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Sophia Dwight Foster Burnside was the older sister of Albert
Dwight Foster
(1800-52), a Worcester resident and member of the American
Antiquarian
Society. Sophia married Samuel M'Gregore Burnside (1783-1850) in
1816
at the age of 29. Among the extensive collection of the Foster
family
papers preserved in the Society's manuscript collection are weekly
letters
written by Sophia to her mother Rebecca Faulkner Foster who lived
in Brookfield,
Massachusetts.(2) Her letters focus primarily on health and family
matters,
including detailed reports on her children and her brother's
activities
and well-being. Visits to Brookfield to see her parents were
frequent.
In 1820, after a carriage accident during a journey from
Brookfield to
Worcester, Sophia wrote immediately to her father to describe the
incident:
'[T]he driver lost the command of [the horses] - they ran.... We
overtook
a man on horseback, our horses ran with violence against his,
threw him
down, threw the man off, overset our carriage, threw the driver
from his
seat, did not stop their progress but went on with increased
speed, with
the carriage on the side.' The driver stopped the horses by
running them
towards a rock wall, and Sophia noted, 'Mr. Burnside and I then
crept,
or rather, climbed out and found ourselves safe on the ground
without
having received any injury excepting a bruise on Mr. B.'s arm.'(3)
Burnside's
parents moved to Worcester in 1821, and the correspondence between
Sophia
and her mother, as well as visits to Brookfield, become less
frequent
after that date.
Sophia's husband, Samuel M'Gregore Burnside, was a lawyer in
Worcester
and, as a member of the Worcester School Committee and a trustee
of Leicester
Academy, was active in community affairs. Burnside was also one of
the
incorporators of the American Antiquarian Society, joining Isaiah
Thomas,
Sr. and others to form the Society in 1812. He was a Councillor of
the
Society and briefly served as librarian from May 1830 to April
1832.(4)
Burnside was primarily interested in the Society's newspaper
collections
and over the course of thirty years gave dozens of issues of the
Columbian
Centinel, the Boston Courier, and the Worcester Palladium.(5) His
personal
papers, including speeches supporting public education, and his
diaries
are preserved in the American Antiquarian Society's manuscript
collection.(6)
This miniature of Sophia Burnside was painted around 1830 by the
miniature
painter Eliza Goodridge. Eliza Goodridge's earliest miniatures
date from
the late 1820s and are similar in style to the work of her sister
and
fellow artist Sarah Goodridge, although not as technically
advanced.(7)
Goodridge probably began her career in Boston working with her
sister,
but spent most of her life in the central part of the state. She
lived
in Templeton, Massachusetts, and made several extended trips to
Worcester
in the 1830s and 1840s, living with the Foster family, of which
she painted
several portraits. In 1849, at the age of fifty-one, Goodridge
married
Colonel Ephraim Stone, who owned a general store and sawmill in
Templeton.(8)
Seven miniatures of the Stone family painted by Eliza Goodridge,
including
her self-portrait, are preserved in the Narragansett Historical
Society
in Templeton, Massachusetts. The Society's holding of twelve
portraits
by her is the largest collection of her known work.
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1) Weis incorrectly lists the sitter's first name as
'Sarah.'
2) Foster Family Papers 1740-1884, American Antiquarian
Society
Manuscript Collection.
3) Sophia Dwight Foster Burnside to Dwight Foster, March
18, 1820,
Foster Family Papers.
4) Proceedings of the American Antiquarian Society
(October 1830):
234. During this period the Society's librarian Christopher
Columbus Baldwin
was on leave.
5) Proceedings of the American Antiquarian Society (May
1847): 521.
Samuel M. Burnside also authored 'Memoir of Isaiah Thomas L.L.D.,
First
President of the American Antiquarian Society,' which appeared in
the
second volume of the Society's Archeaologia Americana, (1836):
xvii-xxx.
6) Samuel M'Gregore Burnside Papers 1783-1850, American
Antiquarian
Society Manuscript Collection. Burnside mentions his wife
infrequently
in his diaries, usually in the context of social occasions, ie.
'Went
to meeting with Mrs. B.'
7) Dale T. Johnson, American Portrait Miniatures in the
Manney Collection
(New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1990), 123-24. The Manney
collection
includes a miniature of an unknown woman that is signed 'E.
Goodridge
Pinxt, Sept. 26, 1829.'
8) Strickler, American Portrait Miniatures , 63.
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