catalogue of family portraits

CATALOGUE OF FAMILY

PORTRAITS

CATALOGUE OF FAMILY PORTRAITS

By Philip Conover Lazo with the assistance of his daughter, Ana Constanza Conover Blancas

May 2013

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Table of Contents

Foreword…………………………………………………………………………………….ii

Colonel John Cox, Continental Army……………………………………………………….1

Esther Bowes Cox…………………………………………………………………………...5

Robert Livingston Stevens…………………………………………………………………..9

Elizabeth Juliana Stevens…………………………………………………………………..12

Commodore Thomas Anderson Conover U.S.N………………………………………….16

Sarah Jones Potter Conover………………………………………………………………..21

Rev. James Potter Conover………………………………………………………………...31

James Potter…..……………………………………………………………………………38

James Conover……………………………………………………………………………..42

Madonna and Child………………………………………………………………………..45

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Foreword

It is our hope that this catalogue of portraits of the Conover, Stevens, Potter and Cox families will help serve family members and friends in identifying their relations and ancestry; also as a point of contact and source of information.

It is an act of faith to conserve and transmit the heritage of a people, it is a form of communication with posterity. I believe that this was the purpose of Elisabeth Juliana Stevens when she bequeathed the Portraits of her family to her son, Richard Stevens Conover. I like to think that a lady who loved literature could imagine her posterity even as she saw her grandchildren play, the thought came to her of a future world which is our world. And just as she prefigured us we want to feel her presence with all the sweetness and kindness of her love.

The people of past centuries speak to us and have many things to contribute to our lives. We want to hear them because they are not dead to those of us who might wish to inhabit with them in their times, who are alive to the continuing present in this world.

Constanza and Philip Conover with friend

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Colonel John Cox

Biography

John Cox was born in Monmouth New Jersey on June 11, 1753. At the age of 24 he commanded a New Jersey company of militia and served with George Washington at Morgantown and Monmouth.

According to George Washington’s diary, Colonel John Cox sat for the finishing touches of a miniature portrait by Charles Wilson Peale who was then a captain of the same company on Washington’s Staff at Valley Forge. Cox had taken the Oath of Allegiance at Valley Forge that same year and served as the company’s Quarter Master General.

A Philadelphia merchant, Cox owned Batsto Furnace in Pennsylvania, which produced munitions for the continental army. He was for many years a member of the State Assembly and one of its speakers. He was also representative from New Jersey to the 10th U.S. Congress, serving from May 22, 1809 until his death the following year.1

Colonel John Cox, 1752-1810, was a son of William and Catherine (Longfield) Cox, of New Brunswick, N.J. He was a Lieutenant-Colonel of Philadelphia Associates, a militia organization, at the battle of Princeton, but was later commissioned a Colonel in the Continental Army, and appointed Quartermaster General under General Nathan Greene. He owned the iron foundry at Batsto, and the rolling mill at Mount Holly, both in New Jersey, which supplied the Continental troops with munitions. He was a member of the Legislative Council 1781-1782.

While in Trenton the family made their home in “Bloomsbury Court”, originally built by William Trent for whom the City of Trenton was named. On November 15, 1760, he married Esther Bowes, his second wife, daughter of Francis and Rachel (Le-Chevalier) Bowes, and had six daughters, who were known as “The Six Lovely Coxes” and as “The Cox Beauties”.2

1 See http://americanart.si.edu/luce/object.cfm?key=338&artistmedia=0&subkey=520.

2 See http://librarycollections.stevens.edu/items/show/641.

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Painting

Colonel John Cox, 1753-1810 by Charles Wilson Peale, 1741-1827.

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Description found at the back of the painting.

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Biographical note on Colonel John Cox found at the back of his portrait by Charles Wilson Peale.

Close up to the text mentioning Charles Wilson Peale as the author of the painting found at the back of the portrait.

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Esther Bowes Cox

Biography

Esther Bowes Cox married Colonel John Cox of Monmouth, New Jersey, on November 19, 1760. She was the daughter of Francis and Rachel (Le-Chevalier) Bowes and had six daughters who were known as “The Six Lovely Coxes” and as “The Cox Beauties”.

We quote from “The Bicentennial comes to Hoboken” by Historian John J. Heaney:

“As the American Revolutionary War was drawing to a close Colonel John Stevens on October 17. 1782, married Rachel Cox, a daughter of Colonel and Mrs. John Cox, one of “The Coxe Belles”, formerly of Philadelphia, and at that time living at Bloomsbury Court, Trenton, New Jersey. Colonel and Mrs. John Cox were married in Old Christ Episcopal Church, Philadelphia, on November 15, 1760. It was from the tower of this old church on July 4, 1776, that historic bells joined with the Liberty Bell a few blocks away to peal forth the message of American freedom.

Bloomsbury Court was originally built by William Trent for whom the city of Trenton was named. Much social prestige was added to the Stevens family through this marriage. The Cox family tree included such names as the Chevalliers, the Stocktons, the Bartons and the Binney family of Philadelphia.

Colonel John Cox was an ardent patriot. During the Revolutionary War he rendered distinguished service to the Continental Army as Assistant Quarter-master under General Greene. He supplied large amounts of ammunitions from his foundry at Batsto, New Jersey.

During the Cox Regime, Bloomsbury Court was scene of many social events. General George Washington and Mrs. Washington enjoyed its hospitality as well as the Marquise de Lafayette, Rochambeau and many other noted Frenchmen. Meals were served in the gardens amid the roses of the Demoiselles Chevalier, the French aunts of Mrs. John Cox.

When General Washington arrived in Trenton in 1789 on his way to New York City to be inaugurated as the first President of the United States, the most prominent young ladies and matrons of the town greeted him at a twenty foot arch at the bridge over the Assumpink Creek. Qn the north side of the arch which appeared to the presidential party there was inscribed “The defender of the mothers will be the protector of the daughters”. The arch was beautifully ornamented with flowers and thirteen lovely young ladies representing the thirteen original colonies surrounded it. Among the young ladies were two of the Cox sisters, Esther and Mary. Little girls strewed flowers in the path of the future president.

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Among the flower girls were Sarah and Elisabeth Cox. Prominent matrons of the town also in attendance were Mrs. John Cox and her daughters Mrs. Samuel (Catherine Cox) Stockton and Mrs. John (Rachel Cox) Stevens.

Upon General Washington’s arrival in New York City, April 30, 1789, at the foot of Wall Street, he was escorted with pomp to Federal Hall and upon its balcony he was inaugurated the first President of the United States. The Oath of Office was administered by Chancellor Robert R. Livingstone who was married to Mary Stevens, the sister of Colonel Stevens.

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Painting

Esther Bowes Cox, by unknown artist.

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Description found at the back of the painting.

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Robert Livingston Stevens

Biography

Robert Livingston Stevens, 1787-1856, was an American mechanical engineer, born at New York City on October 18, 1787, the son of John Stevens (q.v.), whose mechanical ability he inherited. Whereas the father spent most of his thoughts on the improvement of motive power and the machinery of steamboats, the son made many advancements in construction, strengthening hulls, reducing weight, distributing strain and improving the lines to gain speed. He designed the false bow, which when first introduced on the “The New Philadelphia” enabled that steamer to break previous records and be the first of Hudson river steamers to go from Albany to New York during daylight. With this steamer and the “North America”, the Stevens Family inaugurated a day line on the Hudson. In 1822 he built the ferry boat “Hoboken” on modern lines and introduced the piled slip which directed the boats entrance to the landing place.

In 1830 he was made the first president of the Camden and Amboy railway which the Stevens family had founded. He then travelled to England to inspect equipment already in use there. On the outward voyage he designed the “T” rail with a broad base, long known as the Stevens or American rail and now universally used. He contracted in England for 500 tons of such rails, the first made, and also placed an order with the Stephensons for a locomotive made according to his specifications. This was the famous “John Bull”, which he brought to the U.S. on his return and which is now on The Smithsonian Institution. He made many improvements on railway locomotives, introducing the pilot truck in 1832, The bogie truck shortly afterward, and, finally, the use of eight instead of four or six wheels in order to promote adhesion to the rails and drawing power. When stone blocks could not be furnished fast enough for the road bed he resorted to logs laid crosswise with broken stone and gravel between and discovered that he had found a bed more serviceable and comfortable than any known previously. He devised spikes “six inches long with heads” to hold the rails in place on the logs. As a recreation Stevens took to yachting, and in 1844 he designed the “Maria”, for twenty years the swiftest yacht afloat. Later he designed the “America” for his brother John Cox Stevens, who with it defeated all English challengers, and founded the America’s cup races. He died at Hoboken N.J. on April 20, 1856.

From The Encyclopaedia Britannica, Vol. 21, 1954, p. 401.

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Painting

Robert Livingston Stevens, by Henry Inman.

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Photograph of the dining room where the painting has been located since the 1960’s , San Angel.

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Elizabeth Juliana Stevens

Biography

Elizabeth Juliana Stevens was the eldest daughter of Colonel John Stevens, the inventor, and the sister of Robert Livingston Stevens, the great engineer, of Commodore John Cox Stevens who won the America’s cup for the U.S and of Edwin Augustus Stevens who founded The Stevens Institute of Technology. She was born on April 18, 1797 and died on November 13, 1881. Art restorer Magdalena Rosenzweig has pointed out that in the middle XIX century women wanted to look striking when they sat for their portrait, Juliana Stevens chose to wear her spectacles and to hold a book in her hands. She was nonetheless a lovely woman of sweet modesty who captured the heart of my GGG father, Commodore Thomas Anderson Conover, and gave him several children. She most have been much loved by her father and brothers because the first motor boat that ever churned the waters of the Hudson, indeed, the waters of the world, designed and built by her father and her brother Robert in 1804,was named after her, the Little Juliana. In 1811 when they designed and built the first ferry steamboat put to work between Hoboken and New York they named it The Juliana, she was older then.

Juliana Stevens married Commodore Thomas Anderson Conover on July 21, 1821. Commodore Conover as a Midshipman commanded the gun boat Boxer at the battle of Lake Champlain on 11 September, 1814, and was awarded a sword by Congress for gallantry on that occasion.

The Conovers had five children: Catherine, Francis, Mary Rachel, Richard and Sophia. They lived for a time at Hoboken, then at Princeton Township, Mercer County, New Jersey and finally at South Amboy where the Commodore expired on September 26, 1864. Juliana then went to live at Castle Point, Hoboken, the family seat of the Stevens, where she died on November 13, 1881.

I quote from the memories of my great aunt Alice Conover, sister of my grand-father the Rev. James Potter Conover:

“About the year 1860 my father, Richard Stevens Conover, whose mother Juliana Stevens was living on a house built on property of the Camden and Amboy Railroad behind the Episcopal Church, at the northwest end of South Amboy (now moved to Main Street at the end of Stevens Avenue) was shooting over land laying southwest of the village overlooking the Raritan Bay. I have often heard him tell of climbing the tallest pine tree he could find; from there he saw a wonderful view of Raritan Bay, towards Staten Island and Sandy

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Hook. To the southeast over the Cheesequake meadows, to the hills now known as the Highlands.”

So that Juliana must have visited her grandchildren at “Sandcombe” the lovely home built by her son, Richard Stevens Conover, on land facing the Hudson at South Amboy.

She it was who laid the foundations for the present collection of family portraits, which she latter bequeathed to her son Richard Stevens Conover, my GGfather, the portraits of herself, her brother Robert, her husband, Thomas Conover and her grandparents, John Cox and Esther Bowes.

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Painting

Elizabeth Juliana Stevens, by Manuel Joachim de Franca, 1808 - 1865

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Close up to M. J. de Franca’s signature on the painting.

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Commodore Thomas Anderson Conover, U.S.N.

Biography

Thomas Anderson Conover was born at Monmouth, New Jersey, on April 17, 1791. He was the first of eleven children. His father, James Conover, was the first of his line to anglicize his original Dutch name, Van Kouwenhoven to Conover. He was a merchant in New York, a descendant of Wolfert Gerretsen Van Kouwenhoven who was born in Amersfoort, Holland and emigrated with his family to New Amsterdam in 1630, where he eventually founded the town of New Amerrsfoort in Long Island in 1638.

Thomas Conover became a Midshipman in the U.S. Navy in January 1812, Lieutenant on March 5, 1817, Commander on February 28, 1838, and Captain on October 2, 1848. His first cruise was on the “Essex” with Commodore David Porter and took part on operations of that famous vessel in the Pacific during the War of 1812.

Thomas Anderson Conover commanded the gunboat “Boxer” in the Battle of Lake Champlain, September 11, 1814, and was included in the acknowledgements of the Congress for gallantry on that occasion and was presented with a sword. He cruised in the Mediterranean, East Indies, Brazil and African squadrons. The last mentioned of which he commanded as fleet Commodore, being the “Cumberland” the flagship of that squadron from June, 1857 to September 1859.

Commodore Conover commanded the U.S.S. “Constitution”(“Old Ironsides”) from 18 September 1849 to January 16,1851 in the Mediterranean and in the early part of 1851 in New York Bay when the “Constitution” was used as a training ship. She made her last cruise in 1878-1879. During his tour in the “Constitution” flogging was abolished in the U.S. Navy.

Thomas Conover married Juliana Stevens on July 21, 1821 and had five children. He died the 25th of September 1864 at South Amboy, New Jersey at the age of 73.

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Painting

Thomas Anderson Conover, by Marchant

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Close up to Marchant’s signature on the painting.

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Biographical note found at the back of the painting possibly written by his son, Richard Stevens Conover.

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Sarah Jones Potter Conover

Biography

Sarah Jones Potter Conover, daughter of James and Sarah (Jones ) Potter, was born July 24,1835, at Philadelphia and died February 4,1879, at “Sandcombe”, Suoth Amboy, New Jersey. She married on November 8, 1855, Richard Stevens Conover who was one of the directors of The Camden and Amboy Railroad founded by the Stevens Brothers who were his uncles. They had nine children and lived a happy family life in the beautiful home, “Sandcombe” built by my GGfather in South Amboy, so lovingly described by my aunt Alice, their daughter, in her Memoire: Memories of “Sandcombe”.

Sarah was a lovely woman of the sweetest disposition and generosity, greatly mourned by all who knew her when she passed away at the age of 44. My grandfather who was her eldest son was devoted to her memory. Her grandfather John Potter and her father James Potter had been Merchants in Princeton New Jersey who made investments in the Delaware and Raritan Canal and latter in plantations in the South , around Savannah Georgia. They endowed the construction of Trinity Church, Princeton and were also patrons of Princeton University. They lived for a time in Philadelphia were Sarah was born and were she was painted by Thomas Sully at the age of fourteen. Her mother, Sarah Jones Grimes, “a lady of unequaled personal beauty and loveliness”, born June 12,1808 died June 4 1847, buried in Trinity Church was a daughter of Dr. John and Catherine (Jones) Grimes of Savannah, Georgia.

Many cousins and friends would visit the family at “Sandcombe” where picnics and promenades along the Hudson were organized, with swimming and diving from the platform of a picturesque beach boat that my GGfather had built for the purpose. Later on many outings to New York City across the harbor took place. On occasions the young ladies being rowed by their beaux across the bay in formal dress for a party in New York. The little girls enjoyed a two story doll house placed on the large roofed piazza that went all around the perimeter of the house. While the boys captained by my grandfather were taught to swim and to sail the family ketch.

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Painting

Sarah Jones Potter Conover, by Daniel Huntington

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Close up to D. Huntington’s signature on the painting.

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From a photograph album of Capt. James Potter Conover USN, her grandson.

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James Potter Conover Jr. is the boy standing at the back, his sister Mary, standing with his brother Richard and his sister Eleanor sitting.

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Note found at the back of this painting, possibly in the hand of her husband, Richard Stevens Conover.

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Note found at the back of the painting, mentions Theodore Roosevelt’s mother of the Glen family, probably written by her husband, Richard Stevens Conover.

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Photograph of the original type written Memories of “Sandcombe” by Alice Conover

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Photograph of p. 3 of the above mentioned Memoires with mention of Daniel Huntington’s portrait of her mother underlined.

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Rev. James Potter Conover

Biography

James Potter Conover, son of Richard Stevens and Sarah Jones (Potter) Conover, was born in the city of New York, October 10 1858, and died in South Portsmouth, Rhode Island, June22, 1931.

Priest of the Protestant Episcopal Church, and an educator of long experience, the Rev. James Potter Conover exerted a wholesome and vigorous influence on the lives of those with whom he came in contact. He was rector of several churches and served as chaplain of the American Red Cross during the first World War, but the greater part of his active career was spent in educational work. For thirty five years he was a master at Saint Paul’s School, Concord, New Hampshire, and subsequently for a brief period headmaster of St. Bernard’s School, Gladstone, New Jersey.

James Potter Conover was the oldest son of nine children. His boyhood he spent at Princeton New Jersey, during the winters, and at “Sandcombe”, his father’s country place near South Amboy, in the summer. Here he early became proficient at swimming, sailing and many other outdoor sports, teaching his younger brothers and sisters to follow his example. At the age of fourteen he went to Saint Paul’s School, in Concord New Hampshire and later on at Colombia University he distinguished himself academically and in the athletic field where he was an all-around athlete establishing a mark in the high jump that lasted twenty years. He could walk under a bar and then jump over it. He excelled at rackets and later on when he was a master at Saint Paul’s School he built (out of his own pocket), the first squash court in America. He is also credited with having introduced ice hockey into the United States after a business trip he made to Montreal where he bought some hockey sticks and a few pucks, and afterwards taught the boys at Saint Paul’s to play Ice Hockey. He was often invited to captain the yachts of his rich friends at the races off New Port, Rhode Island. He once rode with my father on horseback, in the summer of 1902, from Concord, New Hampshire to New Port, Rhode Island.

My grandfather married my grandmother, Mary Coit, who was the daughter of Dr. Henry Coit, founding rector of Saint Paul’s School, on June 5, 1890, at Concord New Hampshire. They had four children: my father, Captain James potter Conover Jr. U.S. N., my uncle Dick (Richard Stevens Conover), who was a great athlete himself “fastest man on ice since Hobey Baker”, who died at the battle of The Somme, 1918, and my dear aunts: Mary who married Herbie Henriquez, and Eleanor, ”baby”, who married Chauncey Beasley.

Samuel Drury, the third Rector of Saint Paul’s School, wrote:

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“Motorists who lolled in the Newport thoroughfare, might have noticed a sinewy , euphoric figure swinging along the road. They might have idly asked themselves who it was so constantly seen amid the rustic environs of that sophisticated resort. They did not know that he was a self- developed Franciscan , a graduate of Saint Paul’s School and Columbia University, a priest in Holy Orders, an author of books, a spiritual and physical athlete, perpetually fit. At other times they might have seen him on horseback ridding from cottage to cottage for friendly visits throughout his wide pastoral domain. In any case they would scarcely have understood him. He had achieved a leisurely career in going about doing good. Not to many it is given to become a pastor beloved of a whole country side and to figure indispensably in so many inarticulate hearts. Though an aristocratic childhood might have developed a useless aloofness, Jay was democratic in spirit.”

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Painting

Rev. James Potter Conover, by Helen Sturtevant, 1920.

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Photograph of the cover of a facsimile of a biographical sketch by Samuel Drury, third rector of Saint Paul’s School, of The Rev. James Potter Conover, published by The School’s Horae Scholasticae in 1932, the following year after of my grandfather’s death.

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Page 7 of the above facsimile.

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Letter of Dr Samuel Drury, third rector of Saint Paul’s School, to my grandmother, Mary Coit, daughter of the first rector, Dr. Henry Augustus Coit and niece of the second rector, Dr Joseph Howland Coit.

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James Potter

Biography

James Potter, son of John and Catherine (Fuller) Potter, was born at Charleston, South Carolina, August 29, 1793, and died at Savannah, Georgia, on January 25, 1862, and is buried in Trinity Churchyard, Princeton, New Jersey.

James Potter graduated from Yale College. He is listed as a merchant in the “Philadelphia City Directory” during 1829-1837. He had inherited interests from his father, John Potter, in the Delaware and Raritan Canal as well as valuable rice and cotton plantations near Savannah, Georgia. About 1840 he moved to Princeton and purchased the property of Commodore Robert F. Stockton, his brother –in-law, on the corner of Nassau Street and Bayard Avenue, it was his summer residence until his death.

James Potter married January 4, 1827, Sarah Jones Grimes of Georgia, daughter of Dr. John Grimes and Catherine Jones Glen, daughter of John Glen , Chief Justice of Georgia. The Glens are related to the family of Theodore Roosevelt’s Mother. They had eight children one of whom was Sarah Jones Potter Conover who married Richard Stevens Conover.

I quote from Aunt Alice’s Memoires of “Sandcombe”:

“My grandfather Potter died during the Civil War. His son John was killed, and his widow, Aunt Alice came to live with us with her little one year old son, James. As I was born the year 1865, I was named after Aunt Alice whom we all dearly loved. My father had been named guardian of her son James. Nearly all the furniture and pictures were removed from the Potter home in Princeton, to the house in Amboy, so that they did not have to be stored. In our youth the two parlors were furnished with soft, comfortable green leather chairs, with Sully portraits on the walls, some copies of madonnas, and other good portraits of the Conover side, to which a beautiful portrait of my mother by Huntington was added after her death.”

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Painting

James Potter, artist unknown.

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Photograph of the title page of the photographic album of Richard Stevens Conover II, who died at Cantiny Wood near The Somme river, France, August 1918, aged twenty.

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Photograph of my grandmother, Mary Coit, sitting by the portrait of James Potter, maternal grandfather of her husband, The Rev James Potter Conover. The young Annapolis naval ensign at bottom is my father, Capt. James Potter Conover Jr., in 1916, the year he graduated from The Academy.

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James Conover

Biography

James Conover was the son of James Conover and Margaret Anderson who married in 1790 in Monmouth, New Jersey. She was the daughter of Thomas and Leticia Anderson, of Newton, Sussex County, New Jersey. They had eleven children of whom Commodore Thomas Anderson Conover and James Conover were two. We ignore the dates of birth or of death of James Conover, son; but we surmise that they could not be far from those of his own brother ,Thomas, 1791-1864. What we do know, from his portrait, is that he went to Cincinnati and became a journalist. Why his portrait remained in the house of his brother Thomas is a mystery.

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Painting

James Conover, portrait by author unknown.

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Madonna and Child

Background

This Madonna and Child painting has an interesting story associated with the adventurous life of Daniel Wadsworth Coit (1787-1876). Daniel Coit ,the hero of our story , was born in Norwich, Connecticut of an old New England family ,descendants of John Coit who had come to America from Wales sometime in the 1630’s and settled in Salem, Massachussets. Daniels’s good father had prenticed him at an early age to a business house in New York belonging to some of his relatives. After a few years of diligence and application Daniel was sent to Peru in 1818 by his relatives as a supercargo on a company ship to deliver arms and munitions to the viceroy of Peru. After a dangerous voyage of 106 days that included an attempted mutiny while rounding the Horn, Daniel arrived in Callao, the port of Lima, in the middle of a blockade by the Chilean fleet of Lord Cochrane. Daniel left his fast sailing brig, the “Boxer” hiding behind and island while he attempted a landing at night with a few men on a boat. He was caught by a Spanish Frigate who mistook his boat for a Chilean spy. He was detained and put under custody at Callao until the matter of his identity and his mission were settled.

To make a long story short our hero had to reside in Peru for three years before the revolutionary situation settled sufficiently for him to be allowed to take a cargo of cocoa to Gibraltar in a Swedish ship as payment for the original arms consignment. This transaction required utmost patience as well as business and diplomatic acumen that put to test the abilities of the young supercargo. He came out of it with flying colors and after a side trip to Guayaquil lasting several months landed in Gibraltar and successfully disposed of his cargo making a handsome profit for himself and his relative, G.G, Howland in New York.

During his soujourn in Lima, to while away the time, as he stayed in the house of a prosperous Lima merchant, Don Manuel Abadia, our young agent spent some of his time exploring the sights in Lima and Cuzco. He would climb the towers of the fine Spanish churches and draw the landscape of the city, paint in water colors, which became one of his life long pass times where ever he went in his many travels in Europe and the Americas throughout his long and productive life. Later on when he was over forty years old, after he had made his fortune, he studied art formally in Italy and his drawings and water colors of all the places he visited were the delight of his family and friends back in Norwich and in New York, indeed after his death these became valuable art pieces.

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Daniel Coit returned to Peru as a partner of Frederick Huth & company of London and lived there for seven years more becoming one of the more successful foreign merchants in that country. He had always been an admirer of the Spanish painter Murillo as he repeatedly mentions in his Memoirs.

We believe that Daniel Coit bought the painting of The Madonna and Child in Cuzco and that it could be of the atelier of Murillo himself. This painting, done in oil over wood in the middle of the seventeenth century traveled from Lima, Peru, to Norwich, Connecticut in 1828 were it stayed till about 1876 when Daniel Coit died. My aunt Harriet Coit, Daniel’s wife and second cousin, gave it to my great grandfather Dr. Henry Coit who took it to his home ,“Coed Mawr”, in New Port, Rhode Island. After my grandmother, Mary Coit Conover, died in 1964 my father Captain James Potter Conover Jr. brought all the family paintings from New Port to Mexico City.

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Painting, before restoration, 1971

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After restoration

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Relevant excerpts from the book “A Memoir of Daniel Wadsworth Coit”, privately printed by Cambridge University Press, November 1908

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