Emma Cabell Henry Ferguson

Photograph

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Patrick Henry's Red Hill

Name/Title

Emma Cabell Henry Ferguson

Entry/Object ID

01.5

Description

A negative taken from an original photograph. Shows Emma Henry Ferguson seated at an upright piano in a music room or parlor. A door to the left opens into another room. Light streams through a window on the right wall. Various pictures and china pieces decorate the room. A bronze or zinc casting of the clay bust of Patrick Henry sits on top of the piano. The oil painting to the right of the piano is of Elvira Henry, sister of Emma Ferguson, affectionately known as "Aunt Bi".

Made/Created

Notes

Copy

Dimensions

Width

4 in

Length

5 in

Provenance

Notes

This negative shows Emma Cabell Henry Ferguson (1838–1905) seated in a parlor or music room. The room also contains two Henry-related artifacts: a zinc bust of Patrick Henry and an oil painting of Elvira Bruce Higginbotham Henry (1829–1874). Emma Cabell Henry was a daughter of John (1796–1868) and Elvira McClelland Henry (1808–1875) and a granddaughter of Patrick Henry. She married James Boswell Ferguson III (1822–1896) in 1858. According to Elvira Henry Miller (1850–1955), a niece of Emma Ferguson, Emma and her husband spent time abroad representing the Confederacy in France during the Civil War. Emma Ferguson was supposed to have been a very musical and literary woman. Emma Ferguson's black dress may indicate she is in mourning. Her husband died in 1896. This picture shows her studio in downtown Lynchburg, Virginia. The zinc bust of Patrick Henry on the piano is one of several made from the original clay bust in 1859. The clay original is in the Red Hill collection (96.19). It is uncertain how many replicas were made or their whereabouts. PHMF has one made of zinc in its possession (76.110). The portrait of Elvira "Aunt Bi" Henry eventually came into the possession of Lucy Gray Henry Harrison (1857–1944). Elvira Henry was a sister of Emma Cabell Henry and an aunt to Lucy Henry Harrison. The portrait was featured in a parlor of Lucy Henry Harrison's newly built addition to Red Hill. This portrait was destroyed by the fire which burned down the Red Hill mansion in 1919. It is unclear how Emma Ferguson came to own this portrait, considering that Elvira Henry did have a surviving son. It is also unclear exactly how the portrait moved from Emma Ferguson's to Lucy Henry Harrison's possession. Both of Mrs. Ferguson's children died by the year 1914. Perhaps the portrait was purchased or inherited by Lucy Harrison. A print was taken from a negative of the original stored in the Jones Memorial Library in Lynchburg, Virginia. The Patrick Henry Memorial Foundation purchased this print in 2001 from Robert DeVaul Photography, Inc.