Maine Memory Network

Thousands of sketches, paintings, watercolors, and exercises in the Wadsworth-Longfellow family archives document that most family members also loved to draw.

Dozens of colored sketches composed by parent and child together illuminate their fascinating inter-generational efforts — art education at an intimate level.

The Longfellows’ artistic creativity did more than enrich their personal lives. Drawing was essential to the professional careers of several family members.

In addition, from their earliest years, Longfellow children all were encouraged to draw.

Here Edith, age six, sketches a portrait of her father, Henry W. Longfellow.

Mary King Longfellow, a Portland native and daughter of Henry’s younger brother, Alexander, was in the regular company of her cousins at Craigie House.

She began to draw at an early age and excelled as a watercolorist. This photograph shows her painting, surrounded by her work.

Education of the Wadsworths

Education became even more important to the Wadsworths, a typical upper-middle-class American family, following the Revolutionary War.

Henry's grandfather General Peleg Wadsworth recognized how critical a well-trained mind was in a country where individuals were self-governing.

On the second page of this letter, Wadsworth reported on the successful exercises of younger siblings, Henry (the poet’s namesake), George, and Lucia, all attending school in Portland.

He encouraged John to improve his public speaking, as “it is a very necessary Qualification in such a Government as ours.”

A Harvard College graduate, Wadsworth expected more of his children than proficiency in reading, writing, and arithmetic.

The study of Greek and Latin was as vital as public speaking and proper comportment. The general sought to instill in his children “the art and mystery of useful living.”

The Wadsworths patronized itinerant artists and early family portraits survive at the Wadsworth-Longfellow House.

William King, a well-known Salem silhouettist who visited Portland in 1805, cut several profiles for the Wadsworth-Longfellow family.

The profiles of Zilpah Wadsworth and Stephen Longfellow, the poet’s parents, were made the year after their marriage in 1804.

Teaching daughters to sew was viewed as an important way to prepare them for a productive and virtuous adulthood.

At an early age, girls practiced and perfected letters and numbers by working samplers with cross-stitching, a needlework that remains popular today.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's mother, Zilpha Wadsworth, worked this example when she was 11.

Eleven-year-old Lucia Wadsworth signed and dated her assignment book, probably drawn for school.

Her maps of the world, based on published atlases, were carefully copied and colored by hand. The book also includes geometry exercises.

Eliza Wadsworth began a silk pocket to hold small items, such as keys or sewing tools. She finely painted the design, including her initials.

Eliza also decorated a handkerchief with a neat pen-and-ink or stamped vine and stitched her name.

The family undoubtedly saved these small personal belongings as mementos of a cherished daughter who died at age 23.

The Wadsworth daughters cleverly crafted cases to hold needles and pins.

The small case, probably dating from the time that young Henry Wadsworth served as a lieutenant in the U.S. Navy, would have been a constant, patriotic reminder of the family’s service to country.

Henry Wadsworth at Tripoli

Peleg Wadsworth’s fourth son, Henry used his education toward a career in public service, joining the crew of the U.S.S. Constitution, the flagship of Commodore Edward Preble, a Portland native and Wadsworth neighbor.

In 1801, in its effort to protect free trade in the Mediterranean Sea, the United States flexed its naval might by beginning a blockade of Tripoli, one of four North African states that had controlled shipping by piracy and bribery for centuries.

In 1804 the U.S. Navy sent a squadron under Preble’s command to resolve this issue with the Barbary States.

Lieutenant Henry Wadsworth visited Algiers and Sicily, describing his activities and sketching the sights. His journal documents the nascent years of the U. S. Navy.

The Transit, a British merchantman, arrived in Malta in June 1803. He is believed to have sent the sketch of Tripoli, including the ruler’s fortified castle, to his sister Zilpah.

This hand-colored print shows the Constitution at the right foreground, and thirteen other American gunboats in battle with boats defending Tripoli, the walled city in the background.

The text below the print reads: "The attack made on Tripoli on the 3d. August 1804 by the American Squadron under Comodore Edward Preble to whom this Plate is respectfully dedicated by his Obedient Servant John B. Guerrazzi 1. Constitution, Frigate 2. Sirion 3. Arges 4. Enterprise 5. Notlas 6. Vixon."

Henry died on September 4, 1804, when a bomb ship he and others manned to infiltrate and destroy the Tripolitan fleet exploded prematurely.

Three years later, Zilpah named her second son after him.

Subduing the Barbary Pirates, a great naval victory for the United States, was celebrated by a series of prints of the battle and of Commodore Preble.

The Attack Made on Tripoli was published expressly for the American market.

This pitcher made for Preble bears hand-painted heraldic arms and a scene of the attack, based on a printed source such as the one by Guerrazzi.

The Longfellow Children at School

In 1804 Zilpah Wadsworth married Stephen Longfellow, a Harvard-educated attorney.

In 1807 they took occupancy of her family’s home with their two small sons after the Wadsworths removed to their Hiram farm.

Six more children were born in the handsome brick house. The rhyme “Stephen and Henry / Elizabeth and Anne / Alex and Mary / Ellen and Sam,” recorded the children’s names and order of birth.

Patrons of the arts, the Longfellows were among the earliest supporters of Eastman Johnson, a Maine artist who later gained national success.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow commissioned a number of portraits of his family and friends that still are on view at the Longfellow National Historic Site in Cambridge.

Henry’s childhood in Portland coincided with statehood for Maine in 1820. This rare watercolor documents Maine’s capitol, constructed in 1824.

It is the classical white building on the right next to the Cumberland County Courthouse.

Two blocks from the Wadsworth-Longfellow House, the Portland Academy, the red brick building to the left, was Henry’s school for eight years.

The Longfellow children were well educated. Stephen and Henry began their studies at ages five and three, respectively.

Elizabeth and Anne and their younger brother Alexander studied with Lucretia Frothingham.

Stephen and Henry studied with a number of different schoolmasters before entering Portland Academy in 1813.

That year Henry, age six, was “one of the best boys we have in school.”

His teachers often remarked on his “degree of diligence” and “amiable conduct.”

Henry completed his studies there in 1821 at the age of 14, continuing his education at Bowdoin College.

The girls drew and painted, but their father, following the advice of contemporaries on educating daughters, also wanted them to learn more useful subjects, such as arithmetic and “not just tend to their amusements.”

When work was done and there was free time, the children often turned to drawing. They drew from life and copied pictures from published books or magazines.

Anne drew this pencil and watercolor sketch of a room interior when she was about eight.

Copying prints published in a wide range of books and periodicals was part of the academic education of many young women and some young men during the early nineteenth century.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow and his siblings all pursued drawing and other visual arts.

Ruins, such as these examples in the English towns of St. Albans and Kent, appealed to their romantic sensibilities.

On a cold January afternoon in 1833, Samuel, the youngest of Henry's siblings, “employed myself in drawing a picture” from Kenilworth, Sir Walter Scott’s novel set during the reign Queen Elizabeth.

Signed “E W,” Lime Castle is attributed to Elizabeth or Ellen Longfellow, both of whom died of typhus.

St. Marguerite also is attributed to either Elizabeth (1808-1829) or Ellen (1818-1834) Longfellow.

Both were younger sisters of the poet, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow.

Anne Longfellow (1810-1901) drew this sketch of a garden in about 1818.