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Profiles and Family Record of David Smith (1803-1875) and Harriet Griffin Smith (1801-1870)
No image number on slide

Profiles and Family Record of David Smith (1803-1875) and Harriet Griffin Smith (1801-1870)

Date1828 (probably)
Attributed to The Letterpress Artist (active 1828-1834)
OriginAmerica, Massachusetts, Springfield
MediumInk on wove paper; hollow cut profiles embellished with pencil details and backed with black paper; framed and glazed.
DimensionsFramed: 12 1/2 x 10 5/8in.
Credit LineGift of Mark T. Fowler in memory of William Smith Fowler
Object number1991.305.1
DescriptionA framed family record, the frame being divided to enclose, at the top, a pair of hollow-cut profiles of a man and woman facing one another. The lower section of the frame encloses a partly press-printed, partly hand-lettered sheet of wove paper noting various family data. The data section is ornamented with various press-printed ornamentation at its perimeter.
Label TextPress-printed forms increasingly replaced hand-drawn family records during the first half of the nineteenth century. Like birth and baptismal certificates, family records were available blank or partially completed. This record is of particular interest since it documents the births and deaths of the subjects of two full-length oil portraits in the museum's collection, William Howard Smith and Mary Jane Smith, both portrayed by Joseph Whiting Stock in 1838. The record is also unusual in documenting a Massachusetts family; most of the Letterpress Artist's work was done for Connecticut families.

Records by the Letterpress Artist usually combine handset letterpress type on printed forms placed below paired hollow-cut profiles in separate panels of a veneered frame.
InscribedSee "Marks," where both handwritten and press-printed wording is transcribed together.
MarkingsThe following inscriptions are press-printed (excepting ALL data concerning the children and the death dates of the parents, which are handwritten in script).
At the top, beneath the parents' profiles, are "HARRIET GRIFFIN." and "DAVID SMITH." At the top of the lower (family record) section is: "FAMILY RECORD./NAMES./BIRTHS./DEATHS./ MR. DAVID SMITH. MARCH. 19. 1803. April 9th 1875./MISS HARRIET GRIFFIN. AUG. 24. 1801. March 5th 1870/MARRIED MAY. 20. 1828/THEIR CHILDREN./Harriet Elvira Smith Sept. 5. 1839 Aug. 9. 1830/William Howard Smith Novr. 24. 1832.March 12, 1911/Mary Jane Smith Feby. 9. 1836 March 10th, 1854."



ProvenanceThe object descended in the Smith family. See Mark T. Fowler to AARFAC, Nov. 4, 1990. The line of descent is thought to have been:
from David Smith (1803-1875; one of the parents on the record) to his son, William Howard Smith (1832-1911); to his daughter, Mrs. Norman N. Fowler (nee Minnie Lee Smith)(1859-1940); to her grandson, Mark T. Fowler, who was AARFAM's donor.