WORCESTER, Mass. - Frank Morrill is the owner of the William Bullard photography collection.

The collection includes about 6,000 glass negatives. The photos are from the 1890s and were taken in 44 different communities. Several photos are from Worcester and identify over 200 Black residents. Morrill said the Black population in the city at the time was 1% of the total population.

“It’s very unusual that Blacks, people of color at that time, though some were Native American and they intermarried. Very, very rare. The photographer would write down who these people were,” Morrill said. “(Bullard) had no studio. He went to their homes in their backyards because he lived right in that neighborhood.”

Morrill, an author and president of the Charlton Historical Society, purchased the collection in 2003. Thanks to the log book Bullard kept, over 80% of the people photographed can be identified. Morrill has dedicated resources to further identify people, and track down their living family members. 

“We found... over 100 decedents of the portraits,” Morrill said. “So you can research them forwards and backwards.”

Bullard took over 30 photos of the Perkins family, and Morrill recently found a descendant of the Perkins family who lives in Worcester and works as a 4th grade teacher.

“The most rewarding for me is having someone say to me, as the Perkins family did, ‘Thank you for giving us a history. We never had one,’” Morrill said. “Becoming friends with the decedents of the people I’ve researched, that is absolutely the most rewarding.”

The Worcester Art Musuem published a book of Bullard's work, "Rediscovering an American Community of Color: The Photographs of William Bullard, 1897–1917." The book can be purchased here.