New Acquisition: Niagara Falls Lithograph, 1827

Clarke House Museum is pleased to announce a new addition to the collection of The National Society of The Colonial Dames of America in the State of Illinois. Niagara Falls from the American Side is a hand-colored lithograph after an original sketch by French artist  Jacques G. Milbert, published in Paris in 1827. This drawing is from his "Itineraire Pittoresque du Fleuve Hudson" or Picturesque Route of the Hudson River, a series of sketches Milbert made in 1825 while he was in the United States surveying for the Erie Canal.

Henry and Caroline Clarke honeymooned at Niagara Falls following their marriage in 1827. According to daughter Caroline Clarke Forman, who filled out an Emma Willard School alumni survey form for her late mother, the Clarkes' travel companions were Mr. and Mrs. William H. Seward. Seward was the 12th Governor of New York, United States Senator and the United States Secretary of State under Abraham Lincoln and Andrew Johnson. Mrs. Seward had attended Troy Female Seminary (later renamed Emma Willard School) with her husband's sister, Cornelia. The relationship between the Sewards and Clarkes most likely came from a friendship formed between Caroline Palmer Clarke, Frances Miller Seward, and Cornelia Seward while attending school together as young women in the early 1820s.

The print, measuring 7 1/2" by 11 1/4 inches, will be placed in a period frame and hung in the Northwest Sitting Room at Clarke House Museum later this year.

William Henry Seward (1801-1872)  c. 1850

Frances Adeline Miller Seward (1805-1865)

 c.1844.