Notes
This oil on canvas portrait depicts Laura Helen Henry Carter (1836–1856), a daughter of John (1796–1868) and Elvira McClelland Henry (1808–1875) and a granddaughter of Patrick Henry.
Laura was born at Red Hill on March 15, 1836, and married Dr. James W. Carter (ca. 1826–?) on March 7, 1855. She died on July 4, 1856, at only 21 years old, and is buried at Red Hill in the Henry family cemetery, several feet west of Patrick and Dorothea Henry's graves. The epitaph on her gravestone reads: "Her short life was bright. Her death full of glory."
According to oral history provided by Margaret Penick Nuttle in 1955, Laura played the guitar and sang traditional African American spirituals. An embroidered collar and handkerchief (76.176.1-2) that once belonged to Laura is also in the PHMF collection.
This portrait was painted in 1863 in Lynchburg from a daguerreotype photograph made during her lifetime. This daguerreotype is now lost. Laura's sister, Emma Cabell Henry Ferguson (1845–1905) commissioned it. Preservation Virginia's accession files note the artist was Charles Byrd King (1785–1862), but his death being in 1862 makes this incorrect. More recent curators suggest J. W. King (active c.1860), who also painted a portrait of Gen. Thomas "Stonewall" Jackson in 1864, now in the National Portrait Gallery in Washington, DC.
Following its commission by Emma Ferguson, the portrait was owned by Laura's mother, Elvira McClelland Henry. According to Elvira's will, dated April 18, 1870, "I desire that the Portraits of my daughters Emma & Laura belong to my daughter Emma H. Ferguson." At some point, the portrait was inherited by Emma Ferguson's niece, Elvira Henry Miller (1850–1955), who then gave it to her niece, Margaret Henry Gammon. Around March 1965, Margaret Gammon donated the work to the then Association for the Preservation of Virginia Antiquities (now Preservation Virginia).
In May 2023, Preservation Virginia transferred the portrait to the Patrick Henry Memorial Foundation.