Reproduction
Portrait of Jonathan Devol Jr.
Oil on canvas, attributed to Mather Brown (1761-1831),
unknown place of origin, late 1780s-early 1790s.
Collection of the Ohio Historical Society, H26990.
Campus Martius Museum, Marietta, Ohio.

Jonathan Devol Jr. (1755-1842) wears a loose, powdered hairstyle, a ruffled shirt, a white vest and curved-front frock coat with a high turned-down collar and large metal buttons, a style similar to the blue frock coat on display in the exhibition (see below). Devol's gray coat is striped, a popular fashion of the late 1780s and early 1790s, which indicates that it could have been made of cotton as fulled woolen fabrics used for coats of this period were usually plain.(1)  The portrait could have been done prior to Devol's departure from his native Rhode Island and does not necessarily mean that he wore such a coat in Marietta. Nonetheless, the portrait is indicative of Devol's status and his possible attire in the Northwest Territory as he was among the first 48 settlers that founded the town of Marietta. He participated in the building of the blockhouses in Campus Martius in 1788. That same year, his wife, Nancy Barker Devol, arrived by covered wagon with their five children. The family moved to Belpre, southwest of Marietta, in 1791 and participated in the building of Farmer's Castle there. After the Indian Wars, they returned to Marietta and settled at Wiseman's Bottom where Jonathan Devol Jr. constructed a floating mill on the Muskingum River.

The portrait of Jonathan Devol Jr. presents another fashionable individual who, in this case, was to emigrate from Tiverton, Rhode Island, to Marietta, arriving there with the first group of settlers from the Ohio Company of Associates in 1788. This portrait serves to give a face to one of the earliest 48 settlers and Revolutionary War veteran.

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(1) For more references on the popularity of striped frock coats see Philippe Séguy, "Costume in the Age of Napoleon," in The Age of Napoleon: Costume from Revolution to Empire 1789-1815, ed. Katell le Bourhis (New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Harry N. Abrams, Inc., 1989), 40, 51.