Iconography and Genealogy

N & F4 4 a K The Pennsylvania gi GENEALOGICAL gN 92 M M m Magazine mwmmiggimammwanwagaummgfammii-Wa Iconography and Genealogy Fa FRANCIS JAMES DALLETT, F.G.S.P., F.A.S.G. T HE genealogist who attempts to augment a written family record with appropriate illustrations has a concern with iconology, "the branch of knowledge concerned with pictorial or sculptural representations." Al] too often his experience with iconography, or the subject matter of pictures, images and other visual representations, is slight. It may be helpful to suggest iconographic resources and iconographic bibliography which the genealogist will find profitable, and to point out examples of the successful use of illustrations in printed genealogies. Normally, we think of "icons" as portraits, but iconography is used here in the context of the many kinds of pictures of interest to a genealogist: portraits in their several forms, topographical and architectural views, representations of artifacts and heirlooms, as well as reproductions of maps, printed material and documents. All are types of pictorial matter suitable for illustrating a genealogical record for private reference or for publication. The Genealogical Society of Pennsylvania has sponsored genealogical lectures for many years, but so far as I know, this is the first time anyone has spoken here about the pictorial aspects of genealogy. We live in an age with a strong visual emphasis. It is the era of illustration because technology has made possible high quality reproductions of illustrative material of every kind. Magazines like American Heritage are often charged by serious historians with presenting sugarcoated, watered-down history in which the interest is largely in the pictures rather than in the text. This is rather pointless criticism for the • Based on a talk given before the Genealogical Society of Pennsylvania on 28 April 1970. 205 206 T he Pennsylvania Genealogical Magazine mature historian goes to the sources regardless; American Heritage in its hard-cover magazine, and ancillary handbooks on American history have made our national story palatable to a wide public. The magazine employs in England a clever and beautiful young American woman whose assignment is to smoke out undiscovered bits of pictorial Americana, and to coax curators into giving her copies of what she finds. Many art and history publishers search constantly for original iconography. Genealogists have not yet gotten on the iconography bandwagon. While they may own family portraits and memorabilia of considerable interest, they do not, for the most part, know how to use their pictorial material, either historically or visually, to best advantage in a family history. Despite our national orientation towards improving standards in design, I doubt if any printed American genealogy has been produced with the help of a layout artist. One or two have had excellent artistic oversight, notably the Drake genealogy, which will be described later. In France, the production of genealogies which are, artistically, a pleasure to behold, is common practice. The traditional printed genealogy is illustrated with two forms of iconography: portraits and coats-of-arms. The latter is the earliest genealogical illustration. Pedigrees in manuscript or print have been enlivened by heraldic art since the Middle Ages. Since genealogies were written only about noble families until comparatively recent times, their text was often merely supporting evidence of the right to bear arms displayed. The seventeenth century ushered in the great age of engraving, and in Continental and English genealogies engraved portraits started to appear, together with the traditional coats-of-arms. Nineteenth century American genealogies inherited these two types of illustration, and often added a third, the reproduction of manuscripts signed by or mentioning a Colonial ancestor. Many of the subject families had no arms or portraits of early generations, so that documents provided a sensible, honest illustration contemporary with the early generations. Aside from this, little was done until the last quarter of the nineteenth century when the 1876 Centennial, and the upsurge of historical and genealogical societies, focused attention on the sites, houses and churches associated with American historical events. Then we see pictures of eighteenth century homesteads and, often, of English parish churches associated with a seventeenth century emigrant, start to appear. Interest developed in American architecture and the decorative arts. People like Thomas Allen Glenn and Harold Donaldson Eberlein wrote books on American houses into which large chunks of genealogy were Iccmography and Genealogy 207 injected. In the genealogies of Colonial gentry families, pictures of ancestral houses, furniture, silver and the like began to be used. If the financial backing was considerable, the result could be a fine example of book production, in the best possible taste. In this category I would place the well-known genealogies of the Morris and Harrison families of Philadelphia. They are conventional in format, but the quality of paper, printing and illustrative matter is uniformly high and tasteful. There are five basic groups of genealogical illustration: Documents, Topographical and Architectural Views, Maps, Association Items, and Portraits. I would like to say a word about each. Documents, be they wills or deeds of early forbears, marriage contracts with a galaxy of signatures following those of the bride and groom, family letters on a headed paper of some interest, military and civil commissions or membership certificates, all represent suitable subjects. Very often they are the only surviving items contemporary with, touched by, signed by, or owned by a certain ancestor. They reveal much about the person in question and also serve as visual proof of the statements in the text based on these documents. Usually they are copied professionally for reproduction and come out well when in print. Also readily available to anyone preparing a genealogy are topographical and architectural views. Such material relating in some way to an ancestor is not hard to find. Often a church attended by ancestors or a house in which the family lived is still standing and we can simply go and take a picture of it ourselves. (If it is for publication, it is best to let a photographer do the job to guarantee quality.) Genealogists should make up lists of houses and churches associated with their families and see that they are photographed. Delay is fatal, for in Philadelphia, as elsewhere throughout the country, everything pre1900 is going fast. Victorian structures are particularly vulnerable. A typical victim is the Kennedy house at Port Kennedy on the Schuylkill, an 1852 mansion with an Italian campanile, built by the master of a once extensive limeworks on the river. Fifteen years ago the large plastered house, hung with wrought ironwork, proudly dominated its large garden and riverside site. Sufficiently far from residential development in both Norristown and the Philadelphia suburbs, and on the edge of Valley Forge Park, it appeared invulnerable. Today, the house still survives, but barely. The grotesque skeleton and relentless din of a super-highway carrying a new bridge across the river, it some ten yards away. The entire ambience of Port Kennedy has disappeared, and the house is deteriorating rapidly. Of There is a real necessity for an architectural recording proJeCt. 208 The Pennsylvania Genealogical Magazine course, library investigation comes first: attempt to pinpoint, from deeds, maps and atlases, all family houses from the 1800 - 1875 period; then lay books aside and spend two weeks on an all-out photography blitz, accompanied by a photographer. It will be time well spent. This kind of personal survey has a counterpart on a national scale in the official American list of scheduled structures, the Historic American Buildings Survey at the Library of Congress. Known as HASS, the Survey has dossiers of architectural and historical reports, and interior and exterior photographs of thousands of early American houses. Most of these are listed in the published HABS catalogues. If an ancestral house is covered by HABS, copies of the reports can be had at small cost. England has a similar inventory, the National Buildings Record. So do France and Holland. The Dutch have always been passionately devoted to their own topography — something about being in a small country — witness the Dutch landscape tradition in art and the immense number of painted conversation pieces. In Holland, in addition to their Register of Monuments, as the buildings survey is translated into English, there is a remarkable office in The Hague, the Prentenkabinet (Print Cabinet) . Here are gathered prints and drawings covering the whole country, arranged village by village, street by street. Of course the national libraries and museums in all the European countries have similar holdings; try both for pictures of the house or town in which you are interested. In our own country, it is the historical societies, state and local, which are strong on topography. The Historical Society of Pennsylvania, for example, has the fabulous Penrose Collection of nineteenth century photographs of old Philadelphia. The Free Library of Philadelphia on Logan Square also has an extensive collection of similar photographs. Nicholas B. Wainwright's Philadelphia in the Romantic Age of Lithography, published in 1958, deals with Philadelphia prints. Many of them show house, shop or street scenes which are pertinent to individual family history. It is hard to know whether to use a contemporary or a period photograph, if both exist of the same building, for genealogical illustration. The older picture is perhaps evocative of the period of family tenure, but it may be less revealing of the house itself than a new picture. The contemporary viewer often prefers a present day view to which he can relate. If both are available, and both are good, my advice is to use both. I need not say much about maps. They are always an excellent choice for a genealogy, either reproduced whole, as end papers, or in sections, focusing on the neighborhood where the family lived. Many maps and Iconography and Genealogy 209 atlases define country houses and farms in detail, indicating sites and even the building material of all the structures on the property. Most local historical societies have good collections of maps. The Free Library of Philadelphia has an outstanding collection, and makes available a brochure which lists the most useful maps and atlases of Philadelphia and nearby counties. The next category of genealogical illustration is what may be called association items. This covers pictures reflecting trades and occupations (such as portraits of ships owned or sailed by an ancestor, horses ridden by an ancestor, pictures of furniture or silver made by others, advertisements on trade cards or in newspapers) . Such family heirlooms as samplers, and pictures of tombstones are all suitable examples of genealogical iconography. If professional photographs of them are used, much interest will be added to the text. I might say that photographs of furniture, silver, porcelain, or any three-dimensional object, are only satisfactory if taken by a professional. Portraiture is, in the end, the basic form of genealogical illustration. Likenesses of relatives are the commonest and most easily findable kind of genealogical iconography. Everyone has photographs of the last two or three generations, so some illustrations for a private or published record can be taken for granted. Before discussing the bibliography and some representative collections of American portraiture, I should mention the types of likenesses one may expect to find, and some of the practical considerations of making copies of them. New World portraiture in the seventeenth century was restricted to painting on canvas or wood and to a very few miniatures and primitive engravings. In the next century portraits and miniatures became more widespread; during the second half of that century portrait engraving, almost all of colonial officials and clergy, became more common, silhouettes commenced to be cut, and wax bas-reliefs to be modelled. All of these likenesses were produced in limited quantity, although Saint-Memin and the other physiognotrace artists of the end of the century began selling multiple copies of their profile engravings. During the early years of the nineteenth century, book illustration proliferated, and engraved portraits of distinguished Americans appeared in this form, hence in greater number. Prominent Americans were also engraved in lithograph or aquatint by print-makers. It remained, however, for photography to make portraiture widespread. Photography is a complicated subject; its development can best be understood by reading an encyclopedia article 210 The Pennsylvania Genealogical Magazine on the subject. Here I merely mention the types of photographs we are most likely to draw upon for a genealogical record. The daguerreotype, introduced into the United States about 1840, is well known. These photographs were made on silvered plates, and usually mounted in small leatherette cases. Often they are badly faded and have moisture and dust spots on their silvered surface. Despite damage, daguerreotypes, when copied, often produce sharper copies than the originals, but caution in handling is advised. Never try to clean the dirt or foxing from a daguerreotype plate. This scratches the original emulsion and makes things worse. When a daguerreotype is to be copied (and here in Philadelphia Mills Brothers and Berry & Homer are the most reliable studios) the photographer should be reminded that the likeness he is being handed is on an emulsion plate. I have known a copy camera to get too hot, causing the emulsion to run and the original impression to vanish! The second type of photograph commonly found in this country, the popular likeness of the 1850's, is the ambrotype. It resembles a daguerreotype in that it is usually framed in a small double case, but it was made by a glass plate process without mercury; the silvered appearance of the daguerreotype is not present. Ambrotypes, and the later tintypes gave way, largely, in the Civil War period to the carte de visite photograph, the small, two by four inch picture which we all know so well in the Victorian family album. Carte de visites were made in multiple copies and sent to friends and relatives much as some people now send Christmas cards of their children and dogs. 'When you see a carte de visite size photograph of a head only, surrounded by white ground and without the studio interior as a background, it can be recognized as a copy picture in itself. It is not a true photograph, but a head from a daguerreotype copied onto the newer media. Very often Grandmama was taken in daguerreotype in the 1840's, and by the time the 1860's rolled around, all the granddaughters wanted the old dear for page one in the album on the parlor table. Thus her daguerreotype was copied as a photograph. Not all portraits are of photograph size and can be carried off to the photographer. Very often we have the problem of obtaining a copy of an oil painting which hangs on the wall in someone else's house. In this situation there are three options. The first and most acceptable, is to take the canvas to a studio to be copied. A second, but more costly way, is to have the professional photographer go, with his equipment, to the house and do the work there. The third method, and one to be avoided, is to take a picture of it oneself. If the portrait can be carried outdoors, it should not be copied in the direct sun. If an ordinary camera, without Iconography and Genealogy 211 a copy lens is employed, better results can be achieved by making a Kodachrome slide of the original, and then getting paper prints of it, than by trying to take a black and white photograph of the original. When I have old pictures copied, be they portraits, photographs or whatever, I usually order two prints: one in semi-matte finish, one a glossy. The semi-matte print is for a family album or for framing; the glossy for possible reproduction in a printed genealogy. There are many different grades of paper. It is advisable to stay away from the satin and deckled finishes, as these introduce light effects which spoil the copies. Paper stock should be checked before an order is placed. The sharpness and color value of the copies should be compared with the original. A picture printed too dark or too light should not be accepted. It is equally important to check the picture surface to make sure none of the original surface has been deleted in the copy, unless it has been requested that some of the background be eliminated. I find the four by five inch size satisfactory, but the size and shape of the original dictates to some extent the size of the copy. In playing around with copies of miniatures, I have learned one lesson. A photograph of a miniature is most effective if it is the same size as the original — no matter how small — rather than an enlargement. After all, the miniature portrait was painted to a specific size for a certain effect, and that effect will be lost, and the likeness possibly diminished, if a new size is arbitrarily decided upon. When we choose nineteenth century photographs for illustrations, we have to use some discrimination, some taste selectivity. A man who was born in 1820 and died in 1890 was often formally photographed five or six times in his lifetime. Usually we must choose one, or at most two, of these likenesses as the one which will become the preferred illustration, either for an album for the children, or for a long-planned printed genealogy. Does one choose Great-grandfather as a bridegroom of 1850, as a church elder in an 1890 photogrph, or, if one is lucky enough to have it, in a family group of 1870? The question brings me first to the subject of hair and beards. Currently, there is a lot of talk about beards: who should wear them, how long they should be, the contours they should follow, and even — among certain of one's extreme acquaintances — whether they should be tolerated at all! I am not, with one qualification, an opponent of beards. In fact, if most of the beard disclaimers spent as much time as I do looking at photographs of Civil War vintage, they would recognize their bewhiskered, cloak-wrapped college sons as precise reincarnations of their great- 212 The Pennsylvania Genealogical Magazine grandfathers. The boys on the college campus today look like extras in Gone With the Wind! However, when it comes to genealogical illustrations, I am not an out-and-out admirer of whiskers. Whiskers hide too much of the physiognomy. If it is possible to have a clean shaven, rather than a hirsute portrait of the same man, I always choose the former. Here is an illustration of what I mean. I have some interest in a transportation pioneer of the Victorian age. His biography is in the Dictionary of American Biography, which is devoid of illustrations, and also in many books of references which are illustrated. In these, as well as in a privately issued genealogy, he is invariably shown in one or two standard portrait photographs of head and shoulders, the lot covered with a prodigious grey beard. His features are further adorned with pince-nez spectacles. This was, quite correctly, the businessman In full maturity, and was the photograph which was easily available. At the same time, it never occurred to the family or his biographers to apply visual discrimination in the selection of the likeness. Overlooked was a magnificent portrait in oils. In this picture, painted from life in three-quarter length, the subject holds his spectacles in hand, thus eliminating part of the disguise and instinctively telling us something of the sitter. The biographers never thought to reproduce a photograph taken at the age of forty, when his beard was browner and trimmer, and he did not yet wear glasses. Nor did they think of the charm of another oil portrait of the subject as a child romping with a dog. Likewise ignored was an even more appropriate picture, surely the happiest age medium of all. This is a pre-whiskers daguerreotype of the future railroad and shipping tycoon in his twenties, in which all the vigor and charm of youth are present, and his features fully revealed. This picture makes it possible to trace family resemblances, always part of the appeal of portraiture, in a way that is impossible in the bearded cover-ups. The original daguerreotype is lost, but the picture survives from a good copy made many years ago. Many descendants display their forebear's picture, but always the example which is so much less revealing. The generation gap would be less and family enthusiasm might be greater if they could identify with the clear-eyed, vigorous young man, freshly arrived in the city to assault the bastions of commerce a century and a quarter ago, rather than thinking of the founder of the family fortunes as a masked icon. Some years ago I experienced considerable pleasure along similar lines. The Radnor Historical Society planned a meeting at woman, the Bryn Iconography and Genealogy 213 Mawr home of George W. Childs, nineteenth century editor of The Pub1k Ledger, and the flamboyant official greeter of Philadelphia. Childs had no children; his name was carried on by George W. Childs Drexel, son of his business associate Anthony J. Drexel. I knew an elderly woman who was the niece of Mrs. Childs. I went to her to ask about pictures of her uncle to illustrate an article about the meeting. I fully expected a copy of the standard portrait of the bald, chinny and paunchy newspaper proprietor. To my delight she produced a daguerreotype of the 1840's showing Childs and Drexel seated side by side. Both were young and the contrast of racial type and personality was marked. The daguerreotype was a piece of real American history. The picture, the earliest known likeness of Anthony Drexel as well as of Childs, was unknown to the former's descendants. The picture was copied and I had the pleasure of presenting an enlargement of the portrait of their founder to the Drexel Institute of Technology. Again, the young, clean-shaven face meant so much more than the elderly visage swathed in mustachios. Having made a choice of no whiskers rather than whiskers if possible, we should look briefly at group pictures and informal portraits. I am a firm believer in both as prime Americana and the best kind of illustration for a genealogy. These are the sort of pictures that attract the grandchildren who are not much drawn to the turgid, formal portraits of Granddaddy in his wing collar and frown. They want to relate to the generation and to the setting. Candid snapshots have not been used enough in printed genealogies. An example of the kind of picture I like, and which I consider both good genealogical value and rather more seductive to those who are not ancestor-oriented, is one in a selection of three likenesses. The first shows another young Philadelphia businessman, in a portrait photograph of 1860 (clean shaven, of course). The second is of the same man in 1890 (whiskers, of course). The third is a group picture of 1870, of the subject seated on the verandah of his country house, next to his wife, with his mother-in-law in the center of the doorway, and the children playing with their toys on the steps. The group picture is on a small scale and somewhat faded; it does not reveal the physical features of the man in question, as do the formal portraits — but how much more it tells us of the Victorian businessman, his family and his way of life. Here, if forced to choose the one characteristic picture, I would opt for number three. 214 The Pennsylvania Genealogical Magazine For some reason photographs of people in or beside their automobiles have never been popular as tasteful iconography. A few years ago a fictitious portrait in oils of a self made businessman and his wife standing in front of a big brassy car, was hung at the annual show of the Royal Academy in London. It was a tough picture, meant to illustrate the tough, garish side of twentieth century life. Most of the viewers thought it obscene. It frightened them. Although we are submerged, saturated in automobiles in our daily life, we try to block them out mentally, and I guess are successful, or there would not be so many. But to show people in a setting of their own time, we should include in our genealogies good pictures of our contemporaries with their cars, just as our lastcentury forebears were depicted beside their carriages or horses. What I have just said about portraits relates to likenesses which are in our own possession or perhaps are owned by relatives. I now want to suggest how and where to extend a search for ancestral pictures. The number of libraries and special collections which own American portraits (and I mean the whole spectrum from oil paintings to photographs) cannot be counted. Portraits of all kinds appear regularly in the art and book markets. There are many opportunities to locate likenesses of ancestors and relations if we know how to take advantage of them. First a word on bibliography. There are several important lists of portraits, both American and European. In 1906, the Library of Congress printed its famous A.L.A. Portrait Index which includes portraits in printed books and periodicals — that is, portraits in a reproduced form, not the originals. This list was based in large part on 40,000 references collected by Bunford Samuel, librarian of the Library Company of Philadelphia. The work includes pictures from 6,216 volumes. In general, genealogical works and local histories were not indexed, nor were biographical works covering huge numbers of contemporaries, such as Moses King's Notable New Yorkers. Any search for portraits should be with the A.L.A. Index, for it includes citizens in all walks of life. When dealing with important Americans, Hayward Cirker's Dictionary of American Portraits must be used. This appeared in 1968, and includes 4,045 American portraits from the earliest times to about the nineteenth century. I am familiar with only one great regional list of American portraits, Weddell's Virginia Historical Portraiture 1585-1830, published in 1930. State historical societies and many museums have published lists of their portraits and miniatures. The Historical Society of Pennsylvania's Iconography and Genealogy 215 volume is a model, and a copy of any item in it may be ordered from the Society. This book covers only painted likenesses, but the portrait files at 1300 Locust Street deal with all kinds of likenesses and are far more extensive. Most of this country's early portrait artists, men like Feke, Stuart, Peale, Sharples and Sully, are the subject of portrait catalogues. Books on miniatures, usually on a regional or religious basis (like Hannah London's study of miniatures of early American Jews, the Boston Museum's book on New England miniatures, and the delightful works of Anne Hollingsworth Wharton of Philadelphia with such titles as Salons, Colonial and Republican) reproduce little-known miniatures. Not many people know that photographs of most of the silhouettes cut by Edouart are now held by a scholarly institution in this country. Another source for portrait photographs are university archives. At Princeton, for example, the first class albums of actual photographs were made up in 1855. These albums survive in a complete run down to 1915, the year the first year book was printed. Descendants of alumni often send in pictures of their ancestors which go into the biographical files. Other places to look for portraits are county histories and the "prestige" encyclopedias, like the Encyclopedia of American Biography and the Encyclopedia of Pennsylvania Biography. For over half a century these works have published, for a fee, the genealogies of business and professional men, often illustrated with family-supplied pictures. While sometimes of the "presentation" variety, and frequently reproduced as muddy engravings, they can be better than nothing. Sooner or later, we come to the Frick Art Reference Library, without recourse to which any search for family portraits would be incomplete. The Frick Library was founded in 1920 in the former Frick mansion at 10 East 71st Street, New York. The most important division of the library is its collection of 300,000 indexed (and 100,000 unindexed) photographs of western European and American Painting, Drawing, Sculpture, Enamels and Illuminated Manuscripts from the beginning of the Christian era down to 1860. In this photographic collection, arranged by name of artist and by name of sitter, are tens of thousands of photographs of early American portraits. The majority of these have come to the Frick from museums and photographic services which, of course, keep their own copies of the pictures they own or copy. However, many are copies of American portraits and miniatures which have been given to the Frick by individual owners. In recent years, the Frick has worked closely with the Colonial Dames in ConnecticUt and 216 The Pennsylvania Genealogical Magazine North Carolina, providing the services of the Frick photographer to go out into the field and copy portraits located by these two groups. They only do field work of this kind when there are hundreds of items to be copied in an ensemble, so we cannot expect them to come to Philadelphia to photograph a single picture hanging over the fireplace! On the other hand, when an early American painting of quality is owned privately (particularly if the artist is known), they are happy to receive a copy of the portrait for their files. This practice occasionally is abused by people about to sell a family picture of indifferent merit who send Frick a photo of it and then tell the would-be buyer it is "registered at the Frick" and hence is a picture of value. Their service can be of real use when one has an old reference to a family portrait and wishes to trace its present whereabouts or to order a photograph of it. If the Frick has it on file, they will ask the applicant to get permission from the present owner for a copy to be made. Application to the owner is then made (often initiating a valuable genealogical exchange of letters) and if permission is received, the photo is eventually received from the library. Among the patriotic societies, the Colonial Dames have made an important contribution toward the recording and publishing of source material relating to American portraits. In 1910 the Colonial Dames of America published Ancestral Records and Portraits, two volumes full of interesting portraits including photographs, of both the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. The majority of these are of the more obvious colonial professional and landholding families, but one is surprised by the number of lesser known people whose likenesses are included. It is pleasant to note a little known portrait of Petrus Tranberg, Rector of Old Swedes', Wilmington, from 1742 to 1748, who baptised and married many New Castle County people. If one lacks pictures of Delaware Swedish forebears of the 1740's, and is looking for appropriate illustrations for a genealogy, what about a portrait of Pastor Tranberg as the most important man outside the family in the ancestral circle? A useful little book published by the Delaware Dames in 1951 is Portraits in Delaware. While this work is in no way a state-wide census of portraits owned in Delaware, it records and illustrates a sizeable nucleus of these, known to the compilers, and is a move in the right direction. In dealing with nineteenth century American mercantile or professional forebears who were not nationally notable, and will not be found in the Dictionary of American Biography, but whose financial status was sound and who were active and useful citizens of some sophistica- Iconography and Genealogy 217 tion, it is often possible to assemble a collection of portraits from the resources of public collections and from the holdings of long established organizations with which these people were connected in their own way. Every old bank in our major cities owns portraits of past presidents and directors. The charitable societies usually hold on to portraits of benefactors. Organizations like the Presbyterian Historical Society or the College of Physicians preserve likenesses of early clergymen and doctors. Others who do not keep pictures have published in the past, biographical catalogues of their deceased members, copiously illustrated. The history of the Fairies Classical School of Philadelphia, and the catalogue of the St. Andrews Society are two examples. Let me tell you how I assembled pictures of a family in this category, that of Lacombe of Philadelphia and New York. I have a personal interest in this family, founded in the United States by Pierre Lacombe of Bordeaux, who arrived here at the end of the eighteenth century. Lacombe, a shipowner, was active, like many of his fellow émigrés, in the French Benevolent Society of Philadelphia. That society still exists and, among its ptissessions is a photograph of a portrait of Pierre Lacombe, presented at some time in the past by one of his descendants. I have no idea where the original canvas is today, but I obtained a copy of the copy. Then, in the Edouart silhouette collection, which I have already mentioned, I discovered a double silhouette of the second generation of the family: Emile Henry Lacombe, who moved to New York, and his bride, cut by the silhouettist in 1840. The A.L.A. Portrait Index was consulted — remember, it includes many everyday citizens, not just the famous — and in it I found that a portrait of Emile Henry Lacombe, Jr., the third generation of the family, appeared in a woodcut in Harper's Weekly in 1884. From institutional collections and published material, I was thus able to assemble portraits of three generations. As icing on the cake, I learned that the Peabody Museum of Salem, Massachusetts, possessed a magnificent watercolor portrait of the ship Lovely Matilda, owned by the first Pierre Lacombe in 1808, and named for his wife Mathilde. A dollar bill brought me a fine photograph of the vessel. The ALA. Portrait Index is useful in connection with the Claypooles of Philadelphia fame. In 1892, Rebecca Irwin Graff published the Genealogy of the Clay Poole Family of Philadelphia. John Claypoole, brother of James, the Philadelphia progenitor, married Elizabeth, daughter of Oliver Cromwell, and died in 1688. No pictures of John or Elizabeth Claypoole were reproduced. The author evidently did not know that the English art world could easily have located likenesses of them. 218 The Pennsylvania Genealogical Magazine A magnificent miniature of Elizabeth Claypoole by Crosse was then in the Royal Collection; a fine contemporary portrait of John Claypoole was known. Both were illustrated in John Morley's biography of Oliver Cromwell which appeared seven years after the Claypoole genealogy, and are cited in the A.L.A. Portrait Index of 1906. I have long admired the collection of a man I know who has photographic copies of original pictures of all sixteen of his great-great-grandparents. I can do only ten of mine (my wife beats me with thirteen). I have portraits of only six of my thirty-two three-greats, and but one of the four- greats. Then there is a great jump — to my seventh greatgrandparents. One has 312 seventh great-grandparents; out of my 312, I have but one portrait, and that is a miracle. It is of a Frenchman, a farmer, who lived in a village in Normandy in 1680, a far more modest man than other French or English ancestors of whom no pictures survive. In 1680, the members of the local charity of the parish church in the village of Normandy, of which my ancestor was one, were painted on a panel which was hung in the church. It is still there, and has been photographed by a distant French cousin. Thus, entirely by chance — one in a million — I have a portrait of but one ancestor who was a contemporary of William Penn. In my wife's case also, a portrait of but one direct ancestor in this tenth generation survives. He was an English clergyman and religious pamphleteer, and father of the man who secured William III's commission as Secretary to the Province of New York. An engraved portrait of the clergyman appears in a contemporary edition of his writings. Again in my wife's family there are several portraits of uncles and aunts in the eighth and ninth generations of the de Peyster family of New York, a much painted colonial dynasty. For purposes of projecting the family story in pictures in any genealogy, uncles and aunts do just as well as "directs." The recent de Peyster genealogy, by Waldron Phoenix Belknap, is, in fact, a genealogy developed to explain the portraits of that family, rather than the other way around! Andrew Oliver's Faces of the Family, published in 1960, is a somewhat similar case. This is not strictly a genealogy, however, as its subtitle suggests: An Illustrated Catalogue of Portraits and Silhouettes of Daniel Oliver, 1664-1732, and Elizabeth Belcher, his wife, their Oliver Descendants and their Wives, made between 1727 and 1850. The body of the book contains seventy portraits of six generations of the family, assembled from many sources. Here family resemblances down through the generations are clearly evident. At the end of the volume are genea- Iconography and Genealogy 219 logical charts provided for aid in placing the various descendants of the family whose portraits are reproduced, and clarifying their relationships. Such personal examples as I have mentioned suggest the paucity of American family portraits beyond the sixth generation. There are numerous exceptions among the clerical families of New England and the planters of the South, but in Pennsylvania portraiture the only family I know of with nine generations in the male line is the Coxe family. That remarkable sequence is in the Historical Society of Pennsylvania. If one has English antecedents of a certain rank in society, finding portraits back of the tenth generation becomes, curiously, somewhat easier than for generations seven through ten. I refer not to painted portraits but to effigies. Of my 312 seventh-greats in the tenth generation, at least two belonged to English gentry families whose antecedents in all lines are traceable for several centuries. These include a number of ancestors whose likenesses survive in English churches in brasses or sepulchral monuments of the fourteenth, fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. Tracing these is a subject in itself, and a fascinating one. The search for ancestral pictures may be facilitated by a regular scanning of Antiques magazine. Its articles and its classified advertisements, month in and month out, have pictured or described thousands of early American portraits and thousands of pieces of furniture, silver and the like, identified as to former owners or makers with specific American families. If you do not have the energy to comb years of monthly magazines page by page, there is a cumulative index to the magazine which may be purchased. While it does not include every name printed in the periodical since its beginning, it does list the titles of every article it has carried. If you are interested, for example, in an ancestor who was a cabinetmaker in Philadelphia, or a silversmith in Boston, look up articles on cabinetmaking and silversmithing in those cities. You may well find pictured in a back number a piece made by your ancestor. Perhaps one of your ancestors lived in a house which has been restored and was featured in Antiques with excellent photographs which would give your genealogical record special interest. You will be able to order from the magazine a photograph of the clock or sugar bowl or New Hampshire farm house, and thus acquire a particularly significant illustration for your genealogy. The piece described in the article may belong to a distant cousin whom you do not know, and a new avenue of genealogical investigation may open up. Here is an example of what I mean. The September, 1957, issue of Antiques illustrated an eighteenth century American hatchment of the 220 The Pennsylvania Genealogical Magazine Van Schaick family of New York, then newly acquired by the Albany Institute of History and Art. I wrote to Albany and acquired an excellent photograph of the hatclunent. Instead of illustrating a Van Schaick family record with a florid modern representation of the family arms (of the Lewis Historical Publishing Company type), how much better to use an authentic piece of Americana, something which was in use by a member of the family. The New York Van Schaick arms were, in any event, self-assumed by a seventeenth century colonial merchant; too often compilers of the type of the Lewis Company fraternity have not done research extensive enough even to have discovered this fact. Without troubling to learn what coat the family actually used in the colonial period (be that usage valid or invalid) , they will go to a European heraldic almanac, extract the arms of any family of the same name, emblazon it in the dictionary volume, and thus give an air of authenticity to their proceedings as well as providing their customers with a vulgar visual representation. How much better to find a true colonial likeness of the coat-of-arms, publish it, with a statement that the arms were self-assumed in the free-wheeling manner of many of the colonials, and achieve not only honest scholarship but honest iconography. A similar example of the right kind of heraldic illustration would be the reproduction of an early bookplate used by an ancestor, such as the bookplate of Judge William Augustus Atlee of Lancaster, a colonial jurist and Revolutionary patriot. Choosing this for an illustration would demonstrate to readers that Atlee used the arms in question, and that he had a library of sufficient importance to warrant a bookplate. Without putting the thought into words, it would be evident that Judge Atlee occupied a certain rank in colonial life. Even more important from an aesthetic point of view, the reader would see an authentic example of American colonial engraving and would turn the page having acquired important new visual knowledge. Following hot on the heels of Antiques, as an invaluable catalogue of potential genealogical iconography, is Portfolio, the monthly catalogue of The Old Print Shop in New York City. It illustrates the prints and paintings offered for sale by that Lexington Avenue establishment. Many, many items of Americana pass through The Old Print Shop. I am interested in the Rotch family of New Bedford, a clan of Quaker shippers intermarried with Rodmans, Morgans, Smiths and many other Philadelphia Friendly families. In a back issue of Portfofio, I found illustrated an aquatint of the Sperm Whaling Fleet off Hawaii in 1833. The original legend on the print identified two of the vessels as "Wm. Iconography and Genealogy 221 Roach's Pocahontas and Hoqua." I immediately recognized "Roach" as a misspelling. The print shows the vessels of William Rotch of New Bedford. It is a marvelously beautiful and evocative view. What better genealogical illustration than this to give the "flavor" of that family to a printed record? If one keeps one's eyes open when checking print and manuscript dealers' catalogues, one of ten reaps rich rewards. Original eighteenth century Pennsylvania deeds and land warrants can still be bought at moderate cost. Their value is determined by the autograph of the President of Council, or the land agent who signed the document — someone of historical importance such as Thomas Willing or Thomas McKean, whose signature the dealer recognized. On several occasions the name of a grantee in such a document, printed only in fine type in the catalogue, has rung a bell with me. Not long ago I had the fun of giving one of these documents, which cost me twenty dollars, as a wedding gift to the direct descendant of the grantee named in the deed. It is one of the newlyweds' proud possessions. Scanning the manuscript dealers' catalogues is not only a dragnet for the colonial officials who signed the documents. The grantees are very often, as in the case of my wedding gift, up-country Scotch-Irish or Germans of no prominence of any kind. The couple to whom I gave the gift have in it an unexpected heirloom which is their only two centuries old family souvenir. A similar example relates to my own family. I am descended from the Cheesmans, an eighteenth century family of Gloucester County, New Jersey, yeomen and Philadelphia shipwrights and cordwainers. In the normal way, one would not expect to find early portraits of any of these Cheesmans who did not belong to the gentry class. One day, in looking through The Month, the sales catalogue of Goodspeed's Bookshop in Boston, I saw a reproduction of a line engraving, published in London in 1798, after a painting by John Trumbull. This depicted the death of Major General Richard Montgomery at the Battle of Quebec in 1775. I recognized the print for I had once seen a faded version hanging in someone's house. If I had paid more attention to the work of Trumbull, I would have known more about it. However, up to that point, I had not and did not. The print, as it was reproduced, showed a group of soldiers surrounding the dying Montgomery. Two of these Americans were identified as "majors Cheesman and Macpherson of Philadelphia." I suddenly realized that here was a portrait of Jacob Cheesman, killed with his commander on the Plains of Abraham. He was the son of a Philadelphia, and later New York shipwright member 222 The Pennsylvania Genealogical Magazine of my Cheesman family. Subsequently I learned of the engraved key to the battlepiece which identified each head and disclosed that Cheesman's was an authentic likeness. Trumbull must have derived it from sort of portrait owned by the family. I have not had time to follow this matter to its logical conclusion, but I know that reference works on Trumbull will lead me to the location of his original painting, and to a copy of the print in a public collection, from either of which I can obtain a copy. In addition, I will be able to have the Cheesman portrait head blown up individually and used as a precious insert to the genealogical record. During the past fifty years a vast number of genealogies have been printed in this country. Many of these are works of considerable scholarship and rank high as genealogical records. Surprisingly few are aesthetically pleasing as books, and almost none use iconographic material in an imaginative way. Meredith Colket's excellent article, "Creating a Worthwhile Family Genealogy," published in the National Genealogical Society Quarterly in December, 1968, considers aspects of illustrations and production. He mentions two printed genealogies which use illustrative material to advantage: Mary Lovering Holman's Ancestors and Descendants of John Coney (1928), and Alice S. Thompson's The Drake Family of New Hampshire (1962). The Coney genealogy contains a nice selection of plates, including portraits, churches and houses with family significance, as well as pictures of silverware made by John Coney, the famous silversmith. To my mind, however, it has one drawback. The illustrations are printed in sepia. The brownish plates already look as dated as the photogravure section of a Sunday newspaper of the 1930's, or as phoney as reproductions of old maps which are printed on yellow papers in an effort to look old. The op Dyck Genealogy of 1889, has been drawn to my attention by Mr. Lewis D. Cook. This book uses the same sort of pictorial material, but in a slightly more imaginative way. For example, portraits of four or five brothers and sisters are printed on the same page. Such presentation helps to teach a relationship to laymen who get confused following genealogical numbering. It also shows family likenesses. The Op Dyck book has its plates printed in black on the finest paper. It must have been a real pacesetter in its own day, and is still far less dated looking than many books which have appeared since. A recent "genealogy" of the de Graffenried family is worth mentioning. Published in 1958 by the University of Virginia Press, The de Iconography and Genealogy 223 Graff enried Family Scrap Book 1191 - 1956 was written by Thomas P. de Graffenried who in 1925 issued a History of the de Graff enried Family From 1191 A.D. to 1925. The earlier book used some early European portraits, coats-of-arms and views of castles owned by this noble Swiss family whose American line, illustrated by nineteenth century photographs, was established by Landgrave Baron Christopher de Graffenried, colonizer of North Carolina, but it was visually unimpressive and left one with a rather dull picture of one of the most accomplished European aristocratic houses to establish a permanent branch in the New World. These faults do not exist in the charming Scrap Book, which, in fact, is not a true genealogy but an album of pictures with running text, similar to if not as professionally conceived or well organized as the Oliver book. The Scrap Book reproduces some seventy five stunning likenesses of Swiss de Graffenrieds from the sixteenth century to the present, more than ninety views of Swiss castles and houses, sixty views and portraits of the American branch, and many plates of armorials, documents and title pages of books authored by members of the family. The portraits include Gobelin tapestries and candid snapshots, the European views rare drawings together with picture postcards, the arms embrace seals and memorial tablets. In other words, the illustrative scope is wide and imaginative and the book, with a quality format, sets a distinguished precedent. Although not a genealogical record as such, this publication should have emulated the Oliver study by including a series of simple charts from which the relationships between the subjects of the portraits and occupants of the castles or plantations depicted could be determined. Outsiders can admire the iconographic quality of the de Graffenried Scrap Book but are totally at a loss to grasp the genealogical structure of the family. Two works concerned with Philadelphia families are interesting for a choice of original and varied illustrations, although one is aesthetically pleasing and the other is much less so. These are the 1910 Dupuy genealogy, and the Stollenwerck book of 1948. The Dupuy book is tastefully done. One of its characteristics is the heavy use as illustrations of manuscripts and membership certificates. Among the latter, the star turn is a London Masonic certificate of 1755, reproduced in actual size in a foldout. This item is attractive to see, and is highly instructive. It lists the members of the Masonic lodge in the London dockside parish of Wapping in 1759. Reading this over I was fascinated by the column headed "Members Using the Sea." There, as members of this London 224 The Pennsylvania Genealogical Magazine lodge, were a whole group of mid-eighteenth century Philadelphia shipmasters who were berthed sufficiently long in London to be resident there and to join a Society. A new avenue of search for some of these elusive men is thus suggested. The Stollenwerck genealogy deals with a family of French émigrés from Saint-Dominque. It is a small volume, cheaply produced. However, the use of pictorial material is imaginative in the grouping of as many as eight or ten different portraits and photographs on one page under such headings as "Namesakes" and "Servicemen." This arrangement does not altogether succeed aesthetically, with its juxtaposition of delicate Empire miniatures and snapshots of toothy blondes of the Jean Harlow era, but it does succeed in provoking the interest of the descendants. As one of eight members of a family who, over a period of 150 years, were all called Cecile, what could be nicer than to see all those who shared her name pictured together? The Cecile of 1970 would begin to relate to her ancestors. In this matter of iconography, we must work toward two goals: pleasing the eye and selling the story. Most printed genealogies which are highly acceptable pieces of scholarship do neither to anyone but other genealogical technicians who speak the same technical language. This is a problem. Should the book be slanted at laymen relations or at professional colleagues? With professionalism increasing amongst us, and thank goodness it is, the tendency is now to write for the profession, in order to get a good review. Few genealogists do as good a job in telling or selling their story to non-professionals in the family, for whom, after all, the genealogy is the most precious. This subject of approach needs more serious study: how to present text and illustrations to maximum advantage to all corners. Among individual genealogies which have achieved some success in illustration is The Strassburger Family, published by Ralph Beaver Strassburger in 1922. This work about which the cliche that "no money was spared" is the grossest understatement, combines scholarship with fine typography, excellent paper, and a varied and rich use of illustrative material. Here are scenes of European cities from which the Strassburgers came, reproductions of fine early prints of American towns as they looked when the people concerned lived in them, illustrations of churches, houses, furniture, documents and, to a very great degree, tombstones. Early American tombstones can be fascinating, but they have a high mortality rate due to the air pollution of the East Coast cor- Iconography and Genealogy 225 ridor. Tombstone plates preserve our vanishing American sculpture and serve as appropriate genealogical illustration. One of the most visually attractive genealogies yet produced — one which uses iconography in the most tasteful way — is a French publication, Jean Racine et sa Descendance, published by the great French genealogist, Arnaud Chaffanjon, in 1964. Chaffanjon did an equally magnificent book on the descendants of Madame de Sevigne, two years earlier. In the Racine book, careful selection has been made of portraits, architectural subjects, documents and armorials, augmented by the "presentation" of the book by the artist who cooperated in the production. Many family chateaux are illustrated, but instead of a mixed bag of photographs, enormous visual unity was achieved by having them all drawn by the same artist. The arms of different branches of the family were likewise drawn in a unified style, using traditional French engraving forms re-interpreted by the artist. Portraits are used for contrast. There is one of Racine next to that of a twentieth century female descendant who looks enough like him to be his reincarnation. There are twentieth century informals, family groups, and so on. The documents have all been reproduced most tastefully. In this particular case, I cannot complain too violently of sepia paper. After extolling a French genealogy whose physical characteristics are a joy, I shall end with equal praise for Alice S. Thompson's work, The Drake Family of New Hampshire, mentioned earlier. This book was published eight years ago. It is unsurpassed for quality among recent American genealogies. It is conventional in textual presentation, except for its distinguished use of red rubrics, a novel albeit expensive touch borrowed effectively from The Book of Common Prayer. The Drake book, and a sequel volume on the family in England written by Sir Anthony Wagner (which the Historical Society of Pennsylvania does not have), are printed on the best rag paper stock; its half-tones have been engraved by the finest process available; the illustrations of documents, churches, houses, portraits and arms, are judiciously chosen, all from fine quality originals. The Drake genealogy, while not as imaginative as the Racine work, is a handsomer, finer book. Perhaps it is not too much to hope that we will one day — if publishing costs permit — see a genealogy which will combine the physical quality of the Drake genealogy with the visual verve of the Racine book. I hope $o!