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Thursday, October 31, 2013

Edward Church, Jr. and Family

Edward Church Family 1787-1843. by Jacques Antoine Vallin. Signed "Vallin/Pinxit. L.L.". Oil on canvas, 82x 61 1/2 inches, ca. 1805.


   I have managed to obtain a better copy of the portrait of Edward Church, Jr. and his family. It is published in Early Georgia Portraits 1715-1870, published by the National Society of the Colonial Dames of America in the State of Georgia, The University of Georgia Press, Athens, 1975. Following is the written description accompanying the portrait:
Edward Church was born in England in 1787. After he came to America, he was appointed consul to L'Orient France, by President Madison in 1817 and served in that position until 1832. He numbered among his friends such illustrious men as Louis Bonaparte, Robert Fulton, Henry Clay, and General Bodley. He died in Lexington, Kentucky in 1843. He married Elizabeth Bentley in Darby, England, in 1806. She was born in England and died in Louisville, Kentucky. Their son, Dr. Edward Bentley Church, was born in Paris, France and died in Greenville, Mississippi, in 1847. Their daughter, Hannah Elizabeth Church, died in 1889 or 1890 in San Francisco, California.
 A medium blue sky, dark green trees, with orange and rose flowers form  a background for this group. Edward Church had brown hair and eyes. A white shirt with a red scarf  shows under his dark brown coat, and his breeches are a medium brown. He has a black hat under his arm. His wife is seated on a gray green bench with a red drapery. She has blonde hair, hazel eyes, and is wearing a white dress with a gold hat over her arm. She is holding Hannah, the daughter. The son Edward, standing, has blonde hair and is holding red flowers. Collection: Mr. J.C. Hagler III
  

Sunday, October 27, 2013

Revisions

   I have revised my two posts on Edward Church, dated March 19, 2013 and May 11, 2013 to include information on Edward's two wives and children and to reflect some land dealings he had when he resided in Braintree just after the fighting broke out at Lexington and Concord.
  
  The next chapter on Edward is forthcoming shortly.

   In an item probably of interest only to me. -I was reading a biography of Ebenezer MacIntosh, the shoemaker and leader of the Boston gangs in the mid-1760s, in the proceedings of The Colonial Society of Massachusetts, and came across the fact that he was descended from a group of Scottish prisoners who had been seized at the battles of  Dunbar in 1650 and Worcester in 1651 by Oliver Cromwell, pardoned, and sent to Boston as bond servants for terms of 6-8 years. A large number of these prisoners were sent to the Iron Works at Saugus to serve out their period of servitude. I discuss the Saugus Iron Works in my January 19, 2013 post on Col Church's swords.

   Apparently, Oliver Wendell Holmes was descended from one of these "redemptioners."