A series of portrait photographs of Flannery O'Conner was taken at the Smyrna home of Brainard and Fannie Cheney. The Cheneys affectionately called their home "Cold Chimneys" and many of Cheney's letters to Flannery were written from there. By 1955, when these portraits were taken, a friendship had developed between O'Connor and the Cheneys that would endure until her death in 1964. She visited them several times and in 1959 on a visit to the Cheney's she read her short story "A Good Man is Hard to Find" at Vanderbilt University.