Robert Hanna (1789-1854) was Born in Lynchburgh, Virginia, on May 28, 1789, the son of Robert Hanna (born 1753 in Ireland) and Catherine Jones. Robert Hanna, Sr. co-founded and settled Lynchburgh, Campbell County, Virginia, and moved his family to Bull Creek, three miles north of Middleton, in Columbiana County, Ohio, in 1801, and lived out his life in New Lisbon, Ohio. He also founded Clarkson, Ohio. Robert Hanna, Sr. died in 1834.
Robert Hanna (1789-1854) was trained as a surveyor and, failing that, became a joiner's apprentice in New Lisbon. He became a carpenter and cabinet maker. He was raised a Quaker, and converted to Methodism in 1811. Hanna became a circuit preacher, and his first minister's position was in Bottetourt, Virginia in 1812, followed by another position in Calvert, Maryland, in 1813. He married Elizabeth Liston in 1815. Robert Hanna was active in the anti-slavery movement and helped smuggle slaves into the North.
Due to increasing deafness, Hanna gave up preaching in 1816 and became an itinerant portrait and landscape painter, working mainly in Tennessee, Virginia, the Carolinas, and Ohio. In later life he settled in Wheeling, West Virginia, and died in Smyrna, Delaware, in 1854 while on a commission.
From the guide to the Robert Hanna Papers, 1811-1938, 1811-1870, (Western Reserve Historical Society)
