Throwback Thursday: Making History- Winter at Washington Hall
Our Research to Imagine Key Figures from Yellow Springs’ Past and Represent them to a New Audience
Art Imitates Life
In preparation for our upcoming exhibition on Washington Hall and the Revolutionary Winter of 1777-1778, the Moore Archives has been conducting extensive research into key figures who were present at Yellow Springs during that time.
Our exhibit (more information about upcoming shows can be found here) will be interactive and feature ‘playable characters’ that visitors can choose as they explore the exhibit in different ways. However, we encountered a challenge: many individuals we identified in our records do not have associated depictions, and in cases where images do exist, they often vary greatly in style.
To address this, we are researching what people at that time and place would have looked like and using this knowledge to reconstruct these individuals as faithfully and accurately as possible.
Our goal is to breathe life back into these long-forgotten stories and give a voice to those who have been silenced; as part of this journey, we aim to provide faces to the faceless.
Our archivist happens to have a deep fascination with facial reconstruction and historical fashion, both of which are very helpful to this undertaking, but we want to present these figures in a continuous, stylized art style that is both historically accurate and visually distinct. We began this process with the ‘cameo’-style portraits that visitors will see upon entering the exhibit.
Building Blocks
We started with a generic skull, so that we could keep the scale of the profile portraits consistent across all of our “characters”.
Next, we added simple ‘tissue markers’ to indicate where the average musculature of the face would be layered in, without adding too many distinguishing features.
This underlying sketch will help us keep the placement and location of features consistent, while also demonstrating all of the beautifully varied and complex ways that people develop into unique-looking individuals throughout the course of their lifetime.
This art is also being created by our archivist, who selected a semi-realistic style that will both highlight the different faces of these historical people in a way that makes them look unique, but is also polished enough that it will be aesthetically pleasing and will visually match the rest of the exhibit.
Painting the Picture
To make sure we show these people as accurately as we can, we researched pictures of them, their family history, written descriptions, and looked at the history of fashion and war. Below, you’ll see how we made each design choice for these “playable characters.”
We chose a semi-realistic art style that is similar to modern digital art (we used Procreate), but also mixes in portrait and engraving styles from the past. The line art looks like the etching style from the 1770s. The features we picked show what these people might have really looked like, but focus more on capturing their essence and the beauty of their features, not making them look exactly like a photo.
During this time period, people who sat for portraits did not expect a photo-realistic or fully true-to-life image that showed every flaw. For example, George Washington had visible scars from smallpox contracted in Barbados, yet most portraits of him do not show them.
Artists often chose to leave out these imperfections. We applied this same approach to the poses we selected and to how our archivist artistically represents these individuals. This “beautification” effect is intentional and goes beyond simple artistic style.
Reverend Dr. James Sproat
A key figure when it comes to primary sources documenting our time period of interest, the Reverend Dr. James Sproat served as the chaplain at Yellow Springs. In his diary, excerpts of which are preserved in the Moore Archives, he recorded his comings and goings as he visited a number of hospitals in the Middle Department.
The image below, showing Rev. Dr. James Sproat, was sourced from a helpful page that compiles a number of useful documents on the historical figure.
However, because we do not have a date for when this engraving was taken, in order to determine what Sproat would have looked like in 1777, we need to determine if this engraving was done soon after that time, or if it was done a while later. Lacking a date, our best option is to look into the company that the image was engraved for: W.P. Farrand & Co.
Doing a quick sweep of archival resources, both in the Moore Archives and from online, publicly available sources, we find that this company is has become fairly obscure. We were able to follow a lead to the archival website Hathi Trust. This website, similar to the Internet Archives, maintains digitized records that can be sourced from outside viewers.
By searching for ‘W.P. Farrand & Co.’ and making sure that we match the addresses to the one included in the engraving of Sproat, we found that the earliest date where this company was recorded was around 1794.
This excerpt comes from page 534 of the Checklist of Past Engravers, published in American Engravers Upon Copper and Steel by David McNeely Stauffer in 1907. The entry mentions W. P. Farrand.
Notably, it also describes an engraved bust set within an oval and paired with a title that matches our image. This detail suggests that the prints may have belonged to a larger set. Publishers likely commissioned this set in the mid-1790s, with J. Ormrod as the original publisher and James Thackara and John Vallance of Philadelphia as the engravers.
At a later date, W. P. Farrand likely purchased the rights to reproduce these images and removed the original date, publisher, and engravers’ names. We also know that Thackara and Vallance engraved a portrait of Benjamin Franklin in 1794, which supports this timeline.
The next earliest reference to W. P. Farrand & Co. appears in Reports of Cases Adjudged in the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania: 1799–1814 (Volume 1) by Horace Binney, where W. P. Farrand & Co. are listed as the publishers.
Here is the earliest reference we have found to William P. Farrand & Co. in which Farrand appears as part of a company, and it dates to 1809. This evidence suggests that the 1794 date for the engraving- created before W. P. Farrand & Co. obtained the rights to reproduce the engravings made by Thackara and Vallance- is likely the earliest possible date the engraving could have been produced.
Based on this timeline, we can conclude that Reverend Sproat sat for his engraving no later than 1794.
As an important caveat, our archives include excerpts from Sproat’s journal written while he served as Hospital Chaplain of the Middle Department in 1778. John W. Jordan published these excerpts in 1903, and in his introduction, he provides a brief biography of Sproat’s life. Jordan states that Sproat died of yellow fever in Philadelphia on October 18, 1793. This date is confirmed by several other sources, so if the engraving featuring him was published in 1794 along with Thackara & Vallance’s works featuring Benjamin Franklin and John Howard, this was likely the last image captured of Sproat before his death.
Regardless, our area of focus is the winter of 1777-1778, so conservatively, this is an image of Sproat about sixteen years after he spent time as the chaplain at Yellow Springs. He is a much older man in this image than he would have been at the time.
Sproat was born April 11, 1722, so during the winter of 1777-1778 and during the early spring of 1778, he would have been around ~56 years old. While not a young man like John Rose, Sproat would have still been middle aged during our time period, and in the above engraving, he would have been in his early 70s. Features of his attire, such as his powdered wig, are rather formal and indicate a formal sitting.
While contemporary images of what hospital chaplains would have worn during this time period are quite difficult to find, we were able to find this image of a chaplain at Valley Forge, created by artist William A. Smith, who was prolific during the 1930s.
The image depicts George Washington and the Continental Army praying with Washington’s chaplain (likely Israel Evans) at Valley Forge. Notably, the chaplain in this image is dressed in the minister’s clerical attire congruent with the Presbyterian denomination, but he lacks a powdered wig. If this is Evans, other images of him that are more contemporary to the time he was alive also seem to show him wearing not wearing a wig, so this may have been his personal style as opposed to a choice taken out of practicality.
That being said, depictions of James Caldwell, a Presbyterian minister who played a prominent part in the American Revolution, is often depicted wearing the typical colonial-style powdered wig that is often called to mind when one pictures important people of the time.
The below image is illustrator H. A. Ogden’s depiction of James Caldwell, the “Fighting Parson”, during the Battle of Springfield (1780).
However, considering that wigs were not viewed as highly fashionable during this period, particularly since Philadelphia was under British control and Sproat was preforming his duty in incredibly lean times, we can reasonably assume that he probably did not wear a wig while he was making his rounds in the hospitals in this area.
Overall, during this time, Sproat would likely have resembled Smith’s depiction of Evans at Valley Forge. It is probable that he did not wear a wig, unlike Caldwell in Ogden’s illustrations. However, he may have adopted the practice in his later years, as wigs had somewhat returned to fashion by that time, especially for men of considerable influence and means.
The attire depicted by both artists- the simple black suit with the distinctive Presbyterian clerical collar- is likely accurate to what Sproat would have worn on a daily basis. A contemporary engraving also suggests that Sproat continued to dress in this style throughout his later years.
How do We Depict Sproat?
Although the contemporary engraving shows Reverend Sproat in his seventies, our goal is to portray him in his mid-fifties, which matches the time period we are focusing on. The engraving by Thackara and Vallance guides how we should style his appearance and highlights several clear facial features. He has a strong, slightly Roman-style nose, a less prominent brow, high cheekbones, and a small, M-shaped mouth with a thinner upper lip and a fuller lower lip.
While some facial features become more pronounced with age, the overall structure of Sproat’s face would have remained recognizable. In our design, we will keep these defining traits.
We do not have any contemporary color images of Sproat, so any coloration we choose is speculative. This limitation applies to most individuals in the exhibit. However, we can make informed estimates by researching Sproat’s ancestry. By tracing his family background, we can identify the regions of Europe his family came from and study common physical traits from those areas during the period.
While publicly-sourced websites such as Find-A-Grave can sometimes be dubious in terms of accuracy- for example, the page for Sproat himself features an image of an unrelated man in attire from a later era- they can still be very helpful when used with caution.
From this website, we learned the names of the chaplain’s parents: Lt. Ebenezer Sproat (born May 1676) and Experience Hawes Sproat (born September 24, 1686). Both were originally from Plymouth County, Massachusetts. Judging by his mother’s distinctive, very ‘Pilgram’-ey name, and the winged deaths’ head iconography on his father’s headstone, it is likely they were part of the Puritans who settled in Plymouth after the famous voyage of the Mayflower.
Looking further back, we found that Sproat’s maternal grandmother, Desire Gorham Hawes, was descended from English nobility, including King John of England, who signed the Magna Carta. Desire Gorham Hawes’s mother, also named Desire, was the eldest daughter of John Howland and Elizabeth Tilley, two notable passengers of the Mayflower.
While this connection may initially seem unexpected, it is not surprising that a prominent figure like Reverend Dr. James Sproat would have such an esteemed ancestry. This information allows us to identify him as English, with Puritan and Pilgrim roots originating in the West Midlands and East Midlands regions of England. Although this area has become increasingly diverse today, during the early 1600s, its inhabitants likely had a genetic makeup consisting of a blend of Anglo-Saxon, Norman, and Celtic influences.
Therefore, for our purposes, Sproat would likely have had a fair complexion, with hair that could have been either red, blond, or brown. To represent him, we’ve chosen to effectively split the difference: giving him sandy, slightly reddish brown hair (streaked with a bit of grey to show his age) and light brown eyes.
Sarah Ruston Kennedy
As the wife of Dr. Samuel Kennedy, Sarah Ruston Kennedy played a central role in the more refined social life at Washington Hall. Although Washington Hall served as a General Hospital, it also functioned as headquarters for the Hospital Department during the Revolutionary War.
While doctors, nurses, surgeons, apothecaries, and surgeons’ mates worked to save soldiers’ lives, influential Revolutionary leaders also visited the site. Figures such as Dr. Jonathan Potts and Dr. William Shippen regularly came to Washington Hall.
These men expected to be received with proper style and decorum. As lady of the house and wife of the chief surgeon, Sarah Kennedy held responsibility for hosting them with appropriate prestige.
Even as conditions worsened during the war, small displays of social grace remained important within the planter class. Although British forces looted the Kennedys’ primary home in Whiteland, they remained part of elite social circles.
Sarah Kennedy was the daughter of Job Ruston, one of the wealthiest and most influential men in Chester County. Her younger brother, Dr. Thomas Ruston, was a personal friend of Benjamin Franklin.
She belonged to the upper class and modeled her behavior and fashion on her social peers. For women like Sarah Kennedy, fashion expressed social standing, personal agency, and individuality.
No known portraits of Samuel or Sarah Kennedy survive today. However, contemporary portraits of women in similar roles help us understand what colonial women of her status likely wore.
The Metropolitan Museum of Art provides several public domain images that serve as useful references. The image above shows an unnamed upper-class woman from 1778.
The portrait depicts her with an intricate hairstyle, pearls woven into her hair, and delicate lace trimming her dress. These details reflect the fashion of elite women at the time.
By studying contemporary portraits like this one, we can identify the clothing styles that were fashionable during this period. We also combined this visual evidence with historical research on eighteenth-century fashion.
Together, these sources allowed us to design an ensemble that Sarah Kennedy likely would have worn to present herself well and (more importantly) impress her guests.
How do We Depict Sarah?
Like many people in our story, Sarah Kennedy left no surviving records that describe her physical appearance.
Because of this absence, we rely on genealogy when selecting colors for her depiction. Tracing Sarah’s lineage shows that most of her ancestors came from northwest England.
During that period, people from this region typically had fair skin and burned easily in the sun. They often had mousy brown hair, though darker shades nearing black were also common.
Historical accounts frequently describe people from this area as having blue or brown eyes. Writers often linked these traits to strong Welsh ancestry caused by earlier population movements.
Sources also describe individuals from the region as having small, delicate facial features.
Sarah also had ancestors from Kent, England. This region included people from many backgrounds, such as Mesolithic hunter-gatherers, Neolithic farmers, Anglo-Saxons, Vikings, and Normans.
As a result, people from Kent showed a wide range of appearances, though observers again noted generally delicate features. We must treat these historical descriptions carefully.
The authors often belonged to the same social groups they described, which may have shaped their views. Even so, these accounts remain useful as we aim for honest and accurate reconstructions.
Unfortunately, as stated above, we do not have recorded descriptions of Sarah herself. However, on her mother’s gravestone (which has since been lost to time), there was once a poem inscribed that praised her looks highly, among other attributes.
“The dame that lieth underneath this tomb,
Had Rachel’s face, and Leah’s fruitful womb,
Abigail’s wisdom, Lydia’s open heart,
With Martha’s care, and Mary’s better part.”— Inscription on Mary Baker Ruston’s tombstone
For those not up to speed with their Biblical trivia, the Rachel mentioned above is a character from the Old Testament who was famed for her almost supernatural beauty.
While such flowery language for the dearly departed is not uncommon, Job Ruston, Sarah’s father, did not seem to praise the beauty of his subsequent wives on their respective headstones (yes, he did outlive two additional wives), at least not in the same way that Sarah’s mother was honored.
Due to this heritage and the genealogical tracing we have conducted, our archivist decided to give Sarah delicate features alongside a smaller frame. Nevertheless, Dr. Kennedy’s will and estate records indicates that Sarah may have had a more ‘sporty’ side, as she had a specific saddle for riding horses, suggesting an active lifestyle. Therefore, we aimed to balance her slender body type with a level of fitness that would have been considered fashionable at the time.
Rina (Surname Unknown)
From our records, we know that during the winter of 1777-1778, while Washington Hall was being built and used for the first time, at Yellow Springs, there were at least three enslaved people. One of these enslaved people was a middle-aged woman named Rina.
Rina was most likely around 40 years old at this time, and considering how slavery worked in Pennsylvania at the time- and the kind of household that the Kennedy family had- she would most likely have served as a domestic servant and a lady’s maid.
Slavery in America is a dark and despicable chapter in our history, but when we do not acknowledge it, we also do not acknowledge the lives of the people who suffered the most under that system. That being said, while Rina would have lacked freedom, she would not have been subject to the same kinds of horrors that come to mind when one thinks of slavery in America. This was not the same kind of chattel slavery that proliferated in the antebellum South; up in the North, during the 1770s, women like Rina would have been relegated to property- but they were extremely expensive property. Having a slave to serve in domestic life would have been a status symbol. As abhorrent as this is from a modern standpoint (and from a moral standpoint), these were the circumstances that Rina lived in- and Washington Hall would not have changed that.
To get a further glimpse into what kind of life Rina would have lived, we can look at the early life of Phillis Wheatly, an enslaved woman from Boston who was a contemporary to Rina’s time.
The reason that we know so much about Phillis’s life is that the Wheatly family- the people who enslaved her- chose to educate Phillis and she learned how to read and write. Phillis was brilliant, and her great skill as a poet made her somewhat of a celebrity in her day. Before she found recognition, though, Phillis’s life was defined by her domestic work. Because Rina and Phillis would have embodied similar stations, we can use the surviving image of Phillis above- and, of course, historical research- to determine the kind of attire that Rina would have worn.
How do We Depict Rina?
We chose to highlight Rina in our exhibit purposefully- though the specifics of her life are incredibly difficult to track due to her enslaved status, what we know about her, even from a basic historical lens without specifics, meant that she lived a life filled with far too little freedom, far too many tragedies, culminating in an existence that was horrifically easy to almost erase. When selecting which voices from our archives to echo in this exhibit, Rina was one of our first choices. However, because of her life’s circumstances, we know very little about Rina.
The slave records established in Pennsylvania after the gradual banning of slavery in the state in 1790 list Rina as a mulatto woman around ~45 years old, enslaved to the heirs of Dr. Samuel Kennedy. In Dr. Kennedy’s estates’ index from 1778, Rina is recorded as being about 40 years of age. Record-keeping for enslaved individuals at that time focused far more on ownership and legal status than on biographical or genealogical histories, and this was largely on purpose.
For our purposes, we estimate Rina’s age as about forty in 1777–1778, making her approximately fifty-two in 1790. Her recorded age may have been lowered to increase her value as property.
Because we have a photocopy of Kennedy’s original will, we treat this primary source as the most reliable record of Rina’s age. The only official description of Rina’s appearance classifies her, along with Lucia and Kitte, as “mulatto.” This label indicated one enslaved African parent and one parent legally considered white. Laws at the time defined enslaved status through the mother. Based on Rina’s age, lack of a surname, and surviving records, we can draw careful but speculative conclusions about her parentage.
Sarah’s father, Job Ruston, enslaved more than one hundred people during his lifetime. Rina likely entered the Kennedy household when Sarah married Samuel Kennedy.
Rina appears as one of only four enslaved individuals recorded in the Kennedy household. One man, Prime, described as “negro,” disappears from records before the family acquired Yellow Springs in 1774. While Prime vanishes from documentation, records continue to list Rina, Lucia, and Kitte through 1790. Lucia and Kitte were much younger and may have been Rina’s daughters. Records from 1790 describe Rina, Lucia, and Kitte as “slaves for life.” Other enslaved people in the area received freedom after turning thirty-one.
This distinction raises difficult questions about the motives behind their continued enslavement. Possible explanations include economic interest, cruelty, or a distorted sense of personal connection.
We will never know the true reasons for this decision. However, the surviving records present a tragic and complex history.
Because of this complexity, we chose subtle facial similarities and poses that suggest a possible family resemblance between Sarah and Rina. This resemblance appears only if the viewer looks closely.
Regardless of any shared parentage, we portray Rina as an independent figure shaped by the world she lived in. Her features reflect the historical realities of her circumstances.
Most enslaved people during this period traced ancestry to West and West Central Africa. These regions included the Gold Coast and extended into the Congo.
These areas contained many cultures, including Akan, Mole-Dagbani, and Ewe peoples from Ghana. They also included Hausa, Songhai, Tuareg, and Arab influences from Nigeria. The Congo region alone included more than two hundred ethnic groups, many from Bantu-speaking cultures. Africa’s genetic diversity makes any broad generalization imperfect. Even so, people from these regions often shared dark hair, dark eyes, dark skin, and textured hair ranging from tight curls to full volume.
As a woman of mixed African and European ancestry, we depict Rina with strong, expressive features that reflect both sides of her heritage.
She wears her hair under a cap, consistent with clothing expectations for ladies’ maids, working women, and household staff of the period. Because Rina served in a prominent household, she likely dressed relatively well. We added light embellishment to her cap and a fashionable choker-style necklace. This jewelry visually aligns her with the household’s status and echoes elements worn by the lady of the house.
Abigail Hartman-Rice
Many of the visitors of Yellow Springs who are familiar with Chester County history, Revolutionary-era women, or the Rice and Hartman families often already know Abigail Hartman Rice. She holds this recognition for a very good reason.
Abigail’s story at Yellow Springs stands among the most quietly powerful human narratives connected to Washington Hall. Her labor rarely appears in military records, yet the hospital could not have functioned without it.
During 1777–1778, Abigail served as a nurse and civilian support worker at Washington Hall and throughout Yellow Springs. She cared for sick and wounded soldiers alongside other local women.
She also helped gather food and supplies from nearby farms when the hospital faced severe shortages. Her work placed her within an informal but essential care network supporting Continental Army medical operations.
Over her lifetime, Abigail gave birth to twenty-two children, and seventeen survived to adulthood. She married Zachariah Rice at age fifteen, only months after her Lutheran church confirmed her adulthood.
She spent much of her adult life pregnant while managing a working farm household. Abigail regularly nursed infants and cared for children alongside her other responsibilities.
This context matters. When Abigail cared for injured and dying soldiers, she already lived with constant physical exhaustion and emotional strain.
Her compassion grew from daily practice, not abstraction. She gave care under pressure and often at great personal cost.
In 1777, Abigail likely stood in her mid-to-late thirties. Given her family’s size and timing, she was probably pregnant or had recently given birth during her hospital service.
This reality highlights the extraordinary nature of her contribution. She layered hospital labor atop the demands of childbirth and early childrearing.
Abigail and her husband belonged to the German-immigrant yeoman farming community that defined Yellow Springs in the late eighteenth century. They lived as stable, middle-class farmers by rural standards.
Their community viewed them as established and trustworthy neighbors.
Although early American folk artists (such as the one shown below) often depicted families like Abigail’s, no known images of Abigail herself survive today.
How do We Depict Abigail?
While we have an extensive record of Abigail’s descendants, thanks to the meticulous genealogical work they have done- we don’t need to look far into Abigail’s ancestry to know where she came from. Her family was German, and she was a first-generation immigrant. The area around Yellow Springs was home to a large amount of German immigrant farming families, and Abigail and her family seemed highly emblematic of a colonial American woman from precisely this time and place.
Recorded in life as being a well-built, short woman, we chose to give Abigail softened features. However, for her coloration and attire, we chose to pay homage to the lovely depiction of Abigail Hartman-Rice by an actress from the SALT theater- also located in the town of Yellow Springs- as she appeared in WHYY’s feature on Washington Hall.
The attire that the actress chose was also very accurate to the kind of attire women like Abigail would have worn at the time. We are incredibly grateful to have partnered with both WHYY and the SALT theater to have brought Abigail back to life for a moment, so we wanted to give a nod to that vision of Abigail as well.
“John Rose”
Most visitors do not arrive at Yellow Springs knowing the name John Rose- and yet his story is one of the most quietly dramatic, and improbable, connected to Washington Hall. What appears at first to be the story of a young surgeon’s mate is, in reality, a story of reinvention, exile, and a life lived under an assumed name.
John Rose was born in 1754 into Baltic nobility as Gustav Heinrich von Wetter-Rosenthal. As a very young man, he became entangled in a violent incident at the court of Catherine the Great, where he shot and killed another noble in a duel. Whether the act was driven by honor, politics, or desperation, its consequence was absolute: flight. To survive, he abandoned his title, his name, and his past, and fled to America under the assumed identity of John Rose.
When Rose arrived in the colonies, he needed work and chose to pursue medicine. He entered mentorship under Dr. Charles Frederick Wiesenthal, a respected Baltimore surgeon.
Wiesenthal was a personal friend of Dr. Bodo Otto and the inventor of the first mechanical sewing device. When planners prepared to send Otto to Washington Hall, Wiesenthal sent Rose to Yellow Springs first.
During 1777–1778, Rose was only twenty-three years old. He arrived before Otto and discovered that builders had not yet completed the hospital.
Soldiers received treatment in makeshift “rebel” hospitals housed in barns. Despite the rough conditions, Rose encountered a strong sense of urgency and shared optimism.
Records show that Rose met Dr. Samuel Kennedy and soon worked closely with him. Their relationship developed into a meaningful professional and personal bond.
Kennedy’s illness and death seemed to have deeply affected Rose. Shortly after Kennedy’s death, Rose abandoned his post at Yellow Springs. Authorities later court-martialed Rose for leaving his position. He then became a privateer aboard a ship named Revenge. Rose participated in several additional military campaigns.
Over time, he returned to Europe, rejoined the Baltic nobility, and regained the title of Baron.
He lived to an advanced age after a life marked by exile, reinvention, and survival.
Rose’s life appears almost unreal in its scope and adventure. However, he was a real person who truly served as a surgeon’s mate at Washington Hall. Because of his later status, a portrait of Rose survives. The image shows him as an older man, not as the young surgeon’s mate who served at Yellow Springs.
The above is a Baltic Baron for sure- but while he was here, Gustav Heinrich von Wetter-Rosenthal was not the stately, older nobleman he is depicted as in that image. Here, he was simply the surgeons’ mate John Rose.
How do We Depict Rose?
Much of what we know about John Rose comes from the book Incognito: An Affair of Honor, written by Mardee de Wetter. This well-written and well-researched book chronicles much of John Rose’s life, and depicts an image of the baron on its cover. Unfortunately, we were not able to determine whether or not this is a contemporary image or if it was an image that was created to be used as the cover. However, de Wetter’s research describes John Rose as looking like a slim, tall young man with dark hair, so the coloration of the man on the cover is also the coloration that we chose to give John Rose.
By comparing this with the image of Gustav von Wetter-Rosenthal above (from much later in his life), we were able to determine the kind of facial features he would have had during his time serving as a surgeons’ mate at Washington Hall. His strong nose, strong cheekbones, rounded eyebrows and hairline were effectively de-aged but kept in tact.
We then dressed him in attire of the upper-middle class, gave him a common hairstyle for men at the time, and depicted him holding a surgical saw- all choices Gustav von Wetter-Rosenthal could very likely have made to have given himself an unremarkable appearance while masquerading as the perfectly un-suspicious surgeons’ mate, John Rose.
Bodo Otto Jr.
Many people today who are interested in Early American medical history and the Revolutionary War in Chester County- and those interested in the history of Yellow Springs itself- will probably recognize the name Bodo Otto.
While rightfully well-remembered, Bodo Otto Sr. was not the only Bodo Otto at Washington Hall.
In 1777, Bodo Otto Jr. accompanied his father to Yellow Springs, a young physician who had been trained from childhood for medicine and who arrived here already carrying responsibilities far beyond his years.
Otto Jr. was born in 1748 in Germany, and raised inside his father’s medical practice, alongside his two brothers. From an early age, he apprenticed under Dr. Bodo Otto Sr., observing patients, assisting with treatments, and absorbing the realities of 18th-century medical care long before most young men chose a profession. By his late teens, after his family had immigrated to the American colonies, he was studying at the Medical College of Philadelphia and training in the clinics at Pennsylvania Hospital- part of the first generation of American physicians to receive structured medical education. When he earned his medical degree in 1771, he did so already seasoned by years of practical experience under his father’s supervision.
By the time the war reached Yellow Springs, Otto Jr. was not a novice. In 1777–1778, at just 28–29 years old, he was a fully trained military surgeon serving alongside his father and brothers, trusted to operate independently in crisis conditions. He served at hospitals like those at Trenton and Valley Forge, and came with his father to the General Hospital at Yellow Springs.
While he treated soldiers here and at Valley Forge, his own family life was unraveling. In 1778, his home in New Jersey was burned by British sympathizers while his wife and children were inside, forcing permanent displacement. That same year, his young son died. Otto Jr. never returned to the life he had built before the war.
He continued to serve until 1781, even as his health declined. When he died of tuberculosis in 1782 at the age of 33, likely a disease he caught while in the wards, and he left behind not just a family, but a record of service that had unfolded almost entirely in the shadow of war. In New Jersey, he is remembered as a hero, and with the descendants of the Bodo Otto line, he is remembered as an ancestor.
Our task, here, though, is to imagine him as he would have been in 1777- and to imagine what he would have looked like.
There are several depictions of what Dr. Bodo Otto Jr. Would have looked like, so this gives us a great place to start.
How do We Depict Otto Jr.?
While our two images of Bodo Otto Jr. are fairly different-looking from each other on the surface, when we consider the features that each artist chose for him, we can see a common thread. In both images, he has a fairly rounded and wide face, eyes that look slightly hooded and fairly circular, notable eyebrows, and a straight nose bridge that fans out towards the nostrils. His mouth, in both images, is very distinctive, so we aimed to match its shape as closely as possible in these different artistic styles.
While there do exist later colored images of Dr. Otto Jr. (such as this one), the coloration of the image appears to be entirely speculative. That being said, while we do not have full color images of Dr. Otto Jr. from the time when he would have been at Yellow Springs, we do have something that we don’t for any of the other people we have chosen to focus on for this exhibit: a full-colored contemporary image of his father.
The above image is what we believe is the least-retouched version of the portrait painted of Dr. Otto. While we have a reproduction of the painting (generously donated to us by decedents of Dr. Bodo Otto himself) in our collection, the image appears to have been altered and smoothed over time, so we chose to rely on this version of the image since it would have been closer to what Bodo Otto looked like in life.
This would have been Dr. Bodo Otto Sr. at an earlier point in his life- it appears to have been commissioned, along with his wife, Catharina Dorothea Dahncken- who may have been a member of the nobility. At the very least, they were wealthy enough to have their portraits professionally painted, no small feat at the time. Catharina was the second of Dr. Bodo Otto Sr.’s three wives, and Catharina died on August 11, 1765, so because she was painted as well, we know that these images must have come from before that time. Likely, these portraits date even earlier- likely from from before Bodo, Catharina, and their five children (including Bodo Otto Jr.) immigrated to the the American colonies in 1755. This would have made Dr. Bodo Otto Sr. about 44 years old here at the youngest- much older than his son, Dr. Bodo Otto Jr. would have been in 1777-1778, but still young enough that we can see some of what he would have looked like in his youth.
Despite being from Germany (and despite the powdered wig Bodo Otto Sr. wears here), we can see that he has dark eyebrows, dark eyes, and an almost olive-colored complexion. This makes later depictions of Bodo Otto Jr. as having blue eyes and almost-white hair rather unlikely- though it is still possible that he had dark roots and lighter hair, so we chose to give Bodo Jr. a similar complexion and hair color choice as Bodo Sr.
You may also notice a distinct look to his hair, which is consistent across all the contemporary images of Bodo Otto Jr. we have referenced.
This style of hair would have been highly fashionable among young men in the late 1770s, and would reach its peak of popularity in 1780. Seemingly a rather fashionable young doctor, Otto Jr. seems to have kept up with the trends of Philadelphia. This style of hair was known as the “disheveled crop” at the time- and was often worn with a slight powdering- hence the white tint to some parts of his hair.
His attire has speculative color choices, but it has been matched to the more detailed image of our two reference images above.
To Us, Today
Our goal with this year’s exhibits, as America celebrates the 250th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence, is to present the history of Yellow Springs from a different perspective. However, as we do so, we want to ensure that the history we tell from those perspectives is accurate, respectful, and reflects the reality of the lives these real people lived.
While we represent their stories from a modern viewpoint and adapt their appearance to speak to contemporary audiences, it is important to remember that these were real people who lived real lives. Their sacrifices and experiences helped shape the world we live in today.
When we tell their stories, we are remembering them. When we present their stories through an exhibit or performance- especially one designed to make history feel personal and come alive for visitors- we must represent these individuals as fully as possible.
To achieve this, every detail matters, from the colors we choose in their illustrations to the moments of their lives we decide to highlight. When we tell history, we must remain mindful of whose stories we are telling.
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Learn more about the history of Yellow Springs
You can read the more in-depth version of this post here
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