19th-Century American Families

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John Barnard Whittaker (American, 1836-1926) The Lesson 1871
Horace Rockwell (American painter, 1811-1877) Lewis G. Thompson Family 1842-5
Henry F. Darby (1829 – 1897) The Reverend John Atwood and His Family

Oliver Tarbell Eddy (1799 – 1868) The Children off Mr and Mrs Israel Griffith

Ambrose Andrews (1805 – 1859) The Children of Nathan Starr
John Mix Stanley (1814 – 1872) The Williamson Family

Erastus Salisbury Field (1805 – 1900) Joseph Moore and His Family
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19th-Century America

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John Gast (1842-a 1877) American Progress or Manifest Destiny (1872)
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Visiting After Church

.Edward Lamson Henry (American Painter, 1841-1919) A Chat After Meeting 1871
Edward Lamson Henry (1841–1919) was an American genre painter born in Charleston, South Carolina who came to live in New York at an early age. As a painter of early American life, he displays a quaint humour. Henry acquired an extensive collection of antiques, old photos, & assorted Americana, from which he researched his paintings. His wife Frances said that "Nothing annoyed him more than to see a wheel, a bit of architecture etc. carelessly drawn or out of keeping with the time it was supposed to portray.”
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Today in History - 1813 US Fur Traders Turn Over Astoria, Oregon, to the British

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John Jacob Astor, Oregon Pioneer

On this day in 1813, US citizens operating the Pacific Fur Company trading post in Astoria, Oregon, turn the post over to their rivals in the British North West Company, and for the next three decades Britons dominate the fur trade of the Pacific Northwest. The town and fur trading post at Astoria were founded in 1811 at the behest of John Jacob Astor (1763–1848), a German-born US immigrant who had hoped to beat out his British rivals and develop the Pacific Northwest fur trade for the US. Unfortunately for Astor, the outbreak of the War of 1812 between the US and Great Britain threw the fate of his enterprise into doubt, raising the threat that at any moment a British warship might arrive and seize Astoria as a spoil of war. Astor's partners in the Pacific Fur Company were mostly Canadian, and they saw little reason to risk losing their entire investment in a British takeover so they sold their interests to the British North West Company in early October 1813. Just as they had feared, within weeks of the sale a man-of-war arrived and took possession of Astoria for Great Britain. In December 1813, the Stars and Stripes came down, the Union Jack went up, and Astoria became Fort George.

Although Great Britain gave the settlement of Astoria back to the United States after the War of 1812, the British maintained control of Fort George and the Pacific Northwest fur trade, primarily through the royally chartered Hudson Bay Company. For the next 20 years the Hudson Bay Company's British representatives ruled as benevolent despots over the traders, settlers, and Indians of the Pacific Northwest. By the 1840s, the beaver population had dwindled, while US settlement in the area was on the rise. Unwilling to protect the Hudson Bay Company's claim to the region, the British agreed to accept US control of the territory below the 49th parallel in 1846 and ceded to the US the territory encompassing the future states of Washington, Oregon, and Idaho..

Today in History - The Telegraph

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This key, believed to be from the first American telegraph line, was built by Alfred Vail as an improvement on Samuel Morse’s original transmitter.
On October 24, 1861, the first transcontinental telegraph system was completed, making it possible to transmit messages rapidly (by mid-19th-century standards) from coast to coast.

This technological advance, pioneered by inventor Samuel F.B. Morse, brought an end to the Pony Express, the horseback mail service which had previously provided the fastest communication between the East and the West.

In February 1753, a mysterious letter appeared in the Scots' Magazine describing a simple method of transmitting messages using electricity "An Expeditious Methods of Conveying Intelligence." At least 60 experimental electric telegraphs are known to have been made in the following 100 years.

Samuel Morse "caught the telegraph bug" in 1832 on board of the ship Sully crossing the Atlantic. He teamed up with the professor in chemistry Leonard Gale and received help from physicist Joseph Henry..

Women & the Painting "The Burial of Latané"

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William D. Washington
(American, 1833-1870) The Burial of Lantane Detail 1864
The Burial of Latané was one of the most famous Lost Cause images of the American Civil War (1861–1865). Painted by Virginian William D. Washington in Richmond in 1864, the work shows white women, slaves, & children performing the burial service of a cavalry officer killed during the Peninsula Campaign in 1862. The incident first inspired a poem & then the painting, which became a powerful symbol of Confederate women's devotion to the Confederate cause.

Latané's Interment

In June 1862, 29-year-old Captain William Latané of the 9th Virginia Cavalry was the only Confederate killed during J. E. B. Stuart's famous ride around Union General McClellan's army during the Peninsula Campaign. After Latané's death at Old Church in Hanover County, his brother John Latané removed the body to the Westwood plantation two miles away. The plantation's white men were all away serving the Confederate army, but Mrs. William Spencer Roane Brockenbrough, the mistress of the house, assured John Latané that his brother's remains would be rendered proper care & a Christian burial. The next day, slaves from Westwood & the neighboring family plantation of Summer Hill prepared the body & constructed a coffin. According to the story that circulated at the time, Mrs. Brockenbrough sent one of the slaves to retrieve the family minister, but Union pickets hindered his arrival. Without any men to assist them, the women performed the funeral themselves. It was believed that Mrs. Brockenbrough's sister-in-law, Mrs. Willoughby Newton, read the service, while the white children & slaves watched.

Scene Becomes Iconic Image

Within days, the details of the burial had been reported in the Richmond press. The much-publicized incident inspired John R. Thompson to compose a poem eulogizing Latané's death among strangers; the restrictions placed on funerals during the war; & the patriotic role of women who had performed the burial. Published in the July–August issue of the Southern Literary Messenger, the poem read in part:

No man of God might read the burial rite
Above the "rebel"—thus declared the foe
That blanched before him in the deadly fight,
But woman's voice, in accents soft & low,
Trembling with pity, touched with pathos, read
Over his hallowed dust the ritual of the dead—
An instant success, the poem was immediately reprinted as a broadside. Its message resonated throughout the Confederacy, as thousands of young soldiers died alone, far from home with only strangers to care for their remains. Mothers & wives on the home front, who feared their sons & husbands might experience a similar fate, could take solace in knowing that other Confederate women would provide loving care for their departed on distant battlefields.

Two years later, in 1864, William D. Washington immortalized the scene on canvas. Seeking models to pose for the image, Washington visited Miss Pegram's School for Girls in Richmond. From his sketches, he painted a 36-by-46-inch oil that featured loyal slaves; Mrs. Willoughby Newton at center performing the rites; Mrs. William Spencer Roane Brockenbrough, who agreed to care for the body; & the children of Westwood & Summer Hill plantations with flowers to decorate on the grave. The painting was first exhibited in a Richmond studio, but the great masses of people wishing to view it compelled officials to relocate it to the Virginia State Capitol. According to several accounts, a bucket was placed under the painting to solicit contributions for the Confederate war effort.

After the war, Washington arranged for A. G. Campbell to produce a steel engraving of the image. It originally sold for $20, a considerable sum in the postwar South. But the price of the print declined, as its popularity rose. In 1868, Campbell engraved the image for William Pate, one of New York City's most popular print-houses. The Southern Magazine, a publication begun in 1871 to celebrate the Confederacy, offered free copies with the purchase of a $1.50 annual subscription & 1 free copy of the print for every 5 orders of their books. According to historian Drew Gilpin Faust, the prints "became a standard decorative item in late-nineteenth-century white southern homes."

Years later, Mrs. Brockenbrough revealed that in fact neither she nor her sister-in-law had performed the service because a Methodist minister arrived just in time. Regardless of this revelation, the painting continued to herald Confederate women's heroic self-sacrifice & their special responsibility for mourning. Alone on the home front, Confederate women had shown their patriotic devotion to the nation through private acts such funerals. Women's wartime mourning thus marked an increasingly political tone of the formerly private grieving process. As would be the case in the postwar Ladies' Memorial Associations, these women were not grieving for their loved ones; they were grieving for the entire Confederate nation. The painting became emblematic of women's devotion to Confederate nationalism.

During the late 19th & early 20th centuries, the print proved integral to the Lost Cause. Depicting the war from a female perspective, the painting celebrated Confederate women's valor & extolled their virtue. Just as much as Confederate soldiers, women on the home front had been faithful to the cause. The image also celebrated the loyal & faithful slave, perhaps hoping to serve as a role model for southern race relations during the uncertain years of Reconstruction (1865–1877). Applauding freedmen who might tearfully mourn their former masters allowed southern whites to praise those black people who knew their "place" in the postwar society—those who did not question the authority of whites, meddle in politics, or stage Emancipation Day celebrations.

Article from Janney, Caroline E. " The Burial of Latané ." Encyclopedia Virginia. Ed. Brendan Wolfe. 25 Oct. 2010. Virginia Foundation for the Humanities. 23 Aug. 2010 ..

Mother By Henry Inman (1801-1846)

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Henry Inman (1801– 1846) Georgianna Buckham And Her Mother.

Today in History - 1866 Dedication of the Statue of Liberty

.On October 28, 1866, The Statue of Liberty, a gift of friendship from the people of France to the people of the United States, is dedicated in New York Harbor by President Grover Cleveland was dedicated.

The Statue of Liberty's head, on exhibit at the Paris Exposition of 1878.
Originally known as "Liberty Enlightening the World," the statue was proposed by the French historian Edouard de Laboulaye to commemorate the Franco-American alliance during the American Revolution. Designed by French sculptor Frederic-Auguste Bartholdi, the 151-foot statue was the form of a woman with an uplifted arm holding a torch. Its framework of gigantic steel supports was designed by Eugene-Emmanuel Viollet-le-Duc and Alexandre-Gustave Eiffel, the latter famous for his design of the Eiffel Tower in Paris.

Right arm and torch of the Statue of Liberty, 1876 Centennial Exposition

In February 1877, Congress approved the use of a site on New York Bedloe's Island, which was suggested by Bartholdi. In May 1884, the statue was completed in France, and three months later the Americans laid the cornerstone for its pedestal in New York Harbor. In June 1885, the dismantled Statue of Liberty arrived in the New World, enclosed in more than 200 packing cases. Its copper sheets were reassembled, and the last rivet of the monument was fitted on October 28, 1886, during a dedication presided over by President Cleveland and attended by numerous French and American dignitaries.

Unveiling of the Statue of Liberty Enlightening the World (1886) by Edward Moran. Oil on canvas. The J. Clarence Davies Collection, Museum of the City of New York.
On the pedestal was inscribed "The New Colossus," a sonnet by American poet Emma Lazarus that welcomed immigrants to the United States with the declaration, "Give me your tired, your poor, / Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, / The wretched refuse of your teeming shore. / Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me. / I lift my lamp beside the golden door."
Leslie’s Illustrated Newspaper July 2, 1887, pp. 324-325. Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division
In 1892, Ellis Island, adjacent to Bedloe's Island, opened as the chief entry station for immigrants to the United States, and for the next 32 years more than 12 million immigrants were welcomed into New York harbor by the sight of "Lady Liberty." In 1924, the Statue of Liberty was made a national monument, and in 1956 Bedloe's Island was renamed Liberty Island. The statue underwent a major restoration in the 1980s.
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Woman's Work - Telling Fortunes by American Harry Herman Roseland (c.1867-1950)

Harry Herman Roseland (c 1867-1950) The Palm Reader. The visitor is wearing a hat & carrying her purse & a parasol. A hatbox filled with yarn sits on the floor & unfinished knitting hangs from the chair behind the fortune teller.

Genre painter Harry Herman Roseland (c.1867-1950) was born & died in Brooklyn and was known for depicting the lives of African-Americans, especially black women reading tea leaves, palms, & cards for white women wearing hats. Often hat boxes, both open & closed, sit nearby. Perhaps the hat boxes were being used as sewing boxes by the readers who are often shown with yarn dotting the floor. Parasols & fans are also props in these paintings.

Harry Herman Roseland (c 1867-1950). Reading the Cards. Hat worn by the visitor with a parasol carried in her hand. Board holding cards rests on hatbox. A nearby sewing box has a ball of yarn on the floor in front of it. Unfinished knitting hangs from the chair behind the fortune teller.
Harry Herman Roseland (c 1867-1950). It's All in the Cards 1898. Hat worn by the visitor with parasol carried in hand. A ball of yarn is on the floor.
Harry Herman Roseland (c 1867-1950). Palm Reader 1890. Hat worn by the visitor. Parasol on the back of the chair. Hat box seems full of scraps & a ball of yarn is on the floor. A piece of a needlework project is on the fortune teller's lap & more of the work hangs on the chair behind her.
Harry Herman Roseland (c 1867-1950). Reading the Cards 1899 Hat worn as well as one in a box. Parasol carried by the visitor plus one just behind the sofa. Fan on the sofa behind the visitor. Scraps of ribbon are on the floor.
Harry Herman Roseland (c 1867-1950). Reading the Cards 1903. One visitor wears a hat and carries a parasol; while the other carries her hat. The hatbox is on the chair behind the group and seems to be filled with scraps. Yarn is on the floor near the fortune teller. Unfinished knitting hangs from the visitor's chair.
Harry Herman Roseland (c 1867-1950). Seeing into the Future. The visitor holds her hat and her parasol rests on the chair behind her. The hatbox seems to be full of ribbons. Unfinished knitting hangs from the visitor's rocking chair.
Harry Herman Roseland (c 1867-1950). The Fortune Teller 1904. The visitor holds her hat while her parasol hangs on the chair behind her.

Harry Herman Roseland (c 1867-1950). The Fortune-Teller. The visitor wears her hat & holds her parasol. The hatbox sits on the footstool serving as the flat surface for the cards. Yarn is on the floor near the fortune teller. Unfinished knitting hangs from the visitor's rocking chair.
Harry Herman Roseland (c.1867-1950). Reading the Tea Leaves 1910. Each visitor wears her hat and has her parasol nearby. The open hatbox is on the table behind them. Yarn is on the floor near the fortune teller. Unfinished knitting hangs from one of the visitor's chairs.
Harry Herman Roseland (c.1867-1950). The Palmist 1909. The visitor's hat is on the floor behind her.

Women's Work - by Thomas Waterman Wood (American painter, 1823-1903)

Thomas Waterman Wood (American painter, 1823-1903) Cakes and Wine 1890

Thomas Waterman Wood (1823–1903) Sherry, Sir
Thomas Waterman Wood (1823–1903) Autumn Leaves
Thomas Waterman Wood (American painter, 1823-1903) A Southern Cornfield in Nashville, Tennessee 1861

1829 American Mother & Child

Abel Buel Moore (American, 1806-1879) Maria Eddy wife of Dr. Joseph Freiot and son John Henry Freiot c 1829.

The Rural Post Office in 1857

Thomas P. Rossiter (American painter, 1818-1871) The Rural Post Office 1857.

Collecting Autumn Leaves 1858

Enoch Wood Perry (American painter, 1831-1913) Collecting Autumn Leaves 1858

Women by American Artist James Peale (1749-1831)

James Peale (1749-1831). Anna Sophia Alexander Robertson (Mrs. William Heberton) 1816

At the outset of his career, when he was working closely with his brother Charles Willson Peale, James Peale learned to paint both portraits & still-lifes, while he was making frames for his brother's works.

James Peale ( 1749-1831). Martha Washington (1731-1802) 1796
By the mid-1780s, James had established his own artistic reputation independent from his older brother Charles.

James Peale (1749-1831). The Ramsey-Polk Family in Cecil County, Maryland 1793
At about this time, Charles Willson Peale turned over his own miniature portrait practice to him; and throughout the 1790s & early 1800s, James Peale devoted himself to miniature painting. Much of this work was watercolor on ivory.

James Peale (1749-1831), Maria Bassett, 1801.
In 1795, Peale exhibited a still life of fruit along with 9 miniatures & his family portrait at the Columbianum, a short-lived art academy in Philadelphia.

James Peale (1749-1831). Eliza Hughes
Around 1810, as Peale's eyesight began to weaken, he gave up painting miniatures to turn to larger portraits & still-life subjects, that were greatly admired & widely exhibited in Philadelphia, Boston, & Baltimore.

James Peale (1749-1831). Mary Polly Lawton Bringhurst 1790

The total number of Peale's landscape paintings remains unknown; but he executed more than 200 watercolor miniatures on ivory, perhaps 100 still-life paintings, probably fewer than 70 oil portraits, & at least 8 history paintings.

James Peale (1749-1831). Margarette Peale 1793
James Peale died in Philadelphia on May 24, 1831.

James Peale (1749-1831). Unidentified Girl with Bird 1770-75

James Peale (1749-1831). Ann Emily Rush
James Peale (1749-1831). Girl with a Doll

James Peale (1749-1831). Unidentified Woman 1802

James Peale (1749-1831). Olivia Simes Morris

James Peale (1749-1831). Elizabeth Oliphant 1795
James Peale (1749-1831). Jane Ramsay Peale
James Peale (1749-1831). Marcia Burns (Mrs. John Van Ness) 1797
James Peale (1749-1831). Anna and Margaretta Peale 1793
James Peale (1749-1831). Madame Dubocq and her Children 1807
James Peale (1749-1831). Susanne Correy 1790
James Peale (1749-1831). Mrs Samuel Simes and Edgar
James Peale (1749-1831). Mrs. John McCluney 1795

James Peale (1749-1831) View of the Wissahickon 1830

Click here for James Peale's still lifes of fruits & vegetables..