Meriva M. Carpenter

Meriva M. Carpenter, born April 28, 1802 in Ellington, Connecticut, was a noted Nineteenth Century painter of landscapes and miniature portraits.^[1]

Personal

Meriva Carpenter was a daughter of Dr. Ruggles and Juliana (Pierce) Carpenter. On 27 February 1820 she married a cousin, Eli Carpenter, son of Dr. Eli and Abigail (Baker) Carpenter. They settled near the town of Homer, New York, in an area that came to be called Carpenterville, now East River, New York. Eli was a successful miller and dyer, and they were prosperous enough to build a fine house which they filled with art treasures. The artist Sanford Thayer painted portraits of Eli (displayed in the Phillips Library in Homer) and son Volney Carpenter. One of their children, daughter Marciana Melvina Carpenter, born December 2, 1820, was also an artist, and a taxidermist. Meriva Carpenter is interred in Glenwood Cemetery, Homer, NY, the same cemetery where noted artist Francis Bicknell Carpenter, a distant cousin, portraitist of President Abraham Lincoln, is interred. Many of Meriva M. Carpenter’s works reportedly survive in the Homer community.^[2]

References

1. ^ F. F. Sherman: Unrecorded Early American Portrait Miniaturists and Miniatures in Antiques, Vol. 23 (Jan 1933), p. 12 (cited in Art Index as “Meriva Carpenter, fl. 1843”).
2. ^ Katherine Waden Crutts: Biography of the Eli Carpenter family, April 13, 1937; and Esther C. Slater, Skaneateles, N,Y.: Obituary of Marciana Melvina Carpenter from the files of the Cortland County Historical Society, Cortland, N.Y.

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Name	Carpenter, Meriva M.
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Date of birth	1802
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