Claude C. Matlack, Cory Osceola (Seminole)

Claude C. Matlack (1878-1944) was an amateur photographer, working as an engineer for his family's plumbing and lighting business, when he happened to meet a trustee of Oneida Baptist Institute on a train in Eastern Kentucky. The trustee talked about the mountain school where Professor James Anderson Burns was educating children from both sides of a bitter family feud in an environment of love and compassion in hopes of ultimately ending the vicious cycle that killed generations of young men and trapped their families in poverty. Matlack accepted the trustee's invitation to stop for a visit, stayed for a week and took his first pictures of the school and the people of Clay County. He returned numerous times over the next dozen years, eventually becoming a trustee of the institute himself.

Around 1916 Matlack left Kentucky for an electrical engineering job in Florida. A few years later he opened a professional photography studio in Miami. Over the next two decades he captured a wide variety of subjects on film, including the Everglades, Seminole Indians, South Florida real estate development, Miami Beach recreation, and the young aviation and motion picture industries.

http://digital.library.louisville.edu/cdm/description/collection/matlack