Ruth Whittier Shute (1803 - 1882)

Mr. and Mrs. Ellerton Jette;

Peter Tillou, Litchfield, Connecticut.

Peter Tillou, Nineteenth-Century Folk Painting: Our Spirited National Heritage, no. 93;

Hellen Kellogg, "Found Two Lost American Painters," Antiques World, December 1978;

Leslie and Peter Warwick, Love At First Sight: Discovering Stories About Folk Art & Antiques Collected by Two Generations & Three Families, (New Jersey: 2022), pp. 233-36, fig. 406.

The William Benton Museum of Art, University of Connecticut, April 23 - June 3, 1973;

The New York State Historical Association, Cooperstown, New York, July 1 - September 5, 1973;

Abby Aldrich Rockefeller Folk Art Collection, Colonial Williamsburg, Virginia, 1974.

Cynthia Minott descended from the first settler of Dorchester, Massachusetts, George Minott, through four generations to her father, Joash Minott (1769-1848) and his wife, her mother, Sarah Hildreth (1773-1847). Cynthia was the fourth of nine children, born in 1804 and married William Barker in 1837. After about two years in New Hampshire, they moved to Ohio and settled in McArthur, Swan Township, Vinton County. In the 1850 Census, William Barker, aged 41, and his wife Cynthia, aged 45, and their three children, Hiram, 14, born in New Hampshire, Daniel, 1, and Sarah, 12, both born in Ohio were on a farm valued at $1,900 in Swan Township. In the 1870 Census, Cynthia is married to James Barker, likely William's older brother, in Claremont, New Hampshire and he is a wheelwright, age 79 while she is 65-years-old. Her older sister Lucinda, (born 1798) remarried in Marietta, Ohio in 1854, explaining a misprint of information on the painting's backboard, as Cynthia never moved to Marietta. When the painting was created circa 1827, Lucinda was a widow and thus not likely to pose in a blue dress while Cynthia was unmarried and was much more likely to wear a blue dress.