Description:
One of a set of four botanical charts done in watercolor and ink depicting plants and flowers, each numbered and labeled in ink with a Latin and descriptive name, which is done on wove paper mounted on fabric and bordered with green silk edges and loops in the upper corners. These charts came from the descendants of Deerfield physician Stephen West Williams (1790-1855) of Deerfield, who married Harriet Taylor Goodhue (1799-1874) in 1818. Harriet was the daughter of Dr. Joseph Goodhue (1762-1849) who was a doctor at Fort Constitution, N.H., and moved to Deerfield by 1822. Stephen and Harriet had four children, one of whom, Dr. Edward Jenner Williams (1823-1881), studied medicine with his father and and then moved to Laona, Illinois, where he married Orilla Nancy Webster in 1856. Two of their three sons and their daughter lived to adulthood - Dr. Henry Smith Williams (1863-1943), Dr. Edward Huntington Williams (1868-1944), and Harriet Goodhue Williams Myers (1867-1949) who wrote a privately printed book (1945), "We Three, Henry, Eddie and Me: Henry Smith Williams, Edward Huntington Williams, Harriet Williams Myers." The donor, Helen Myers Curtis (and her sister, Neva Myers Brown), were the daughters of Harriet Williams Myers (see spectacle case, HD 64.168) and William Raymond Myers, and first cousins of Dorothy Williams Hartigan, the daugher of Henry Smith Williams and Florence Whitney Williams. Both Mrs. Curtis and Mrs. Haritgan gave Historic Deerfield a number of Williams/Goodhue family pieces. Variations in the style and execution of the elements of these charts, and the similarity of some elements to published botanical diagrams, suggest that these charts incorporate student work and that more than one person made them. These illustrated wall charts were probably done by Deerfield Academy students (and perhaps their teacher) for use as classroom visual aids for instruction in elementary botany. Harriet Goodhue appears to have resided in Deerfield before her father relocated to the town in 1822. She may have attended Deerfield Academy, where she probably learned the art of botanical illustration from Deerfield Academy teacher and botanical illustrator, Orra White (1796-1863). In 1817, Harriet illustrated a manuscript herbarium of local plants, compiled by her then fiance, Stephen West Williams. Although prints document the common use of wall charts to illustrate natural history (science) lectures in the 18th and early 19th century, few survive. These wall charts incorporate diagrams and images of specimens very similar to those that Mrs. Almira H. Lincoln, a teacher at Troy Female Seminary in Troy, New York, published in her 1829 botany primer, "Familiar Lectures on Botany, Including Practical and Elementary Botany." Lincoln’s work may have been one of the textbooks used at Deerfield Academy and provided the basis for these charts.
Subjects:
Textile fabrics; Canvas; Silk; Watercolor painting Link to share this object record:
https://museums.fivecolleges.edu/detail.php?t=objects&type=ext&id_number=HD+59.194.2 |
