Left:
Portrait of Mary Kidder Gleason (died 1824) and
her daughter Bethia Gleason (1775 or 1776-1855)
Oil on canvas by Winthrop Chandler (1747-1790),
Woodstock, Connecticut, ca. 1780-1781.
Brought to the Northwest Territory in 1800 by Mary Kidder Gleason.
Collection of the Ohio Historical Society, H27064.
Campus Martius Museum, Marietta, Ohio.

 

Right:
Portrait of Dr. William Gleason (1750-1793)
Oil on canvas by Winthrop Chandler (1747-1790),
Woodstock, Connecticut, ca. 1780-1781.
Brought to the Northwest Territory in 1800 by Mary Kidder Gleason.
Collection of the Ohio Historical Society, H 27065.
Campus Martius Museum, Marietta, Ohio.

 

The portraits are recorded as having been made in Woodstock, Connecticut. The one on the right represents the two sitters in fashionable gowns of the period. Mrs. Gleason's high-piled hairstyle is outlined by a sheer white dormeuse cap, both extremely fashionable in the late 1770s and early 1780s.(1)  She wears a sheer white striped and embroidered neckerchief over a caramel-colored gown closed at the center front bodice. The gown's skirt portion is layered with a sheer white striped overskirt and depicts a vertical style line (sitter's right hip partially hidden by Bethia's skirt) that can indicate an open robe aesthetic and would follow a similar overskirt on another Chandler portrait.(2)  The cap and gown are trimmed with striped red and white ribbon bows. Striped fabrics have become the rage at this time and were also seen in other artifacts described earlier.(3)  Mrs. Gleason also wears white lace engageantes (sleeve ruffles), black lace or filet mitts and holds a painted fan. Her daughter, Bethia, wears a pink patterned "frock"--a word used to describe both a man's informal coat with high turned-down collar and a young girl's dress--with a pink ribbon at the waist and pink bows at the cuffs, a fashionable dress style for girls at the time.(4)  She also wears skin-colored mitts and, like her mother, has a long black ribbon hanging from her neck.
   
Information on file at the Campus Martius Museum indicates that Bethia was the first of three daughters and that, in 1794, she married Dr. William Pitt Putnam (died 1800), a native of Pomfret, Connecticut, a noted officer in the American Revolution, a son or grandson of Israel Putnam and a 1792 settler of Marietta. Additionally, the portrait's cataloguing record indicates that upon Dr. Pitt Putnam's death in 1800, Bethia's mother came to the Northwest Territory to join her and brought this portrait, along with that of her deceased husband, Dr. William Gleason (1750-1793), with her. These portraits hung for many years in the Putnam house in Belpre, southwest of Marietta. Bethia eventually remarried, this time to General Edward W. Tupper (died 1823), another early pioneer of Marietta, and died in Gallipolis, Ohio.(5)  Although the portraits of the fashionable sitters were made in Connecticut, they indicate, as in the case of many of the artifacts studied and selected for exhibition, that these objects, which were not essential to frontier survival, were nonetheless transported to Ohio. Other types of mementos could also have been brought west: two Spitalfields open robes in the exhibition (see below), which are similar in style to the gown worn by Mary Kidder Gleason, could have been mementos or they could have belonged to more conservative older women who retained the styles of their youth.
   

CLICK ON IMAGES ABOVE FOR LARGER VIEWS AND DESCRIPTIONS OF SIMILAR GOWNS IN OHIO COLLECTIONS