Elizabeth Abigail Wallingford (1806-1829) by John Brewster, Jr. (1766-1854),
1808, oil on canvas, 30 1/4" x 25". Brick Store Museum Collection.

The Wallingford family was quite prominent in the town of Kennebunk, and to this day, various landmarks bear the family name. George Wallingford had come to Kennebunk around 1800 to practice law.  Upon his death in 1824, it was written:

“The state has lost a firm patriot whose talents were equaled only by his undeviating integrity and unshaken firmness.  The country has lost the first ornament of its forum, its ablest advocate and most profound counselor, and the town, one of its best citizens.”

George’s first wife Abigail died very young at the age of 23.  Only a few months after her death, George had the itinerant deaf artist, John Brewster, Jr. of Buxton, Maine, paint a portrait of their daughter Elizabeth, who had just turned two. The Museum has this portrait in its collections, and from 2005 to 2007 it traveled to five east coast museums as part of a major retrospective exhibition of Brewster’s work: A Deaf Artist in Early America: The Worlds of John Brewster, Jr.  In the painting, young Elizabeth is wearing a red stone brooch bearing the initials of her dead mother. Elizabeth survived to adulthood and was married to Dr. Samuel Dow.  However, she died the following year at age 23…the same age as her mother at her death.