EllingtreeResearch Archivea circle with many centers

Richard Mather in his skullcap and broad collar, his beard spread over his gown, a pair of spectacles in his right hand and an open book under his left; on this copy someone has written “Richardus Mather” across the top and “Johannes Foster sculpsit” at the foot. It is the earliest portrait print known to have been made in the English colonies, cut by John Foster, son of Capt. Hopestill Foster of Dorchester, soon after Mather died in 1669; Hopestill Foster had witnessed Mather’s will and sworn to it in 1669. Five impressions survive, at Harvard, the University of Virginia, the American Antiquarian Society, the Massachusetts Historical Society and Princeton. Houghton dates its copy about 1675, as a frontispiece added to a reissue of Increase Mather’s life of his father; the Virginia copy is dated 1670. A few years later Foster cut the map of New England for Hubbard’s history of King Philip’s War.

An oval head-and-shoulders portrait of an elderly man with a lined face, side-whiskers and a black stock, copied from an early photograph. He died in 1867.

Blacksmith, husband of Polly Collins. The photograph, in an ornate case-style frame, is reproduced from a printed family history and captioned “Eli Woodruff Bruner”. The caption is in the same typewriter face as Polly’s in the 1997 Brunner/Bruner Picnic book (page), so the history is probably that book. The photograph uncropped is here.

The same photograph as the oval portrait in the family’s printed history, here uncropped: a bearded man in a broad-brimmed hat, a bow tie and a long coat with a row of buttons, seated, his hands in his lap.

Polly Collins Bruner (1827-1887), wife of Eli Woodruff Bruner. Molata is her story: the photograph shows the darker complexion the family remembered, and the DNA of her descendants bears out the “Molata” of the colonial records. The same photograph as printed in the 1997 Brunner/Bruner Picnic book, with its caption, is here.

The same photograph of Mary Elizabeth “Polly” Collins as the family’s copy, here as printed, in an embossed frame with the typed caption “Mary Elizabeth ‘Polly’ Collins Bruner.” The book is a 1997 family history made for a Brunner/Bruner picnic. The portrait of her husband Eli in the family’s printed copy is captioned in the same typewriter face, so is probably from the same book. The foot of the page is cut off in the screenshot.