Portraits: Christopher and Catherine FitzSimons with their daughter
Book 1, Page 2 ·1762–1841
Transcription
The page holds two photographs of painted portraits, mounted side by side. Each is captioned beneath in pencil.
Left portrait
A bust portrait of a man in a dark coat with a white neckcloth, dark hair brushed forward.
Christopher Fitz Simons — Born Dec. 27th 1762
Right portrait
A three-quarter portrait of a woman in a frilled cap, holding a young child on her lap. The child wears a white dress.
Catherine Pritchard — B. Aug. 19th 1772
— m —
Christopher Fitz Simons — Aug. 3rd 1788
and their daughter
Catherine Fitz Simons — m. Gov. Hammond
AI Notes
Two photographs of painted family portraits, mounted side by side with pencilled captions. The captions identify the subjects as Christopher FitzSimons (the emigrant), his wife Catherine Pritchard, and their daughter Catherine FitzSimons — three of the four people whose family record opens on page 3.
The two paintings are likely 19th-century likenesses of Christopher FitzSimons (1762–1825) and his wife Catherine Pritchard FitzSimons (1772–1841). The infant on Catherine’s lap is identified by the caption as their daughter Catherine, who later married Gov. James H. Hammond. Photographing painted portraits and mounting the photographs into family albums was a common late-nineteenth-century practice — a way to circulate likenesses of ancestors that otherwise existed as one-of-a-kind oils.