A letter sent 27 years ago… finally answered

In 1998 Strafford Historian Gwenda Smith wrote a letter to Eilzabeth Markin of The Wadsworth Atheneum in Hartford Connecticut. Markin had published an article in the November 1976 issue of The Magazine Antiques on the early 19th century portrait painter Zedekiah Belknap.Smith was writing in regards to the portraits of Jedediah Harris and his wife Judith Harris which hang in the Morrill Memorial Library. Smith felt they might well be among the over 200 hundred portraits done by Belknap. Harris was the mentor and business partner of Senator Justin Morrill, and Morrill gave the first library to his hometown and named it the Harris Library.