The subject was the eldest child of Silvanus Folger Jenkins and Hannah S. (Leggett) Jenkins, Quakers of New York. He joined the bank of America in 1846 and was elected president in 1846, from which position he retired in 1888. He was a charter member of the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children and a life member of The New-York Historical Society. This portrait is based on an original that dates from about 1830.

Hannah S. Leggett was the second daughter of Joseph Leggett and Miriam (Haight) Leggett of New York. She married Silvanus Folger Jenkins (1782-1818), on October 12, 1803. Her portrait was a gift to the Society from her great-granddaughter.

The two Trumbull paintings of Niagara Falls hung in a gallery of the country home of Dr. David Hosack (1769-1835) at Hyde Park in Dutchess County, New York.

The two Trumbull paintings of Niagara Falls hung in a gallery of the country home of Dr. David Hosack (1769-1835) at Hyde Park in Dutchess County, New York.

Judith Rawlins was the daughter of Phillip and Hannah Rawlins of Boston. She was the wife of Admiral Clark Gayton and the mother of George Clark Gayton. Her portrait which has been attributed to John Smibert is very close in style to the work of that master, but the treatment of the head suggests the work of another artist. The portrait is similar to one of Mary (Williams) Smibert, wife of the artist, in the Massachusetts Historical Society.

The subject of this portrait, the son of the famous Italian navigator and explorer John Cabot, served as cartographer to Henry VIII of England and Ferdinand V of Castile and as pilot major to Emperor Charles V of Spain. Thompson, who came to New York from the Boston area in 1837, probably copied John Gadsby Chapman's replica of the Holbein original, as the latter was apparently destroyed in a fire at the Royal Galleries, Whitehall, England, in 1842.

Harriet Ann Riblett married Henry Aaron Burr of New York in 1832. Her portrait is neither signed nor dated, but rather assigned to George W. Hoffman on the basis of style, and dated similarly to Hoffman's companion portrait of her husband, which is also in the Society's collection (1912.1).

The subject of this portrait was the son of Gideon Burr and Indiana (Tinker) Burr of Canaan, New York, and a relative a Aaron Burr. By about 1830 Burr had settled in New York City where he became an accountant in a milinery firm; in 1845 he began experimenting with a hat-making machine which eventually made him a fortune. He was a director of the Mechanics' National Bank and a member of the Volunteer Fire Department, of which he was president of the board of trustees for seventeen years.

When John Vanderlyn (1775-1852) arrived in New York City from Kingston, NY in 1792, he honed his painting skills by copying portraits by Gilbert Stuart, among them a painting of Aaron Burr. Impressed by the copy, Burr took Vanderlyn under his wing, sending him to Paris to continue his artistic training at the Ecole des Beaux Arts. Vanderlyn returned to New York in 1801 and, a year later, painted this right-facing portrait of Burr, which became the subject’s standard image. Aaron Burr was elected vice president under Thomas Jefferson in 1800. His political fortunes changed in 1804, when he mortally wounded Alexander Hamilton in a duel in Weehawken, New Jersey. He spent some time in the West and then in Europe, before returning to America in 1812, politically and financially ruined.

Caroline Matilda Wood was the daughter of the Hon. Walter Wood, first judge of Cayuga Country, New York, and Paulina Wood. Her family moved to Aurora, New York, in 1795, from White Creek, Washington County. She married Eleazer Burnham, her father's law partner in Aurora, in 1807.