Protected in a refrigerator in the St. Augustine Historical Society s research library are 104 glass photographic negatives that tell the story of Lincolnville, the city s historic Black community, in the 1920s.
The photographer, Richard Aloysius Twine, was born in the city on May 11, 1896, and was the youngest of eight children.
Around 1917, Twine left St. Augustine for New York City. We have, through research, found he was living in New York City for several years from about 1917 to 23 or 24, and that would have been right around the time of the Harlem Renaissance, said Bob Nawrocki, St. Augustine Historical Society s chief librarian. So there s a possibility he may have learned to take photographs when he was up there.