Portrait of Asa Wolverton

For anyone who is as obsessed with the home as we are, will appreciate the journey we have been on to locate a picture of the original builder/owner of our home.  I have spent many hours in the museum archives and ancestory sites, library, etc, researching the family responsible for building this manor. 

It was at the library, almost two years after starting our restoration that I decided to check out the file for "Wolverton".  Dont know why it took me so long, but it did.  And low and behole, there was a photo copy, black and white, of this very portrait.  It was at that time that I knew it existed.  I was also lucky to find the book that was published by a decendant with 150 years of geneology records.  Unfortunately, Asa and Juliet (his wife) did not have children, so that it made it very difficult to find information.  But I did contact the author of the ancestory book, Harold Wolverton.  We started to correspond via the internet and I was able to meet other Wolverton's.

While reading this book, I also discovered that my family ancestors were inter-married to the Wolvertons back in the 1800's.  My direct roots go back to Kentucky where the Bryan, Boones (yes the Daniel Boone clan) and the Wolverton's settled.  Joseph Bryan married Nancy Wolverton around 1805.

It was in September of '08 that we had our home on tour for the County of Brant.  In less six hours we welcomed over four hundred people through our Parlour Poladium Window (like a french door only exterior).  Two of our guests were Wolverton decendants.  That was an exciting day for us!  I invited them to come back so we could talk.  Judy Palmer and her husband have a maple sugar farm somewhere in Ontario, I think.  Cristine lives in NWT and was living briefly in Toronto while going  to school.  (BTW, both ladies are our age).  Both Ladies are great, great grand neices of Asa and Juliet. Cristine and I connected immediately.  She is an amazing and interesting lady.  She had come to visit the Wolverton House many times and we still keep in touch.

Cristine was able to point me into the direction that lead me to the portrait.  Many years back, she and her mother saw it while vacationing in Europe.

So I went back to Harold who gave me the addresses of Mary Sheppard and her husband Stephen.  Mary resides in Edmonton as she is researching and writing a book about her famous father and her husband is living in Sheffield, England in the family home....where the portrait hangs.  Mary is the great grand daughter of Asa's brother Enos.

I sent letters to both addresses and got a response via phone and letter from Mary.  She too is a delightful lady, now in her mid eighties.  Within three months, and three letters, and....a bit of money...I now have a 600dpi of the Wolverton Portrait.

We are not sure how old it is, perhaps from the 1840's, however it is an actual camera photo that was oil painted. We are now in the process of having this "picture" duplicated and have it oil painted. 

With much discussion, hubby and I are sure that this is the very wall that the portrait original hung in the dining room.  The holes in the wall are from the blown in insulation, however the black line above those holes is where a picture rail was installed.  Hook and small chains were used to hang pictures back in the day. (not like today where we ram a fat nail in the wall, cracking plaster).  This is an alcove, 19" deep.  The black part of the lower wall is probably where the wainscott was glued to the wall (probably tar based) and the darker grey section just above the tar is where the chair rail was attached to the lath.  Now it is plaster over; looks like cement.  We believe there might have been a large side board or serving buffet sitting in this alcove with Asa's portrait handing over it.  It is our goal to do this again.