Academic

Justice Goldthwaite and Anne Wilson Goldthwaite

By Alfred Brophy

One of my areas of interest is multi-generational studies of families.  Francis Daniel Pastorius to Jaco Pastorius, for instance; Theodore Sedgwick to Kyra Sedgwick for another (and Catharine Sedgwick, too).  And, of course, I'm most interested in the intersection of landscape art and law.

So you can imagine my excitement on learning that George Goldthwaite, an antbellum justice on the Alabama Supreme Court, had a granddaughter who became an important early twentieth century artist--and a devotee of women's rights.  (George Goldthwaite's brother Henry also served on the Alabama Supreme Court and was a little less zealously proslavery than his contemporaries.  Perhaps there's a story here.)  Anne Goldthwaite was born in Montgomery in 1869 and died in New York in 1944.  Anne was the daughter of Richard Wallach Goldthwaite, son of George Goldthwaite. 

Add to this, John Archibald Campbell--an important legal historian of the nineteenth century (and better known as a justice on the United States Supreme Court, where he concurred in Dred Scott)--married into the Goldthwaite family.

The illustration is Anne Wilson Goldthwaite's The Green Sofa, in the Metropolitan Museum's collection.

Full post as published by The Faculty Lounge on June 01, 2009 (boomark / email).