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The Society’s recently acquired miniature of John Cumming Howell wearing his Eagle was commissioned by his daughter.
line of his grandfather Richard Howell, an Original Member. The miniature portrays the admiral wearing his Society Eagle on his
dress uniform. This miniature is the only one the Society owns that depicts a hereditary member wearing an Eagle.
Howell devoted forty-five years of his life to the U.S. Navy—roughly as long as de Grasse served in the French navy. Born in Philadelphia, Howell went to sea as a midshipman in 1836, when he was seventeen, the same age at which de Grasse joined the French navy. He spent much of his early career in the Far East, and in 1854 he was aboard the sloop-of-war U.S.S. Saratoga with Commodore Matthew Perry’s squadron in Tokyo Bay when Perry signed the treaty that opened Japan to American trade. During the Civil War he was executive officer of the U.S.S. Minnesota during the Battle of Hatteras Inlet, and com- manded ships blockading the Atlantic and Gulf coasts of the Confederacy. After the war he held commands in the European, North Atlantic, and Mediterranean squadrons and at the Philadelphia and Portsmouth navy yards. He joined the New Jersey Society of the Cincinnati in 1872. He was then a commodore, stationed in Philadelphia. Howell was promoted to rear admiral in 1877 and retired in 1881. He died in Folkestone, England, on September 12, 1892.
English artist William T. S. Barber (d. 1916) painted this posthumous portrait from a photograph in January 1893 at his studio in Florence, Italy. We know this from an inscription on a backing paper inside the case. It was probably commissioned by Admiral Howell’s daughter, Maria Stockton Howell Cheston
(1855-1913), who was his only surviving child and lived in
England. The back of the locket- style case holding the miniature
displays a lock of hair. We have not found a photograph of Admiral
Howell wearing his Society Eagle. His daughter may have asked the artist to add the
insignia to the portrait—just as Admiral de Grasse’s daughters probably did a century earlier.
We know considerably less about the subsequent history of this portrait miniature. It had passed out of the family’s hands by the 1960s, when it was acquired by Ida and Fannie Edelson, then well-known decorative arts collectors in the Philadelphia area. The Society purchased the portrait from the Edelson sisters’ great niece in June 2019. The purchase was funded entirely by members of the Society who participate in the “Revolutionary Brothers” Facebook group. This same group also supported conservation of the painting and its case, which was probably custom made for the portrait. While the case was in poor condition when the Society acquired the miniature—the front and back halves were separated and other elements damaged and loose—the separated case allowed the inscription to be visible, immediately identifying the subject, artist, and date of the portrait.
The Society is on the lookout for portrait miniatures to add to our collection. Our focus is on members of the Society, but we look at miniatures of other soldiers of the Revolution as well as miniatures of their wives and children, especially if those portraits might have been carried in the war as cherished reminders of far away family.
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