Winthrop Chandler and the rural gentry of northeastern Connecticut
Date
1990
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Publisher
University of Delaware
Abstract
This paper studies the rural elite of northeastern Connecticut and Worcester County, Massachusetts through the portraits of Winthrop Chandler. Portraiture was one way the ruling elite attempted to assert their social position through material objects. Many of the rural gentry of this area commissioned Chandler (1747-1790), a local artisan-painter from Woodstock, Connecticut, to paint their likenesses on canvas. These portraits preserve the images of a self-conscious rural gentry, whose material possessions distinguished them from elites who did not sit for portraits. ☐ To recover the material culture of the portrait sitters, I used probate inventories to document their household furnishings and compared this information to a group of inventories chosen from the highest taxpayers' lists for Woodstock, Connecticut in 1796 and 1807. These two groups of inventories suggest how the economic elite from northeastern Connecticut and nearby rural Massachusetts differed on the proper ways to convey status and power. ☐ The differences were most apparent in the quantity and types of furniture listed in the inventories. In particular, differences between the two groups were noticeable in the ownership of chairs with slip seats, tea tables, desk and bookcases, and silver. The examination of the education, occupation, military, and political backgrounds of portrait sitters and other elites suggests that the ownership of portraits and certain household furnishings was an expression of one's intellectual, professional, and social background, and not just an economic statement. Taken together this information provides the background for understanding the elite landscape of rural Connecticut and Massachusetts in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries.