Peale-Sellers families.

The Peale family is best known as a family of artists; however, family interests and activities were much more wide-ranging. The best known Peale is Charles Willson Peale (1741-1827, APS 1786), who produced more than one thousand paintings, including hundreds of portraits of leading Americans during the colonial and early national periods. Peale was married three times, to Rachel Brewster (1744-1790), Elizabeth de Peyster (1765-1804), and Hannah More (1755-1821). He had eighteen children, eleven of whom reached adulthood. Three of Charles Willson Peale’s sons became artists: Raphaelle Peale (1774-1825), Rembrandt Peale (1778-1860), and Rubens Peale (1784-1865). A fourth son, Titian Ramsay Peale (1799-1885, APS 1833), was a naturalist (who made drawings on the exploring expeditions he accompanied) and pioneer in photography, and another son, Benjamin Franklin Peale (1795-1870), became a naturalist and paleontologist. Peale’s daughter Sophonisba Angusciola was married to Coleman Sellers (1781-1834), an inventor and manufacturer of machinery, including locomotives. Two of their sons, George Escol Sellers (1808-1899) and Coleman Sellers (1827-1907, APS 1872), were inventors and engineers. The latter served as director of the construction of the hydro-electric power development at Niagara Falls. He was married to Cornelia Wells Sellers (1831-1909). One of their grandsons was Charles Coleman Sellers (1903-1980, APS 1979), a librarian and historian and the author of several studies of the Peale family, including a Charles Willson Peale biography.

Charles Willson Peale was born in Queen Anne’s County, Maryland, in 1741. His father Charles had been banished from Britain to the colonies for embezzling funds while working as a clerk in the General Post Office at London. By 1740 the elder Charles was employed as a teacher in Annapolis; later that year he married Margaret Triggs. The couple lived in modest circumstances. They had five children. Charles Willson’s father died when he was still a boy. At the age of twelve Charles was apprenticed to Nathan Waters, a saddle maker in Annapolis. In 1762, Charles opened his own shop; that same year he married Rachel Brewer. The couple eventually had eleven children, six of whom reached adulthood. They also adopted Peale’s orphaned nephew Charles Peale Polk.

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