Description:
Silhouettes were the most expedient and inexpensive form of portraiture available to New Englanders in the early 19th century. Profiles were so cheap, costing about ten cents apiece, that an artist's profit was dependent on making them as quickly as possible. Miniature oval silhouette portrait done in etched gold leaf on glass with a paper label on the back inscribed, "Capt. John Williams, 1804." The image of a young man with ear-length hair, high cravat, and jacket that is signed "UK Hill" on the bottom, is etched into gold leaf and then backed in black to set the profile into sharp contrast. According to George Sheldon, John Williams (1778-1806), son of John Williams (1751-1816) of Deerfield and Elizabeth Orne (d. 1785) of Salem, followed his father's import/export business and was engaged in business at Cheapside (an area of Greenfield, Mass.); he went to the East Indies as mate of a vessel about 1803, was made a Captain, and died in August 1806 on the Isle of Bourbon (now Réunion, one of the Mascarene Islands in the Indian Ocean, 430 mi. east of Madagascar) on his return voyage. Given the dates of his voyage, the silhouette was not made in America. The silhouette came from the descendants of Dr. 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, Dorothy Williams Hartigan, was the daugher of Henry Smith Williams and Florence Whitney Williams, and first cousin of Helen Myers Curtis and her sister, Neva Myers Brown, who were the daughters of Harriet Williams Myers and Raymond Myers. Both Mrs. Hartigan and Mrs. Curtis gave Historic Deerfield a number of Williams/Goodhue family pieces.
Link to share this object record:
https://museums.fivecolleges.edu/detail.php?t=objects&type=ext&id_number=HD+64.169 |
