Great-great-great-great-granddaughter brings lost family portrait back to Webster

WEBSTER — After decades of searching only to be met with dead ends, and thousands of dollars raised by extended family, a family heirloom from Webster's founding father has been brought back to the community he founded.

Sally McInnis, the great-great-great-great-granddaughter of Samuel Slater, spent years searching for a family portrait that originally belonged to the Slater family. The portrait, which shows three of Slater's grandchildren, had been something McInnis had been hunting for after having a photocopy in her family home growing up.

"I'm a bit of an amateur archivist for my family, and growing up we had a photocopy of this portrait showing the Slater grandchildren," McInnis said. "Our cousins also had a photocopy of it, and I always wanted to find the original."

The oil-on-canvas painting was completed in 1833 and is attributed to Joseph Goodhue Chandler , a noted New England painter of the period who is recognized as a key artist of early American folk art.

Samuel Slater was an industrialist who is widely credited with helping create the American factory system and is a major figure in the Industrial Revolution. Slater was an apprentice at a textile mill in England, where he memorized the English textile system and then immigrated to the United States, bringing that knowledge with him and setting up his first factory in Pawtucket, Rhode Island.

Slater would eventually come to own more than a dozen mills, three of which were constructed in Webster by 1812, a community he founded.

The portrait features three of Samuel Slater's grandchildren, the children of his son George Basset Slater and his wife, Lydia Robinson Slater. The children, from left to right are Samuel E. Slater, Elizabeth Hamilton Slater and George Arkwright Slater.

McInnis is the great-great-granddaughter of William Strutt Slater, the fourth child in the family, who was not born at the time of the painting.

The portrait spent most of its existence in Webster, in a home that was owned by the Slater family, from 1833 until the home was sold in 1977. The painting was briefly on display at the Holyoke Museum in Holyoke before bouncing around different private collections.

The search begins

The first place McInnis went looking for the painting was in local art museums. The Peabody Essex Museum in Salem and the Worcester Art Museum didn't turn up any results, casting doubt on if the painting was still around. In 2015, an auction house confirmed to McInnis that the painting had been recently sold to a private buyer.

"We tried to find out who sold it and who bought it, but we were not successful," McInnis said. "It was still great to find out that the painting was still out there, and it was valuable to art aficionados, that satisfied my curiosity to a great deal. When the trail went cold, I was at least heartened to find that the painting was still out there."

The painting would resurface late in 2023, when a Pennsylvania auction house reached out to the Samuel Slater Experience , an interactive museum in Webster that opened in 2022. The auction house told the museum that the painting would be coming up for auction in January.

More: No yawning allowed: Samuel Slater Experience interactive museum opens March 4 in Webster

The museum then reached out to McInnis, who had notified the museum in the past on her search for the painting.

"I didn't think that I would be able to bid on it, since it had sold in 2015 for $12,500, and that was out of my budget. I surprised though that its starting bid was only $2,000 and it was expected to go for $5,000," McInnis said. "I thought, Wouldn't it be fun to bring this painting back to Webster?"

Going once, going twice...sold

McInnis dedicated herself to getting the portrait back into the family. She studied the auction process and worked with the auction house Pook & Pook to get her ready for the online auction process. When the day came she was well prepared, even going as far as setting up a mobile wireless hotspot, in case her internet crashed in the middle of the bidding process.

"I figured that I was probably going to win it, nobody wanted this painting more than I did," McInnis said.

When time came for the auction, McInnis said she was concerned she was going to pass out from excitement. As the bids came in, she quickly opted to go higher than the prevailing bid. Soon she was in a bidding war with one other buyer, and the bids started escalating far beyond the expected price, surging past $10,000, way beyond the $6,000 budget McInnis had given herself.

"They tell you to never bid emotionally, but this was pure emotion," McInnis said.

In the end, McInnis realized she wasn't going to be able to win the bidding war. The painting was sold to another bidder, for more than $14,000.

"After it was over I just fell to the floor and cried for about a half-hour. It took me the entire weekend to get over it," McInnis said.

The silver lining

Unlike during previous times the portrait had been auctioned off, this time McInnis was able to get in touch with the buyer, the purchaser who had outbid McInnis.

"It turned out she was a prominent art dealer in Pennsylvania, and she was very enchanted by the piece as an example of early American folk art," McInnis said. "She did tell me that she was planning on selling the item at an upcoming auction, to flip it."

McInnis then began about pursuing her own private purchase of the portrait, but the cost was going to be steep — the art dealer wanted $22,000 for the painting. Using contacts she had from years on working on family history, she reached out to more than 60 Slater descendants, seeking funding to purchase the painting and bring it home to Webster.

"I was shocked and overjoyed by the generosity everyone showed. We had small donations, large donations and huge donations that came in. After two weeks and more than 30 cousins contributing, we had raised $22,000," McInnis said.

McInnis then directly purchased the portrait, and it was shipped to the museum in Webster, arriving on May 24.

"I burst into tears, I could touch it, I could see it, I was just ecstatic. I could bring my eyes right up to it and see the oil and the cracks, it was pure joy," McInnis said.

Barbara Van Reed, executive director of the Samuel Slater Experience, said that when she told the Slater family about the portrait, she was surprised that the Slater family would be willing to donate the painting to the museum.

"I originally reached out to the Slater family because I thought that they would want the painting back, I didn't think it would be hung in the museum," Van Reed said. "I got in touch with Sally, and she was so shocked because she had been unable to find it. Sally and her group of Slater descendants thought the museum should have it."

A public ceremony unveiling the painting will be held 11 a.m. Aug. 26 at the Samuel Slater Experience. Van Reed said that the painting will first be put on an easel display in the museum, but the plan is for it to eventually be moved into an event space currently under construction at the museum as the centerpiece decoration.

This article originally appeared on Telegram & Gazette: Great-great-great-great-granddaughter brings lost family portrait back to Webster