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Portrait of Florantha Thompson Sproat

Painted by Cephas Thompson (1775-1856).
Oil on canvas, 1838.
Wisconsin Historical Museum object #1942.162.
WHI 2938

PORTRAIT PAINTING

Portrait of Florantha Thompson Sproat

Florantha Thompson Sproat (1811-1883) was born in Massachusetts, where her father was a portrait and landscape artist. She learned homemaking and married missionary Granville T. Sproat in 1838.

Later in 1838 the couple moved to the Ojibwe mission at La Pointe on Madeline Island in Lake Superior. There, Florantha cooked and sewed and gave birth to her first child, Elvira.

After the mission closed in 1845, the Sproats returned to Massachusetts. In 1854 they moved to California, where Florantha was among the pioneer settlers of the Yosemite Valley.

This portrait was painted by her father in 1838 and presented to the Wisconsin Historical Society in 1942 by Elvira's daughter, Gertrude Hutchings Mills.

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More than Face Value

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More than Face Value