Ruth Whittier Shute (1803 - 1882)

Don and Faye Walters, Goshen, Indiana, discovered in Maine circa 1980;

Barbara Pollack, Chicago, Illinois.

The Magazine Antiques, September 1981, p.504, advertised;

The Magazine Antiques, January 1988, advertised;

Leslie and Peter Warwick, Love At First Sight: Discovering Stories About Folk Art & Antiques Collected by Two Generations & Three Families, (New Jersey: 2022), pp. 236-7, fig. 407.

Sarah Fuller and Sarah Anne Drew in the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston both have applied cartouches and they and Cynthia Minot all have the S & AB watermark on their paper made from 1817-1820, probably from the same paper lot. The three girls’ portraits are some of the earliest Ruth Whittier Shute paintings.

In the 1820 Census of New Hampshire, there are two Sarah Fullers as possible candidates: Sarah Fuller from Chester and Sarah Fuller from Bradford. The Sarah Fuller from Chester was an older widow and had many children making her not a good candidate since the portrait is of a young woman in the 1820s. Sarah Fuller from Bradford was born in 1810 to Israel and Esther Fuller. In the 1820 Census, she was ten years-old and living on the County Poor Funds; most likely an orphan. In 1827, Sarah of Bradford was painted at the age of seventeen, and died in 1840 at the age of 30 in Amherst, Hillsborough County, New Hampshire.

Sarah Fuller and Cynthia Minot were born in Hillsborough County, New Hampshire. Sarah was six years younger than Cynthia and both of their parents were from Massachusetts; Sarah’s from Middleton and Cynthia’s from Westford. Westford became incorporated into Lowell where the textile industry was growing rapidly, hiring many young women. Since both parents were from the Lowell area, Sarah and Cynthia probably had relatives there and would have likely work in the mills in Lowell knowing their relatives were nearby. Helen Kellogg has theorized the Shutes painted young women who made money for the first time and they may have sent some money home or commissioned a portrait to send home.

Ruth Shute’s father built and operated a textile mill but died in 1814. In the same year, Francis Cabot Lowell built a textile mill in Waltham, Massachusetts, the first integrated mill in the United States, transforming raw cotton into cloth in one building. In 1822, the textile manufacturing operations expanded into a town named "Lowell" in honor of the late Francis Cabot Lowell. In less than 20 years, a few family farms were transformed into an industrial city where 32 mills were built. “Lowell Mill Girls” were recruited by men telling tales of high wages, 3-5 dollars per week. About three quarters of the work force were females. A few girls, who were as young as ten years old, came with their mothers or older sisters to work in the textile mills. Some women were middle-aged, but the average age was about 24. They were usually hired under contracts for one year but the average stay was about four years. New employees were paid a fixed daily wage while more experienced loom operators would be paid by the piece. The “Mill Girls” were paired with more experienced women who trained them. Conditions in the Lowell mills were terrible by today’s standards and the first women’s strike was in the textile mills. Employees worked from 5 AM until 7 PM, for an average 73 hours per week. Each room usually had 80 women working at machines, with two male overseers. The noise of the machines was described as “something frightful and infernal” and the rooms were hot, windows were often kept closed in the summer so that conditions for thread work remained optimal. The air was filled with particles of cloth and tuberculosis was common. Hundreds of boarding houses were built where textile workers lived. About 25 women lived in each boardinghouse, with up to six sharing a bedroom. One worker described her quarters as “a small, comfortless, half-ventilated apartment containing six occupants”.