Notes
The Aylett family became related to Patrick Henry after his third daughter, Elizabeth "Betsey" Henry (1769–1842), married Philip Aylett (1767–1831) in 1786. This photographic print of a posthumous portrait of Patrick Henry by an unknown artist likely belonged to one of their children or grandchildren.
Virginius Cornick Hall, Jr., in his April 1963 article in The Virginia Magazine of History and Biography (Vol. 71, No. 2), claims that the original portrait was in the ownership of Betsey's great-granddaughter, Mrs. Thomas P. Bolling Jr., in 1892, after which it went to Mrs. E. H. Harriman, who donated it to the New York Historical Society in 1930. It remained there at the time of the article's publication.
This photographic print also passed through the family. At one time, it was owned by Lucy Gray Henry Harrison (1857–1944), a great-granddaughter of Patrick Henry. Her ownership is proven through the print's appearance in a photograph of the law office at Red Hill during Harrison's residency (2023.24.12).
The photograph was donated to PHMF by Catherine Spotswood Fontaine Lawrence (1938-2015), a fourth-great-granddaughter of Patrick Henry, on December 2, 1998.