The painting was an heirloom, handed down through generations but unknown to the world at large. The identity of its subject was uncertain. The owner thought it was an ancestor, probably painted by Georgetown artist James Alexander Simpson in the first half of the 19th century, but she wasn’t certain.
Now, the mystery of the portrait has been solved, and it’s scheduled to go on exhibit at the Baltimore Museum of Art this week.
The woman sitting for the portrait was Mary Ann Tritt Cassell, a woman of mixed race. Formal portraits of African Americans in the period of slavery are rare, but this is one of a kind: It’s probably the first known portrait commissioned by an American born into slavery.
Mary Ann’s mother, Henrietta Steptoe, was born in 1779 on the Stratford Hall plantation in Westmoreland County, Va., where she was enslaved by Philip Lee. Upon his death, she passed to Lee’s young daughter, Flora. When Flora’s widowed mother married Philip Fendall, Steptoe followed her to the Lee-Fendall House in Alexandria. And when Flora came of age and married her cousin Ludwell Lee, Steptoe became his property. He was the son of Richard Henry Lee, a signer of the Declaration of Independence and a second cousin of Henry “Light-Horse Harry” Lee, father of Robert E. Lee.
In 1803, Ludwell moved to his new home of Belmont in Loudoun County, Va., and freed Steptoe. She moved to Georgetown, then its own municipality within the District of Columbia.
There, Steptoe joined a small free Black community. She worked as a midwife and nurse. Her brother-in-law belonged to the Mutual Relief Society, formed by Black businessmen and skilled craftsmen to help one another. Another member of the community, Yarrow Mamout, had come to America on a slave ship and had his portrait painted in 1822 by Simpson, who would later paint Mary Ann. But Yarrow did not commission his portrait, and Simpson kept it.