Anthia Brady Hughes 1868-1949 Willie Huges 1895-1986

A mother and daughter outlasted the school that trained one of them. Willie Hughes entered McMinnville's Southern School of Photography in 1918, and the school closed in 1928, but the Hughes Studio her mother had opened in 1898 kept working until 1978, eighty years in all. They worked on glass negatives and hand-tinted prints, with cameras as large as eight by ten inches. The result is a record of McMinnville's people and everyday life: more than thirty-five thousand photographs, the town's family album.

What the plaque says

Anthia Brady Hughes 1868-1949 Willie Huges 1895-1986 Anthia Brady worked on riverboats on the Tennessee River in the late 1800s. After her marriage, Anthia Brady Hughes opened Hughes Studio in McMinnville in 1898. In 1918, her daughter, Willie, entered McMinnville's Southern School of Photography. Willie joined her mother in the studio and continued her work until 1978. Using cameras as a large as 8" x 10", they did glass negatives, hand tinting and left more than 35,000 photos of life in McMinnville.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Rock Island State Park — 11 mi
  A park where the Collins, Rocky and Caney Fork rivers meet at the head of Center Hill Lake, with a gorge of waterfalls below a 1917 dam and the remains of a cotton-mill town.
• Savage Gulf State Park — 17 mi
  Roughly 19,000 acres of gorge and sandstone bluff on the western edge of the Cumberland Plateau, a state park of its own since 2022, with the Stone Door and a National Natural Landmark.
• Old Stone Fort State Archaeological Park — 23 mi
  A 2,000-year-old enclosure of piled stone and earth on the bluffs above the forks of the Duck River, built by Native people between about 80 and 550 A.D., with a museum and waterfall trails.
• Fall Creek Falls State Park — 24 mi
  A New Deal park on the western edge of the Cumberland Plateau, where Cane Creek has cut a gorge and a 256-foot waterfall drops into it.

More markers nearby

• Carl T. Rowan — steps away
• Bernard School — steps away
• Morgan's Headquarters — 0.3 mi
• Lucy Virginia Smith French — 1.5 mi