Florence married Lloyd William Henson Hardin in 1893 at the age of nineteen. They had a total of five kids. Her husband -was a veteran of the Spanish-American War. He passed in 1950; Florence passed in 1976 at the ripe old age of 102.

Florence's sister Grace, taught music in the Kansas City school system until she married John Muse and moved to St. Paul, Minnesota and later to Chicago. After her husband passed, she returned to Kansas City where she sang in the Allen AME Church Choir and taught music until she died six months shy of her 100th birthday in 1978.